Does Name Of The Wind get better?

[thistlepong]

Wow. this thread exploded.

Simon and Wilhem - what the fuck is the difference between these two?

Fela - oh she's got a great rack and only once Kvothe is gone does his loser but nice guy friend get the girl.

Auri - this crazy girl would lost without Kvothe to help her.

Denna - super independent girl who is utterly broken, if ONLY she'd accept Kvothe's help. "Bitch".

Bast - Resi, can I shove my nose further up your ass? Can I Reshi? Can I?

And so on. The sad thing many of these characters are interesting, and if they were in a Harry Potter novel we might be given some development on them.

I disagree. Simmon's the eager blonde alchemist poet noble prodigy who's a bit ruled by his passions. Willem's the black friend, son of merchants, given to gambling, gruffness, and solid dependability. Fela's the dusky Modegan academic who's into Kvothe, but drops that notion when she see's how cool Sim is. Auri's the mysterious feral survivor whose mysterious past, esoteric knowledge, and stunning compassion keep the reader, and Kvothe, guessing. Denna's out there fucking doing all the things people are complaining Kvothe isn't. Bast... yah, you're right. He's up to just enough that we forgive that. They suffer a bit from Kvothe's lack of empathy or inattentiveness, but they're solid.

Honestly, I put Rothfuss's characters and story at Dresden File range: the fast food of fantasy: fun pulp, with close to great moments, but not quite what I call great. I've never felt the urge to re-read any of their books after finishing them once. The edge goes to Rothfuss for style (sometimes) but Jim Butcher is way better structurally.

I seriously had to go look up what Jim Butcher's structure was. Apparently it's pretty conventional. So much so that Harry was supposed to be a sardonic joke demonstrating what he thought of formulae to an instructor. He's wrote her a letter to apologize. Anyway, I hope I'm taking your point correctly that Butcher writes much better plot based fiction; and by comparison Rothfuss meanders.

He's writing with an entirely different set of structural concerns, though. Not some vague memoir biography travelogue structure, either; though that certainly informs the appearance of the prose. He's crafted the books circularly and alchemically. So, like, one of Sci's favorite punching bags is the draccus. The dragon actually needs to not be a dragon so it can be a symbol. It needs to be black to resonate with that tradition. Hell it has to sound like a lion. He has chapters that line up across the book, so the second to last chapter, for example, reads like the second chapter, only backwards. And that barely touches the surface.

I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying, mind. I can see the Dresden books being more fun and maybe even more satisfying. But structurally, formally, The Kingkiller Chronicle is fantastic.

[Sci-2]

So, like, one of Sci's favorite punching bags is the draccus.

Oh, I picked that because it brings the first book to a screeching halt, and Rothfuss actually complained about dragons in fantasy somewhere.

The dragon actually needs to not be a dragon so it can be a symbol. It needs to be black to resonate with that tradition. Hell it has to sound like a lion.

Curious what you're talking about here....

[thistlepong]

Meh, I knew suspected you picked it 'cause he's poo-pooed dragons and prophecies and appears to have given us both. Maybe he means it. Consider it. Tropes are fun to play with. Everyone loves Martin's boastful drunken axe wielding dwarf.

Curious what you're talking about here....

Okay, so, it's kind of a long convoluted explanation and the books aren't properly digital :bawl:

The nickel version, where I neither quote nor define terms, is that the black dragon is symbolic of the first stage of the magnum opus, the alchemical niggredo, which in some traditions is also the black lion. He doesn't want a dragon-dragon, though, 'cause that puts the emphasis on dragons and off the symbol. So, you think, "that not-dragon is pretty much a god damned dragon," and it's doing it's job. You're working for the symbol in the service of the text. Unless you skip it. :rolleyes:

It's also just a big dumb drug addicted destructive animal material force that get's smote by god and incinerated in an earthen vessel. That there reaches into the text, performs the literary alchemy, and recalls several earlier images. Those images, in turn, open up. Lanre's parallel with Sir Gareth, for example jumps out and echoes with the broader historical tradition and reverberates across the story.

I'll eventually get around to making that look beautiful and unassailable, but offspring.

[thistlepong]

Pat talks about pinups.

[Seli]

Pat talks about pinups.

Thanks, that was an interesting discussion. The somewhat familiar experience of enthusiasm overcoming good sense is more widespread it seems.

[dietl]

"Lovely, scantily clad humans are sex objects only to people who objectify other human beings. And those people do that no matter how draped that person might be. In 1967, a Jesuit priest observed to our class that he really did not see the sense of a dress code, as an immodest girl cannot be made modest no matter how you drape her, and that a modest woman can be stripped of her garments but not her modesty. So there it is, for me. If you are looking at our calendar and seeing sex objects instead of fascinating characters, well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And so are sex objects."

[thistlepong]

^ - Robin Hobb

[Sci-2]

You're working for the symbol in the service of the text. Unless you skip it. :rolleyes:

I think you and I might have different ideas about what it means to skip a part of the text. A person can only endure so much effort in entertainment before it feels like the effort is wasted.

So I didn't jump past everything to do with the draccus, I just go to some point where I skipped around and got the gist of what's happening.

That said, symbolism and structural tricks are all well and good. I wrote a poem in high school where I tried to include all sorts of structural tricks. The poem sucked.

[dietl]

"The poem sucked."

Don't be so harsh upon youself. I'm sure it was great! :-)

[Sci-2]

Argh, my post got destroyed. Anywho, I was about to say obviously my shitty poem doesn't compare to Rothfuss's novel - especially given his strength in writing prose.

My point was merely that symbolism and structural tricks should come after story. At the same time, I do have to concede that there are skills Rothfuss has that I did not catch on to in my readings.

[dietl]

Sci's post-> :box: <- me

[Sci-2]

Sci's post-> :box: <- me

?

[dietl]

Nevermind :-) It was a deliberate misinterpretation.

I think you are right about the story being more important.

[thistlepong]

I think you and I might have different ideas about what it means to skip a part of the text. A person can only endure so much effort in entertainment before it feels like the effort is wasted.

So I didn't jump past everything to do with the draccus, I just go to some point where I skipped around and got the gist of what's happening.

That said, symbolism and structural tricks are all well and good. I wrote a poem in high school where I tried to include all sorts of structural tricks. The poem sucked.

We undoubtedly do. We also clearly have different notions and expectations of how it might affect our understanding of the text. I tend to just stop or grudgingly plow through as though it were some noble effort. In both cases I definitely miss something.

Part of how formal structures work relies on actually engaging them. So, no matter what your conception of skimming through, some of the meaning and merit of the work is lost. If my eyeroll was untoward, it was not intended personally.

Banging out a rapid explanation of arcane literary formalism in reference to a contested text is a bit of a gamble even with a bright open audience. Doing so under the duress of (perceived) imperfect attention to the detail in question doubles down on that. It’s all or nothing when something popularly considered charming but wanky is on the table.

My point was merely that symbolism and structural tricks should come after story. At the same time, I do have to concede that there are skills Rothfuss has that I did not catch on to in my readings.

Hrm. Don’t worry about me misconstruing analogies. I’ve technically been pro since 1987. If you’d worked on that poem consistently over the years, you could be approaching The Faerie Queene or Manfred by now.

Here I think I converge with Shryke, but it’s only conjecture. I think the story did come first. I don’t think it has a conventional plot. And I think he acquired a lot of formal kit on the way to publication via exposure to, for example, Harry Potter and Tim Powers.

I think WMF is a much better book. The symbolism serves the story and scaffolds it rather than driving it ,while still being perfectly available. And the ring is delicate and unobtrusive. I’ve read them both enough that I can’t responsibly judge where the narrative stutters or halts. Tarbean, Trebon, Faen, and Ademre practically breeze by; though I do remember them seeming longer the first time through.

Edit: removed some irritated formatting

[Sci-2]

Edit: removed some irritated formatting

I actually did feel authority radiating off the bold text. :-)

[a wooden chair]

Is wooden chair aware of the bigotry hidden in the text?

I AM NOW!!!

Been thinking of finally breaking into some of this series for a while.

A man can chair, damnit.

[alguien]

I don't see what's clumsy about it. And it's very consistent with Kvothe's character. His casual dismissal of things he wasn't quite working at is exactly the kind of thing he'd do.

Its clumsy in that I don't think it was elegantly done or well-written. Its a bit that, IMO, should have been completely cut by his editor, as it didn't really help with an already over-bloated narrative. And, to clarify, its a fairly minor criticism--but one that relates to the overall problems I have with the character and the book's structure in general.

As for inconsistency, see what I said earlier about the uber-critical thinking skills and how those just disappear when its convenient for the author to give him a weakness. From what I know of gifted children (and, to be fair, my company writes educational anthologies for them) this isn't usual. Finally, the whole incident is inconsistent with Kvothe's character. Rather than even devote a sentence or two to say he wasn't good at something, I'd expect him just to say he chose to focus on what he liked and ignore it altogether.

[alguien]

I seriously had to go look up what Jim Butcher's structure was. Apparently it's pretty conventional. So much so that Harry was supposed to be a sardonic joke demonstrating what he thought of formulae to an instructor. He's wrote her a letter to apologize. Anyway, I hope I'm taking your point correctly that Butcher writes much better plot based fiction; and by comparison Rothfuss meanders.

He's writing with an entirely different set of structural concerns, though. Not some vague memoir biography travelogue structure, either; though that certainly informs the appearance of the prose. He's crafted the books circularly and alchemically. So, like, one of Sci's favorite punching bags is the draccus. The dragon actually needs to not be a dragon so it can be a symbol. It needs to be black to resonate with that tradition. Hell it has to sound like a lion. He has chapters that line up across the book, so the second to last chapter, for example, reads like the second chapter, only backwards. And that barely touches the surface.

I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying, mind. I can see the Dresden books being more fun and maybe even more satisfying. But structurally, formally, The Kingkiller Chronicle is fantastic.

Can you clarify a little? How does the 2nd to last chapter read as a reverse of the 2nd? Rothfuss can spin out pretty phrases from time to time, but I really came away with the sense that they lacked discipline and direction. Now, to be fair, I thought that while in the midst of reading LOTR in middleschool and Jonathan Strange in my 20's, and found both books to be brilliant upon conclusion. It may very well be that Rothfuss addresses those concerns in his last book. But I remain highly skeptical of this. More and more I get the sense that in terms of story, his has become a Lost, BSG, Wheel of Time, or Lies of Locke Lamora, where the narrative has spun out of control and he's doing his best to land the thing with no real plan in mind.

And I have to say, the dragonosaur that got high was easily the worst part of the first book. If it was included because he was trying to do something structurally, then it was a poor authorial decision to put structure or cleverness ahead serving the story itself.

You may be seeing structurally brilliance here, but I'm seeing the familiar signs of a series of novels that got out of the author's control and now he's doing his best to wrangle them back in. There's a lot of bloat, a lot of meandering, and a lot of editorial decisions that I would have done differently.

I actually went to listen to a panel at Worldcon this summer about structure with Rothfuss on it, and I came away with the distinct impression that while there were certain things he was trying to do, he didn't really have a huge plan in place and was somewhat making it up as he went along.

Nothing would make me happier to be proved wrong though. He seems like a great guy and, as I've said, there are parts of the story I enjoy.

[Poobah]

I don't really have anything to add to the overall discussion though I do rather object to the Dresden Files being brought up in a negative way since Butcher's series is one of my favourites for multiple reasons but I did want to add my thoughts on the whole "someone gifted giving up on stuff / suddenly finding something hard" thing.

I too found it very believable and very true based on my own life - as a kid I was widely considered to be very bright and did a lot of 'advanced' stuff for a 7 year old or whatever, but yeah time goes on and you find things that you can't intuitively grasp easily and suddenly you don't really want to do maths/science/whatever any more because it's hard and being hard means it's not fun any more. Being that good through the early years of school pretty much trained me to be extremely academically lazy and I dropped a hell of a lot of stuff as soon as I found it hard. It took a good deal of work to train myself out of giving up on something that I couldn't 'get' right there and then on the spot.

Anyway yeah... I don't find it hard to believe that Kvothe is a lot smarter and more intelligent than the average 12 year old kid or whatever but being able to understand basic trigonometry at 10 doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna be able to handle advanced algebra by 15. Kvothe was smarter than the average kid but really so what? He excels for a while because he's naturally smart and that works fine till he hits something that's beyond his natural abilities and he can't be bothered to do the work, so he leaves the subject by the wayside. Kvothe is certainly at the smart end of the bell-curve but so are those of his peers who managed to make it this far through the arcanum. It really doesn't seem like much suspension of disbelief is required to get that, for me.

[Castel]

I don't really have anything to add to the overall discussion though I do rather object to the Dresden Files being brought up in a negative way since Butcher's series is one of my favourites for multiple reasons but I did want to add my thoughts on the whole "someone gifted giving up on stuff / suddenly finding something hard" thing.

Whether or not Butcher has a structure doesn't stop the books from being fun or good.

EDIT: Though Butcher has worked to change a ton of shit with almost childish glee in Changes.