Chapter 8: Thieves, Heretics and Whores
In which Galatea is pedantic about puns.
Previously, in The Name of the Wind, Rothfuss limped his way out of the framing narrative, stopping to make sure we all know Kvothe is a narcissistic asshole.
Ladies And Gentlemen: 9
Well, that didn't take long. It is a well-known fact that a single instance of the word "whore" in an epic fantasy is enough to make the book officially Serious and For Grownups. Those dirty, dirty sex workers.
There are a few things that inspired the Ladies And Gentlemen count, but Rothfuss' treatment of sex workers is a big 'un. Prostitutes - or whores, as they are inevitably called in books like this by writers like Rothfuss - are a very convenient shorthand for a Gritty and Realistic Fantasy World. Firstly, they demonstrate that recreational sex exists in this universe - and, true or not, the stereotype of epic fantasy is that it is either sexless or allows sex only in cases of True Love™. Secondly...well, they give the women something to do in a universe that is almost always resoundingly patriarchal.
Look, there is no good reason any more for fantasy universes to be sausage-fests. Hell, even Lord of the Rings, which is basically the Platonic ideal for the genre, doesn't particularly bother to make excuses for Eowyn wielding a sword or Galadriel being insanely powerful and influential. Yet somehow fantasy writers, particularly bad ones, keep setting their stories in universes wherein women can only have power by being born into it, by being spectacularly evil, by being "one of the boys", or by using her vagina. "Whores" in these stories are inevitably both derided by the characters for their line of work, and praised by the authors for being resourceful enough to seize the only source of independence available to them (again, their vaginas), and it's reductive and insulting. I'm not saying that fantasy universes can't have sex workers and a good author can't find a way to use the word "whore" that isn't instantly demeaning, but Rothfuss is going to demonstrate over and over again that the only reason his universe has "whores" is because he has absurdly narrow ideas of what women can do to be useful in a universe like this.
I guess I should start the actual chapter now, shouldn't I?
If this story is to be something resembling my book of deeds, we must begin at the beginning.
Repetition(epetition): 30
Do you know how I can tell that most of the last chapter was wheel-spinning to pad the word count and delay getting to the actual narrative? Because Rothfuss just copy-pasted himself. Twice. Both "something resembling my book of deeds" and "begin at the beginning" showed up in the same paragraph last chapter, and that's some damn specific phrasing to be repeated that quickly.
Anyway, we're about to get into the good stuff. Kvothe repeats that he is one of the "Edema Ruh"...
Repetition(epetition): 31
...and I just have to say...
Sometimes a good gif is the only appropriate response.
Remember the whole "reaching for a fantasy word and coming up with something wholly inappropriate"? Yeah, an edema is a medical condition. Specifically, it's a buildup of fluid in the tissues, often as a result of vascular disease. If it occurs superficially - that is, in or under the skin itself - it's ugly and excruciatingly painful. If it occurs in the organs, particularly the lungs or brain, it can be fatal. There is no such thing as a "good" edema: at absolute best it's an annoyance, and at worst it's a death sentence.
Please remember this every time Rothfuss takes pains to tell us just how wonderful the Edema Ruh are.
Anyway, the Edema Ruh are travelling performers. They're not just any travelling performers, though: they're elite travelling performers.
My troupe was not some poor batch of mummers, japing at crossroads for pennies, singing for our suppers.
Okay, back the fuck up a second. Street performing and busking have been around for millennia. I am good friends with many people who make their living that way, and who make a pretty good living at that. The conceit Rothfuss is trying to establish is that the Edema Ruh are the only buskers with any kind of standing in this universe, and that everyone else is basically a panhandler - and that's a narrow-minded view of busking that really makes me bristle.
It's worth pointing out that, despite Rothfuss heavily implying that many of the Edema Ruh are actually related by blood, this isn't quite your typical gypsy/Romani fuck-up (though the blood relation thing does edge into that extremely uncomfortable territory). As best I can tell, Rothfuss is basing this particular social dynamic on the travelling players of early Elizabethan England: England didn't actually have formal theatres with resident players until 1576, and prior to that actors toured in troupes that fairly closely resembled what Rothfuss describes with the Ruh. Acting was considered a low profession, and unless they had a license or writ from the Crown or from local authorities, actors were regarded as little better than beggars - and even licensed performers sometimes ran afoul of anti-actor prejudice, putting them in the bizarre position of having high official status but shit-poor social standing. In that regard, Rothfuss actually does a pretty good job of using real history to inform his fictional society without being appropriative or insulting.
HOWEVER. I can't ignore the fact that the Edema Ruh is a racial group as well as a societal one. Rothfuss not only explicitly states that many of them are related by blood, but also often talks about typical Edema Ruh looks, specifically in context of redheaded Kvothe not having them. Whether he intended it or not, that drops him headfirst into appropriative territory, especially when you get into the Edema Ruh's living situations (nomadic, with wagons), oral history tradition, reputation as thieves and con artists (Elizabethan actors were considered morally low and sexually licentious, but not typically thieves or grifters), and association with magic and superstition. Rothfuss does his best to paint the Edema Ruh in a good light, and it's amateur writing rather than poor intention that sometimes fails him in that regard. Despite that good intention, it's impossible not to see his absorption of centuries of fictional "gypsies" colouring his depiction of the Ruh, and it turns what could have been a refreshingly different take on a nomadic group sour.
There's also the really fucking weird insistence that any performer who isn't Edema Ruh is by default a penniless amateur hack with zero social standing and probably minimal talent. It would be one thing if this were just actors, but the Edema Ruh are more like a travelling circus than a theatre company, with jugglers, acrobats, musicians and what looks like a clown or a magician. These are skills for which a writ or license probably helps get those cushy indoor gigs, but which also make for perfectly viable solo busking careers, and have done for - again - literal millennia. Social status notwithstanding, having that dichotomy of Edema Ruh = professionals/everyone else = "poor batch of mummers" isn't just weird but totally unrealistic. Even if you chalk it up to Edema Ruh arrogance, it still doesn't ring true: I know street performers who are part of close-knit circus families or troupes, and they all have immense respect for non-family performers with the skill to make a living at their art.
All of that was a very long-winded way of saying that I respect the attempt to pull from a different source for his nomadic performers enough to spare Rothfuss an I Know Stuff count, but I'm definitely giving him one of these:
I Have An Interrogative: 25
I am not close to done talking about all the ways the Edema Ruh piss me off, by the way: I'd just like to be more than a paragraph and a half into the chapter before I go off on another tear.
Kvothe's troupe is under the patronage of "Lord Greyfallow", and their arrival in a town to perform is usually a Big Fucking Deal, bigger than the "Midwinter Pageantry" - explained later - and the "Solinade Games" - never explained at all.
I Have An Interrogative: 26
It bugs me that Rothfuss eventually gives us context for the obvious event (could the Midwinter Pageantry possibly be a big interactive performance event in the middle of winter?) and not for the one with the made-up word.
There were usually at least eight wagons in our troupe and well over two dozen performers: actors and acrobats, musicians and hand magicians, jugglers and jesters: My family.
That sentence is hideously constructed and makes no sense. We're clearly not talking massive circus rail cars here - at absolute biggest, these are Mediaeval-style pageant wagons, and it's unlikely they're even that big unless Kvothe's troupe has a whole herd of horses we never find out about. So we're talking at least three adult performers living in each wagon, to say nothing of children and non-performing adults, and all their gear still has to go somewhere. Unless each wagon is actually the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, I have some serious questions about how in the hell everything fits.
Alert The Editor: 28
I Have An Interrogative: 27
Kvothe dumps some backstory on us about his parents, mostly that they aren't married, they both look, act and live typically of the Edema Ruh, they're fantastic musicians, and his mother was noble but they don't talk about it much. I spy Chekhov's mysterious lineage. There's a little more about Baron Greyfallow, little of it interesting, and then we're onto the broad strokes of Kvothe's childhood.
It was a happy childhood, growing up in the center of an endless fair. My father would read to me from the great monologues during the long wagon rides between towns. Reciting mostly from memory, his voice would roll down the road for a quarter mile.
That last sentence is another mess: is his father's voice so loud that it carries a quarter-mile down the road? Does he recite for a quarter-mile at a time? Does his voice leap out of his throat, curl into a ball, and roll away from this trainwreck of a sentence?
Alert The Editor: 29
I remember reading along, coming in on the secondary parts. My father would encourage me to try particularly good sections myself, and I learned to love the feel of good words.
How much do you want to bet that last clause really means "I, Patrick Rothfuss, love the feel of good words"?
My mother and I would make up songs together. Other times my parents would act out romantic dialogues while I followed along in the books. They seemed like games at the time. Little did I know how cunningly I was being taught.
This is the first of many suggestions that Kvothe's parents teach him stuff that is wholly inappropriate for kids his age - because everything we're seeing described in this little potted history of Kvothe occurs before he is nine years old. Never mind the very questionable sense of teaching a nine-year-old to court at all, though: this little section suggests to me the cause of some of Rothfuss' real problems writing romance and women - namely, that he got it all from books and plays. In fact, I'd go a step further and say he got it all from an extremely superficial reading of books and plays, because a lot of what looks like epic, sweeping romantic courtship in what we now consider romantic classics is either actually supposed to be biting satire, or is just cleverly-veiled references to really filthy sex. Romeo and Juliet is drowning in both: the play many regard to be the Most Romantic Thing Ever is really a scathing commentary on how teenagers are fucking idiots, and when characters aren't commenting on or demonstrating how teenagers are fucking idiots, they're just talking about fucking.
Anyway, Kvothe goes on to say that random travellers would sometimes hook up with the troupe for safety on the road, and he got a broad and eclectic education from hanging around them. It actually rings reasonably true: the people I've known who were itinerant as children - from performer or military families, mostly - say similar things about their experiences growing up.
And then there's this:
I learned the sordid inner workings of the royal court in Modeg from a...courtesan. As my father used to say: “Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.”
Oh, Rothfuss. You were doing so well for a moment there.
Ladies And Gentlemen: 10
Politeness isn't going to stop Rothfuss from throwing the word "whore" around like rice at a wedding.
Hetera smelled vaguely of cinnamon, and at nine years old I found her fascinating without exactly knowing why.
Bewbs.
No, seriously, I'm not going to comment on Kvothe's preadolescent funny feelings. I am, however, going to comment on Rothfuss co-opting the Greek word for "prostitute" as a name for an actual prostitute, because that's just lazy.
Mother Tongue: 8
I'm sure Rothfuss thought he was being terribly clever, especially since "hetaira" might have referred to a specific high class of prostitute (think Inara from Firefly) - but it's still lazy to borrow wholesale a word that isn't typically a name and use it as one. Besides, pulling a word of Greek root makes "Hetera" phonologically and etymologically inconsistent with the other names and invented linguistics of the Kingkiller-verse. So there.
She taught me I should never do anything in private that I didn’t want talked about in public, and cautioned me to not talk in my sleep.
How very useful. Kvothe being Kvothe, no doubt he prevents himself from sleep-talking through sheer force of will. At the age of nine.
And then there was Abenthy, my first real teacher. He taught me more than all the others set end to end. If not for him, I would never have become the man I am today.
With "set end to end", Rothfuss is effectively measuring knowledge in distance, which is...weird. That said, knowledge is hard to quantify and doesn't really have a natural unit of measurement, so I think this squeaks by without a Simile Soup count.
I ask that you not hold it against him. He meant well.
Again, Rothfuss gilds the lily with "He meant well" - nonetheless, it's a fairly effective and slightly funny end to the section. Especially when it comes to section endings, it tends to feel like Rothfuss does actually know what he's aiming for; I just wish he'd resist the urge to over-emphasise or -explain his wham lines and punchlines. Coco Chanel supposedly once said "Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off"; that's actually pretty decent writing advice too. Rothfuss, before you go to print, look at the paragraph and take one sentence out.
Kvothe then launches into a long and excessively detailed account of his father arguing with the mayor of a small town over whether or not the troupe gets to perform. That makes this a good time to introduce what I'm pretty sure will be the final count of this book:
Over-Reliable Narrator: 1
The conceit of this entire series - as has been very, very, very well established by now - is that Kvothe is dictating an account of his life to Devan. That makes this book not just a first-person narrative, but an oral first-person narrative. On that level...well, it fails in every conceivable way. If we weren't ostensibly listening to Kvothe talking to someone, it wouldn't be too bad: almost every book ever written in first-person throws believable narration out the window so you aren't reading a series of "um"s, "er"s, and "oh wait, I remembered that wrong - actually it was..." and so on. Even in the case of oral accounts, it's typical and absolutely acceptable to take some liberties with voice in the interest of readability.
In Kvothe's case, it goes well beyond acceptable liberties and into the absurd. From impeccably detailed recollections of inconsequential conversations to jumping into other characters' heads to tell us what they're thinking, from this point forward Rothfuss fails utterly at emulating anything approaching believable narration. Now, because this book is one massive first-person fail, if I tallied every misstep up I'd be counting every sentence, so I'm not going to do that. Consider this first count, then, a blanket count for every time Kvothe remembers every word of conversations he heard before he hit puberty; there'll be a couple of other times I insert a count for a general and consistent failure of voice, but otherwise I'll just be using it to point out specific and unique fails, such as when Kvothe confidently tells us what another character is thinking despite not actually being a psychic.
Oh, and by the way? At the end of the book, this count is going to be fucking hilarious. You heard it here first.
The general gist of the scene is that the mayor is anti-Ruh and doesn't want them to use the public house to perform, and Kvothe is frustrated that his father doesn't use their official writ to overrule the mayor. The mayor offers the troupe a pittance to leave:
Now you have to understand that twenty pennies might be a good bit of money for some little ragamuffin troupe living hand-to-mouth. But for us it was simply insulting. He should have offered us forty to play for the evening, free use of the public hall, a good meal, and beds at the inn. The last we would graciously decline, as their beds were no doubt lousy and those in our wagons were not.
So that confirms that they live in their wagons, once again begging the question: how the hell do they have room?
I Have An Interrogative: 28
Also: what an arrogant ass.
Kvothe's father manages to worm Baron Greyfallow's name into the conversation - Greyfallow being the Lord to whom Squire Semelan, nominally in charge of the little town they're in, owes fealty.
“Lord of the eastern marshes, Hudumbran-by-Thiren, and the Wydeconte Hills.”
That sounds like a really sucky fifedom, if I'm honest. Even if "Hudumbran-by-Thiren" is the most magnificent township on the River Thiren (I'm assuming), I can't give Rothfuss a pass on the "eastern marshes". That's just not how toponymy works: if you've got "by Thiren"s and "Wydeconte"s, then the "eastern marshes" should be named "Astmarsh" or "Estermoss" or something like that.
Trust me, I'm English. We don't call the big bumps on the way to Brighton the "southern hills": they're the "South Downs".
Mother Tongue: 9
The upshot was this: it was true that the Squire Semelan controlled this little town and all the land around it, but Semelan owed fealty directly to Greyfallow. In more concrete terms, Greyfallow was captain of the ship; Semelan scrubbed the planking and saluted him.
That is so far from how feudalism works it's on another continent. Yes, as a squire, Semelan is below Greyfallow on the totem pole, but that doesn't make Semelan a fucking cabin boy. Semelan's a member of the landed gentry: he has land, that land has tenants in the form of villagers, and Semelan is responsible for the welfare of the villagers and has judicial power over them. If you go with the ship metaphor, Semelan is a bosun - as in, the guy who orders other people to scrub the planking and who answers directly to the captain. If Rothfuss really wanted Semelan to be a powerless toady, he should have picked a different title for him.
I Know Stuff: 10
Simile Soup: 42
The mayor hesitated, though I could hardly believe it. We sometimes chose to play on the green because the local buildings weren’t big enough. Two of our wagons were built to become stages for just that eventuality.
Are these eight wagons Tardises? Three adults living in each wagon, plus all their gear, plus two of the wagons become stages. This is not how wagon circuses work.
I Have An Interrogative: 29
The mayor keeps prevaricating, and eleven-year-old Kvothe is righteously pissed:
I was outraged. I waited for my father to show the mayor the sharp side of his tongue, to explain the difference between mere traveling performers and Edema Ruh.
I'm sorry: I meant Kvothe is a righteous ass.
Seriously, though, "mere travelling perfomers" makes me so angry. It takes skill, dedication and a lot of passion to make a viable career out of being a street performer, and being part of a troupe or a special family has fuck-all to do with that. It would have been fine for Rothfuss to make a distinction between the Ruh's reputation and that of other travelling performers; it would have been fine to make a point of the Ruh having to fight being seen as beggars just as all travelling performers often do; but this constant peering-down-their-noses at other buskers is unrealistic, patronising and just plain fucking ignorant.
That was the hardest part of growing up Edema Ruh. We are strangers everywhere. Many folk view us as vagabonds and beggars, while others deem us little more than thieves, heretics, and whores. It’s hard to be wrongfully accused, but it’s worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born.
Forget I said anything. Apparently Rothfuss can't even get the "fight being seen as beggars" right without being a patronising asshole.
My father laughed and roughed my hair. “Just pity him, my boy. Tomorrow we’ll be on our way, but he’ll have to keep his own disagreeable company until the day he dies.”
Last bit of quoting before I do my best to summarise for a while, I promise: I just pulled that section out to make the point that, as much as Kvothe's parents are supposed to be painted as wonderful, educated, kind-hearted free thinkers, Arliden (Kvothe's dad) is just as big an ass as his son. The mayor has told them in no uncertain terms that the last time a troupe played in the public hall the result was significant property damage, for which the town had to bear the cost. He has every goddamn right to be wary of another troupe asking to play the same venue, licensed or no. And, instead of telling Kvothe's troupe to go fuck themselves, he gives them permission to play the green and pays them to do so. The mayor is a fucking saint, and I'd much rather be reading a book about him.
Stu Stew: 32
Since I don't have a count for Arliden-centred morality, this will have to do. At least we know where Kvothe gets it from.
Kvothe and Arliden discuss which play to do, which involves more jabs at the locals' rural cloddishness, and then the mayor comes back to tell them that they can play the public house after all. I hope he pulls a Red Wedding and locks them all in so he can murder them to the Rains of Castamere.
In the next scene, Trip the juggler is pulling double duty as carnival barker as he takes people's money so they can see the show. When he's talking to the men in the audience, it's actually rather funny. When he's talking to the women, it's about babies and tits.
Ladies And Gentlemen: 12
Saying the pregnant woman should pay for "a head and a half" would be funny if he were addressing the woman instead of her husband; telling the woman with the infant to "give him the tit quick" if the baby makes noise is really fucking rude.
Kvothe's distracted because the police are dealing with an old fellow with a wagon outside, disputing his claim that he's a tinker.
Tinker, tailor: 3
The old fellow insists that he is a tinker, and that he's also an arcanist. This causes the constables to collectively shit their pants with superstitious terror. One makes a move to arrest the old man, and then this happens:
The constable grinned and twisted the old man’s arm. The arcanist bent at the waist and gasped a short, painful breath.
From where I hid, I saw the arcanist’s face change from anxious, to pained, to angry all in a second. I saw his mouth move.
A furious gust of wind came out of nowhere, as if a storm had suddenly burst with no warning. The wind struck the old man’s wagon and it tipped onto two wheels before slamming back down onto four. The constable staggered and fell as if he had been struck by the hand of God. Even where I hid nearly thirty feet away the wind was so strong that I was forced to take a step forward, as if I’d been pushed roughly from behind.
Two things. One: this little interlude suffers from the same problem as Kvothe's breaking the bottle of strawberry wine in chapter 6, by which I mean there's far too much foreplay. Everything between "twisted the old man's arm" and "A furious gust of wind came out of nowhere" works against the impact of the furious gust of wind by giving us time to wonder what the arcanist is going to do. Remember, this is not just the first time we've seen magic in the narrative proper: it's the first time our literal narrator has seen real magic in his life. If he wants to give Devan - and by extension us - the best version of the story he's telling, he should be evoking the surprise and suddenness of that event by letting it happen out of the blue, and explaining it afterwards.
Alert The Editor: 30
Just like I said when the bottle of strawberry wine broke, it is the editor's job to identify the key points of a scene and help an author pare away anything that robs them of their impact.
Two: I am so confused by the geography of this scene. If the wind is pushing Kvothe from behind as he watches the constables and the old man from thirty feet away, we shouldn't get the sense that it is dissipating by the time it reaches him: the wind should hit Kvothe with more force than it hits the wagon further down its path. Either the wind should come from behind the wagon, pushing Kvothe backwards as it passes the wagon and hits him, or Kvothe should be knocked right off his feet and blown towards the wagon, which is blown almost off its wheels and certainly weighs more than an eleven-year-old boy.
I Have An Interrogative: 30
Anyway, the old guy shouts some dramatic-sounding nonsense and the constables turn tail.
The wind faded as quickly as it had come. The whole sudden burst couldn’t have lasted more than five seconds. As most of the townsfolk were gathered around the public house, I doubted anyone had seen it except for me, the mayor, the constable, and the old man’s donkeys who stood placidly in their harness, utterly unperturbed.
In a circumstance like this, five seconds is a hell of a lot longer than Rothfuss seems to think it is. A gust of wind strong enough almost to upend a wagon - especially one likely full of heavy equipment - couldn't go on for more than a second or two without doing some serious damage to the surrounding buildings: anything not nailed down would go flying through the air and crashing into things, and people nearby would most definitely notice.
I Have An Interrogative: 31
The old man keeps muttering - apparently to his donkeys, since he hasn't seen Kvothe yet, and Kvothe recognises his words as a speech from a religious play. This potential common ground emboldens Kvothe enough to try for a closer look at what's written on the fellow's wagon.
ABENTHY: ARCANIST EXTRAORDINARY.
Scribe. Dowser. Chemist. Dentist.
Rare Goods. All Alements Tended.
Lost Items Found. Anything Mended.
No Horoscopes. No Love Potions. No Malefaction.
Abenthy spots Kvothe, and Kvothe is a little snot:
“You’ve misspelled ‘ailments’,” I pointed out.
He looked surprised. “It’s a joke, actually,” he explained. “I brew a bit.”
“Oh. Ale,” I said, nodding. “I get it.”God, that is a spectacularly shitty pun. I love puns. I think puns are awesome. I once had a three-hour text conversation with a friend entirely in fish puns. If Rothfuss had come up with a great pun, I would not go on the rant I'm about to begin - but, since Rothfuss' puns are almost universally shitty, he gets the full brunt of my linguistic nerd rage over the fact that he should not be using puns in-universe at fucking all.
Here's the thing about puns: they are a purely linguistic form of humour. It is unbelievably rare to find a pun that works the same way in multiple languages, especially if those languages are unrelated.
In fact, the one above is literally the only one I know, and even that one only works because four out of the five languages are closely related and the fifth (English) puns on a different word ("purr" vs "cat").
Now, we don't yet know specifically which language our main characters are speaking, but we do know it isn't English. They aren't in England - they aren't even in our universe - and the two conlangs we've seen so far don't have their roots in any extant human language. We're in uncharted linguistic territory - and that's fine. What's not fine is making a pun based on the relationship between two English words, especially one predicated on how those words are specifically spelled in English, and trying to pass it off in a world that doesn't fucking have English!
Puns can be pulled off in epic fantasy with conlangs. As part of prose description they typically slide by just fine, because it's safe to assume the author and readers are speaking the same language even if the characters aren't. If your conlangs are consistent enough, you can make puns in those languages, which is something that Tolkien occasionally does. And there's a little more room when your aim isn't humour or when one of the words is a proper noun, which is what GRRM does with "The Rains of Castamere". In that song, the "rains" of the title is a play on the name "Reyne", the noble family that ruled Castamere before the Lannisters violently conquered in it. Thus the line "And now the rains weep o'er his halls" could refer to the literal rain that fell over Castamere after the battle, or to the remaining Reynes weeping in the aftermath.
I'm not denying that it still takes some suspension of disbelief to accept the rain/Reyne pun, but a number of things GRRM does there stop the pun from sticking in my craw. The song is in Westeros' "Common Tongue", a language that serves the same broad purpose as English by being essentially a universal language, making it significantly easier to imagine that it works in a similar way. Half of the rain/Reyne pun is a proper noun: it's a made-up word, so if your headcanon is that the Common Tongue sounds vastly different to English, it's not a stretch to imagine "Reyne" pronounced differently to compensate. The pun hangs on homophony, not spelling, so again the reliance on literal English is lessened. And finally, it's not supposed to be funny. It's about atmosphere, not yuks, so GRRM can reinforce the pun in the text without explaining a joke. Taken altogether, it's a pun I likely wouldn't have noticed enough to analyse if it weren't a good contrast to what's going on here.
Because what's going on here is fairly simple: Rothfuss is asking me to believe both that his unspecified conlang can support a pun that is very specific to written English, and that his shitty, shitty pun is funny - and I just cannot suspend my disbelief high enough to do both.
Mother Tongue: 10
Anyway, Abenthy asks Kvothe what he wants, Kvothe asks for a specific anti-toxin, and Abenthy schools Kvothe in what he's asking for in a way that actually very effectively demonstrates how Kvothe isn't as wordly as he thinks he is. Rothfuss genuinely does rather well when he's deliberately making Kvothe out to be a precocious little brat; it's when he tries to make Kvothe heroic or romantic that he careens into narcissistic asshat (or fucking sociopath).
Abenthy asks whose troupe is performing.
“In a way it’s mine,” I said. “But in another way, it’s my father’s because he runs the show and points which way the wagons go. But it’s Baron Greyfallow’s too, because he’s our patron. We’re Lord Greyfallow’s Men.”A brief reminder that Kvothe is eleven in this scene. I was a superbly precocious eleven-year-old, and I can say with absolute confidence: eleven-year-olds do not talk like that.
Abenthy basically comes right out and asks Kvothe for a job, saying he can make stage lights for them and improve their cosmetics.
I didn’t have to think too hard about it; candles were expensive and vulnerable to drafts, torches were dirty and dangerous. And everyone in the troupe learned the dangers of cosmetics at an early age. It was hard to become an old, seasoned trouper when you painted poison on yourself every third day and ended up raving mad by the time you were twenty-five.
I Have An Interrogative: 32
I have to give Rothfuss this: that paragraph is not actually as stupid as it sounds. The real world has known about lead poisoning since Roman times; after the knowledge was lost during the Middle Ages, lead poisoning was discovered again in the mid-17th century - despite that, cosmetics were still manufactured with lead and mercury and people did keep slapping said cosmetics on their faces. Just as with the apparent inspiration for the Edema Ruh, I have to give Rothfuss some credit for doing a little research here.
Unfortunately, part of good research is knowing when to ignore it, and, to a modern reader, there's no way that showing the Ruh continuing to use lead cosmetics in full knowledge of its toxicity doesn't make them look monumentally stupid. This is one of those rare places where adding a line might have fixed it: a throwaway statement that the lead cosmetics were the only option long-lasting or affordable enough for the Ruh would have made it look like the Ruh were stuck between a rock and a hard place, makeup-wise, and not just suicidally stupid. Without that extra line of information, I'm forced to question why the supposedly educated and enlightened Ruh keep poisoning themselves with lead paint, no matter how true to reality it might be.
Perhaps using the same logic I just did, Kvothe invites Abenthy to join the family.
Once again: he is eleven.“I may be overstepping myself a little,” I said as I held out my hand for him to shake. “But let me be the first to welcome you to the troupe.”
Stu Stew: 33
It's genuinely hard to write children convincingly, but it's harder still when you're trying to write the child version of a character you think is blindingly perfect. The usual result is a creepy miniature adult version of your Sue or Stu.
Almost done: the chapter ends with a brief section in which Kvothe explains that he may have had ulterior motives for inviting the crazy old man with the donkeys to come home with him.
If this is to be a full and honest account of my life and deeds[...]
Repetition(epetition): 32
"Book of deeds", "account of my life and deeds", same song; different verse.
What he had done afterward was different. He called the wind and the wind came. It was magic. Real magic. The sort of magic I’d heard about in stories of Taborlin the Great. The sort of magic I hadn’t believed in since I was six. Now I didn’t know what to believe.
Is This The Real Life: 16
So I invited him into our troupe, hoping to find answers to my questions. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I was looking for the name of the wind.
Title Drop: 3
Boom.
Quick clean-up before we put this chapter to bed:
Alert The Editor: 49
Be glad I didn't stop for every comma splice, fragment, capitalisation error or other grammar/punctuation fail.
Repetition(epetition): 34
Rothfuss is really keen that we understand the townsfolk are "God-fearing" people.
One final bit of housekeeping: now that we've introduced all of our The Name of the Wind counts, all the chapter-end counts will be in alphabetical order. It's a little easier for me to tally, and it'll make for some fun comparisons at the end of the book.
Join me next time to see the origin of the Mother Tongue count and find out what broke the book for me the first time I tried to read it!
I found this yesterday and am now caught up, and I just wanted to say I really enjoy it! I haven't read the books themselves, because they are stupidly long and there's only so much time in the day, but I've heard a lot about them. Some people tell me they're awesome - but on the other hand, some people also think Sword of Truth is awesome so I tend to take that with a pinch of salt. It seems to me a lot of fantasy fans have no taste, and I say that as a fantasy fan.
ReplyDeleteEither way, I've also heard a lot of less flattering things about them. Like Kvothe's Stu-ness and cultural elitism, the padding, and Rothfuss's inexplicable hatred towards poetry and his Frank Miller-like obsession with whores. I actually wanted to check them out for a spork myself, but I really don't have the time, since I a) study for a degree in literature at uni and therefore read like four, five books a month as it is, and b) am already sporking one boring, infuriating and overly-long fantasy book (Wizard's First Rule, natch). But now I don't need to, since this sporking exists and does a great job! Keep it up. I'll definitely keep reading!
I've read your Wizard's First Rule sporking! It was actually part of my motivation to do this: I was originally hoping to spork for the Das Sporking comm, but they haven't been open to new sporkers for a while.
ReplyDeleteGreat to [virtually] meet you!
It's an honour!
ReplyDeleteYeah, there haven't been any openings for quite some time, unfortunately. There's talk of moving to Dreamwidth. We'll see what happens