thistlepong Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 I don't have a problem with what PR blogged about the schoolboy crush either. :dunno:Is it the kind of having no problem where you can't see why anyone ever would? Or is it the kind where it doesn't bother you and you think maybe folks are harshing on him about it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcus Cicero Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 I don't have a problem with what PR blogged about the schoolboy crush either. :dunno:Neither do I, but the backfire has been hilarious when one considers his original intentions. Trying to clarify his disappointment with Jackson, he accidentally distracts from his argument by going into comic detail comparing his nerdrage with asymmetrical schoolboy infatuation.We loved the sweet, shy, freckly girl. We still remember her name, and after all these years she lives close to our heart. Seeing her in lipstick and stiletto heels dancing on a pole is like watching Winnie the Pooh do heroin and then glass someone in a bar fight.It just isn’t something that I look forward to seeing….This just makes me wonder if Winnie the Pooh is due for a gritty reboot.Also, using Winnie as his simile within a simile is delightfully ironic in light of Moorcock's 'Epic Pooh' essay concerning LOTR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thistlepong Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 Pooh rebooted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 I thought the nerd girl turned stripper story was written by a 13 y.o. ghost writer who is paid to handle his blog.I assume the same kid wrote the Felurian chapters.Either that or it's this guy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tears of Lys Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 Is it the kind of having no problem where you can't see why anyone ever would? Or is it the kind where it doesn't bother you and you think maybe folks are harshing on him about it?Neither do I, but the backfire has been hilarious when one considers his original intentions. Trying to clarify his disappointment with Jackson, he accidentally distracts from his argument by going into comic detail comparing his nerdrage with asymmetrical schoolboy infatuation.This just makes me wonder if Winnie the Pooh is due for a gritty reboot.Also, using Winnie as his simile within a simile is delightfully ironic in light of Moorcock's 'Epic Pooh' essay concerning LOTR.It doesn't bother me in the sense that I personally feel no sensitivity about his example of the stripper. Indeed, I would rather have a similar reaction to that situation. However, if I had been a stripper, for whatever reason, or had a close friend who was one, I can see where I would have a different reaction. I'm just so damn understanding and open minded that I sometimes amaze myself. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Queen Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 Adding my 0.02, I couldn't finish The Name of the Wind either, I stopped very early because everything about it seemed cliched, generic fantasy. And I also don't understand why anyone would have a problem with his girl turned stripper story, even after I read the negative comments and even considering people who are friends with strippers. It was about something he loved turning into something else that would have been great, except it destroyed the original thing and he laments that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brendan Moody Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 It was about something he loved turning into something else that would have been great, except it destroyed the original thing and he laments that.Except that women are not, in fact, things. Unlike works of fiction, they don't exist purely to bring pleasure to people, and it's inappropriate (even in a hypothetical) to judge their behavior as though they did. Which is why it was an inappropriate analogy.Personally it wouldn't have stopped me from reading his books, if their style and content hadn't already done that anyway, but I can see why it would for some people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tears of Lys Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 Goddamn it. Christopher Paolini's stuff is cliched, generic fantasy. Rothfuss' is not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spoony Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 I wasn't very into the first book, and I was severely disappointed in the second.I personally don't care about the stripper story. The story wasn't really about the stripper as much as it was about his own personalized attachments and sentimentality -- which so happened to be directed towards an imaginary women who got all gussied up in sex.If people are somehow disappointed in this guy, then they should really re-examine their initial frame of reference that inspired much of anything to be disapointed in, at, or towards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 Except that women are not, in fact, things. Unlike works of fiction, they don't exist purely to bring pleasure to people, and it's inappropriate (even in a hypothetical) to judge their behavior as though they did. Which is why it was an inappropriate analogy.Personally it wouldn't have stopped me from reading his books, if their style and content hadn't already done that anyway, but I can see why it would for some people.Yeah, the geek girl turned stripper is about as developed as any female character in KKC with the exception of Denna, who isn't a good character anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Queen Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 Except that women are not, in fact, things. Unlike works of fiction, they don't exist purely to bring pleasure to people, and it's inappropriate (even in a hypothetical) to judge their behavior as though they did. Which is why it was an inappropriate analogy.Maybe works of fiction mean more to him than they do to you, as much as girls. He is a writer after all. And people don't exist to bring pleasure to each other, but they do bring pleasure to each other, sometimes, and why can't he lament if a girl no longer gives him as much pleasure as she did before? When, for instance, friends move far away, are we being inappropriate for lamenting that we won't see them as often as before? He never said the girl had to change her behavior to suit him, he knows she won't as he knows film makers won't change their films because of what he thinks. That's the whole point of the post, and why he wouldn't want to have TNoTW adapted to cinema. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcus Cicero Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 Goddamn it. Christopher Paolini's stuff is cliched, generic fantasy. Rothfuss' is not.The only argument that it's not generic seems to be 'but there's an unreliable narrator.' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brendan Moody Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 Maybe works of fiction mean more to him than they do to you, as much as girls. He is a writer after all.This repeats Rothfuss' error in making the analogy to begin with. If works of fiction literally mean as much as girls to him, it's because he's treating them both as inanimate objects whose purpose is to give him pleasure. Which would be deeply not okay. But I don't think that's the case.And people don't exist to bring pleasure to each other, but they do bring pleasure to each other, sometimes, and why can't he lament if a girl no longer gives him as much pleasure as she did before? When, for instance, friends move far away, are we being inappropriate for lamenting that we won't see them as often as before?Not a comparable situation, because in that case you have an actual relationship with the person, have presumably developed that by treating her like a human being, and aren't just projecting various fantasies (creepily described as "love") onto her as though she has no life of her own. If you have a crush on the girl across the hall you've never spoken to, and lament when she moves far away that you won't be able to ogle her anymore, then yes, that's inappropriate. Or rather, it would be inappropriate to put that fact at the centerpiece of a metaphor about a book, even a book you really, really love.I imagine that, to one degree or another, a fair number of people do mentally objectify others in real life the way Rothfuss does the girl in his metaphor. (I have from time to time myself, I must admit.) That's not great, but as long as it exists in the realm of internal fantasy and doesn't influence behavior toward them it doesn't really hurt anyone. But when a bestselling writer does it in a public blog post, it's worth pointing out that that's what happening. Rothfuss could stand to be alert to the unintended consequences of a given metaphor; he is a writer, after all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Queen Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 If works of fiction literally mean as much as girls to him, it's because he's treating them both as inanimate objects whose purpose is to give him pleasure.Or he is treating works of fiction as more than just inanimate objects whose purpose is to give him pleasure. It wouldn't surprise me at all that he would become extremely attached to a story and its fictional characters, that he would "fall in love" with them and compare them to his teenage crush. After all, people come and go (and sometimes they go to become totally unreachable strippers you no longer identify with), but books are forever. :) You can count on Frodo being always there for you, and he will always stay the same.Not a comparable situation, because in that case you have an actual relationship with the person, have presumably developed that by treating her like a human being, and aren't just projecting various fantasies (creepily described as "love") onto her as though she has no life of her own.I understood that he might have had a relationship with hypothetical geek girl. They would talk about books and she would laugh at his Star Wars joke. If she were real.I imagine that, to one degree or another, a fair number of people do mentally objectify others in real life the way Rothfuss does the girl in his metaphor.He wrote: "You liked her because she was funny. And she was smart. And you could actually talk to her. And she read books." Hardly what I would expect if he were objectifying her.In short, here is one way of interpreting PR's post: comparing books to girls objectifies the girl. But there is another way: comparing books to girls personifies the books. He is romanticizing Lord of the Rings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gigei Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 Well the series isn't bad but it's nothing that great either. I would rate it right now as above average for fantasy books. I do like way it's being told as an inaccurate tale where you have to tease out some hints where the narrator could easily be making things up and such. On the other hand, it's not as good as Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun series which also features an unreliable narrator. I reserve final judgment for when the series finishes, of course.The first book was pretty good. The second was okay but with some uninteresting bits (Felurian, the martial arts dudes, etc.).I definitely did love some specific scenes in it. like when his friend Bast arranged a theft. Bast (and me, too as the reader who had been listening to the tale of how super-awesome Kvothe is) was expecting him to kick their ass but its pathetic how he loses badly. Very nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tears of Lys Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 I'm going to post this plea in both WMF and tNotW threads since I'm not sure where it's mentioned.Could someone who knows off the top of their head where it's mentioned that one of Kvothe's hands appears to have been injured please point it out to me? I can't find it and it's driving me crazy.Thanks!ETA: I got my answer in the WMF thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chinadoog Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 The only argument that it's not generic seems to be 'but there's an unreliable narrator.'poor orphan boy grows up to be super smart, famous, and powerful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Stone Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 It's interesting that I found this thread. I picked up NotW a couple years ago and tried reading it, but found it fairly boring and put it down. About 6 months ago my Kindle got squashed so I was forced to start reading paper books that I had laying around the house. I read through everything I had stockpiled and only NotW was left, so I picked up where I left off and immediately got right into it. I had stopped reading about 10 pages before his parents were killed, and that seemed to be the point where it picked up for me. Once he got to the University I was into it, and that is where I am at right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 I actually never finished NotW or WMF. I just skipped around the latter, and the former I skipped the "not really a dragon b/c this is anti-fantasy!" shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferrum Aeternum Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 I read TNOTW in late 2011. I liked the book enough to finish it, but it didn't particularly spark my imagination and as a result I haven't yet bothered to pick up TWMF.The responses in this thread tell me that many of the folks who are big fans of the book (and its sequel) are those for whom the meta- aspects of the books (story-within-a-story, unreliable narrator, trope deconstruction) are as much a draw as the story itself. Personally, I don't read books to marvel at how many tropes the author purposely deconstructs. I prefer to read an interesting story in a vivid world with memorable characters. For me TNOTW came close at times, but didn't quite provide any of that. Great prose helps, and while I suppose Rothfuss' prose is above average for a fantasy author, I didn't find it or the story (even once he reaches the University) particularly compelling.Reading this and other threads on the series, I feel like I'm missing something. Maybe when I'm done with Abercrombie I'll give this another try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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