Chapter 6: The Price of Remembering (Part I)
In which Galatea re-writes half a chapter and begs Rothfuss to get to the fucking point.
Previously, in The Name of the Wind, Kvothe attempted murder by indifference, and Bast stitched him up using utterly inappropriate tools while in an imagined agony of iron torment. I was the one imagining it, because the text was not nearly that interesting.
The next morning, Devan is shockingly not dead, bringing us to the end of our brief brush with realism. In fact:
Chronicler raised a hand to touch the back of his head. “Throbs a bit when I move around too quickly. But it’s still working.”That is literally the last we'll ever hear of the injury that dropped Devan into two prolonged periods of unconsciousness.
I Have An Interrogative: 20
My praise for how Rothfuss handled the immediate aftermath of Devan's injury still stands, by the way. That brief interlude of Devan's head being genuinely conked is leaps and bounds better than the "I'm out - I'm up!" of far too much genre fiction.
But it is worth pointing out that this entire doorstopper of a trilogy takes place over three days - four since Devan's injury, if you're being generous. And in that time, time during which Devan is actively using the brain he bruised as he basically takes tens of hours of dictation, not once do we get so much as a mention that Devan has a bit of a headache.
I cracked my head open on an ice rink once. I was trying to execute a difficult turn I hadn't got the hang of yet, my skates were badly in need of sharpening, and my foot went right out from under me as I tried to change edges. My coach, who was watching me practise while she waited for her next student, told me later that - for the brief moment before I remembered that gravity existed - it was the most beautiful spin she'd ever seen. The point is, I came down hard on my head and got treated to my first ever concussion.
Unlike Devan, I was unconscious for a fraction of a second - in fact, I can only tell I was actually out because I remember the rather distinctive feeling of coming to. Also unlike Devan, I was a wreck for weeks. I lost peripheral vision for a while, I had constant headaches, if I stood or sat too quickly the room spun, and thinking felt like an endurance sport. If I'd been trying to take hours of dictation like Devan's about to, I would have ended up with something that looked like the drunken scrawlings of an inebriated spider.
True, every head injury is slightly different: someone can shrug off a right hook to the skull under one circumstance and be laid out cold by a gentle tap under a different one. But if we're being realistic - which Rothfuss was clearly trying to just a couple of chapters ago - my experience after just a moment of unconsciousness is much more typical than Devan's being an insensible lump overnight and just fine the next day. And, like so much else, I have to chalk this up to the original contrivance of having Devan there for the scrael attack at all. Rothfuss wrote himself into a corner with his incessant need to pad his word count, and the only way to write himself out of it again was to defer to the head-injury cliches he was trying so hard to avoid in the first place.
Kvothe confirms that Devan has made it all the way to Newarre:
He made a dramatic sweeping gesture with one hand. “Thriving metropolis. Home to dozens.”
I Have An Interrogative: 21
Despite being sorely tempted, I'm not going to dig too deep into what makes a town a "town", except to say that I'm pretty sure Newarre isn't one. The accepted requirements for township are pretty loose and vary a lot from place to place, but generally you have to have a certain population size, a local economy not based on primary industry (farming), and/or walled fortifications. Newarre has precisely none of these things. Again: what makes a town a "town" is pretty loose, but so is Rothfuss' sense of geography and economics, so this is far from the only time he makes a statement about the location we're in that doesn't fit what we've been told about that location.
Kvothe pads for a paragraph by asking Devan how the road to Tinuë is, which is especially annoying because 1) Devan wasn't heading to Tinuë, and 2) Kvothe knows the roads are bad. Devan knows the roads are bad. We know the roads are bad. Everyone fucking knows the roads are bad. It's old news, it doesn't tell us anything new about setting, story or character, and it's yet more wheel-spinning.
NaNoPadMo: 14
Just get to the bloody story already. I am literally begging.
Alert The Editor: 13
If we can get there without any more comma splices, so much the better.
A couple of things start happening in this chapter, and despite that we're still a couple of chapters away from being out of the framing narrative and into the story proper, they signal that things are getting ready to get moving. Firstly, Devan's about to undergo a lobotomy. Once he starts interacting properly with Kvothe, Devan's dry wit and self-assured confidence evaporate, and over the next couple of chapters we'll see him be shy, nervous, and something of a doormat - not qualities that fit with the man we saw haggle with highwaymen not too long ago.
Secondly, Kvothe's about to turn from a relative non-entity of a Mysterious Character™ into an actual asshole. I am undoubtedly biased in that I like Devan (for now) and I've read ahead so I know how Kvothe is for the rest of the book, but there's no two ways about it: Kvothe is a dick to Devan. It goes beyond what Rothfuss has already asked us to accept of Kvothe's world-weariness and so on; after all, in his interactions with the townspeople Kvothe has been distant but cordial. For my money, it also goes beyond the anger that would be appropriate for a man who's having his true identity thrown in his face after a lot of effort to keep it hidden. There's an entitlement to Kvothe's interactions with Devan that doesn't track with what we've seen of Kvothe so far in his interactions around the inn, but that does track with what we'll see of him later on in the story proper.
“Fine,” the innkeeper interupted as he pulled out a white linen cloth and began to polish the bar. “Who are you then?”
“You can call me Chronicler.”
“I didn’t ask what I could call you,” Kote said. “What is your name?”
“Devan. Devan Lochees.”This is exactly what I mean. We already know that this world has Naming magic; we already know that Kvothe has many names and all of them have at least some significance, especially the one he's left behind and the one he chooses to go by now. Under the rules of this world, Devan has every right to dictate how he wants to be addressed, and Kvothe demanding his real name is somewhere between rudeness and an actual threat. And yes, I know that I'm doing the same thing in insisting that Chronicler is a stupid name and I won't use it, but the big difference is that I'm not in the book. I'm an external observer making comments from outside the rules of the fictional universe; Kvothe is in the book, and so he is bound by those rules. Under those rules, he's being a dick.
Stu Stew: 7
I guarantee you that if Devan demanded Kvothe's real name (and he doesn't - Kvothe's actually the first to use it in their conversation) Kvothe would refuse. As a character who exists to facilitate Kvothe's story, Devan doesn't get that option.
“Lochees? Are you related to Duke . . .” Kote trailed off, nodding to himself. “Yes, of course you are. Not a chronicler, the Chronicler.”Early, not-too-obvious setup for a mystery that will be painfully obvious later. And a comma splice.
Alert The Editor: 14
Though note: Kvothe is aware that Devan is famous enough at his trade that his job title does actually function as his name, yet he still demands Devan's given name.
He stared hard at the balding man, looking him up and down. “How about that? The great debunker himself.”
Chronicler relaxed slightly, obviously pleased to have his reputation precede him.The Devan of Chapter 2 would have recognised that Kvothe is being a sarcastic asshole.
Stu Stew: 8
It's a minor case of protagonist-centred morality: Kvothe is very clearly being an ass, but Devan either doesn't notice or chooses to ignore it, despite that contradicting his established character.
Devan tries again to coax Kvothe into talking, and Kvothe deflects by padding about Devan's book, The Mating Habits of the Common Draccus.
NaNoPadMo: 15
Yes, it bloody well is padding: not only is it a diversion from the track we should be on, which is Devan's persuading Kvothe to actually tell his bloody story; it also robs us of what could be a fun moment for eagle-eyed readers later on, when Kvothe encounters the book for the first time. If we were allowed to recognise Devan's name organically when we encounter it later, it would be a cool "Aha!" moment that adds richness to the characters we already know. Shining a spotlight on it now, on the other hand, is just an excuse to do this:
“I read your book years ago. The Mating Habits of the Common Draccus. Quite the eye-opener for a young man with his head full of stories.” Looking down he began moving the white cloth along the grain of the bar again. “I’ll admit, I was disappointed to learn that dragons didn’t exist. That’s a hard lesson for a boy to learn.”
Is This The Real Life: 9
Look, I get it. This is "realistic" fantasy. But the revelation that dragons don't exist - or, rather, that they aren't what we think they are - would be much more powerful in-story, where Rothfuss has more opportunity to build up our expectations before the reveal.
Chronicler smiled. “Honestly, I was a little disappointed myself. I went looking for a legend and found a lizard. A fascinating lizard, but a lizard just the same.”
Is This The Real Life: 10
And again I say: I get it. But once again, we've had more than enough emphasis on how this isn't your average fantasy. I'd much rather see a young Kvothe have that realisation - that the stories aren't real - as part of his actual narrative than harp on it here, in padding-within-padding.
Repetition(epetition): 10
It's not word-for-word, but it is telling us twice that dragons don't exist at the point in the story where it is arguably least relevant whether or not dragons exist.
“And now you’re here,” Kote said. “Have you come to prove that I don’t exist?”This would almost be funny if Kvothe weren't being such a dick.
Kvothe gets pissy when Devan implies someone else knows he's been hiding out in an inn:
“I’ve been traveling with an old friend of yours. Skarpi.”
“Taken you under his wing, has he?” Kote said to himself. “How about that? Skarpi’s apprentice.”You fucking asshole. To borrow a term from a group full of such assholes, Kvothe is basically negging Devan here. Remember, Kvothe isn't unaware of Devan's credentials: not a page previously, he said "Not a chronicler, the Chronicler". If someone calls you "the [job title]", that someone knows your reputation as the foremost in your field. So either Kvothe's going senile and straight-up forgot that he's talking to the Chronicler (read: Rothfuss forgot) or - more in keeping with the ugly character he's started to display - he's being deliberately patronising towards a man who is older than he is and a known master of his trade. And for what? Yes, Kvothe tried to murder the last man who recognised him, but 1) that was accidental on Rothfuss' part, and 2) at least he was cordial to the fellow while he was deflecting his assertions. When it comes to Devan, Kvothe goes beyond dismissive and beyond angry: he's downright cruel.
I'm tempted to give it a You Fucking Sociopath count, but I'm going to have to settle for one of these:
Stu Stew: 9
Devan corrects Kvothe about his professional relationship with Skarpi - "More of a colleague, really" - but it's a gentle correction that Kvothe ignores and Devan never underlines. Either we aren't supposed to notice that Kvothe's being a dick, or we aren't supposed to care.
Kvothe gets one last cheap shot in at Devan, which actually bothers Devan this time, and, once Devan's effectively wrong-footed, Kvothe presses his advantage.
“So what can I do for you?” Kote set aside the clean linen cloth and gave his best innkeeper’s smile. “Something to eat or drink? A room for the night?”Of all the things that frustrate me in this chapter, this might be the most frustrating of all - not because it's bad writing, but because it could be really good writing. If Kvothe's trying to persuade Devan to leave him alone and move on, the best thing he could possibly do is to just keep being a perfect innkeeper until either Devan gives up or something happens that forces Kvothe to drop the act. He knows Devan's reputation: he should know that the only way to get rid of him is essentially to gaslight him.
So imagine how effective that same bit of dialogue could be if it were right after Devan comes downstairs, instead of after paragraphs of faffing around while Kvothe insults and patronises him. Devan's shaken, injured and off his game, but he knows what he saw in the woods: this has to be the legendary Kvothe he came to find. But despite that Kvothe must know the game is up - after all, he killed a horde of scrael with a witness there for part of it - the man behind the bar never drops the pretense that he's just an innkeeper. Devan thinks he sees something else going on behind the man's green eyes, but he can't be sure, and the more he presses for answers the more he doubts that he wasn't really just knocked silly when he hit his head.
Of course, at some point during that hypothetical scene, Kvothe's control has to break, probably as a result of Devan asking just the wrong question (and we'll see something like that happen in just a few paragraphs). But until that moment, Rothfuss could have had a tense and effective game of cat-and-mouse, with the added bonus of showing us just how high the stakes are for Kvothe: after all, how desperate must he be if he's willing to play this game with a man to whom he all but revealed his identity already during the fight?
Instead, Kvothe blows his was during his dick-measuring contest with Devan, basically confirming Devan's suspicions before going back to his harmless innkeeper routine. The tension's gone right out of the scene: Devan knows, Kvothe knows Devan knows, and we're left - once again - spinning our wheels while we wait for Kvothe to feel he's landed enough blows to Devan's ego to consent to tell his story and get us out of this fucking framing narrative.
NaNoPadMo: 16
For the whole bloody lot of it.I'm going to break the chapter here: while this isn't a long chapter, the reveal of Kvothe's actual personality means that there's a lot to unpack. Couple that with some hideously amateurish writing and the frustration of seeing what could have been if Rothfuss could just get out of his own way for a while, and I'm beat. We'll pick this up again in Part II.
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