Chapter 9: Riding in the Wagon with Ben
In which Galatea realises that her second-favourite character is probably a sex offender.
Previously, in The Name of the Wind, Kvothe's troupe were elitist asshats to local authorities, and eleven-year-old Kvothe tried to buy ingestives from a stranger with a suspicious wagon.
Funny sidebar before we get going: I was reading one of Rothfuss' reddit AMAs, and I discovered that he's actually a big Barry Hughart fan - Barry Hughart being the author I name-checked when talking about Rothfuss' missing the mark with his children's rhyme about the Chandrian. Finding that out actually makes me wonder if Rothfuss was deliberately playing off the nursery rhyme and game in Bridge of Birds with his own rhyme and accompanying children's game. Not, I must hurry to add, in a plagiaristic way: I think it's perfectly valid to pay homage to another author or even to riff on an idea you like from another book.
That said, just as with Rothfuss' reading of romantic plays and poetry, I think his reading of Bridge of Birds was very superficial: he's paying homage to the mechanic of the rhyme and game without any real understanding of why Hughart makes it work so well. And, now that I stop to think about it, I can see other elements of Bridge of Birds in the DNA of The Kingkiller Chronicle, just as I can see elements of Wizard of Earthsea and A Song of Ice and Fire. In each case, Rothfuss is doing the same basic thing: nodding at a storytelling mechanic or worldbuilding element, but not really understanding why that mechanic or element worked well enough to stick with him in the first place.
Unshaved Mouse puts it very well in his review of a Roger Rabbit cartoon:
Imagine a ten year old boy watching Star Wars for the first time and it instantly becoming the only thing he ever wants to watch, or talk about, or think about for the rest of his life. And you give that boy the money and crew he needs to make his own Star Wars. That movie would just be wall to wall spaceship battles and lightsabre duals and it would last ten hours and be absolutely unwatchable. Because the boy knows that those are the parts of the movie that he enjoyed the most but doesn’t understand that the talky bits were what gave narrative and emotional context to those battle scenes which is what makes them satisfying on more than a surface visual level.I'm not accusing Rothfuss of Frankensteining other fantasy books together in a cheap attempt to pass his own work off as original: I'm saying he's that wide-eyed ten-year-old boy, knowing that he loves certain things but not realising the complex narrative framework that has to exist to support those things. It's another very common amateur writer pitfall, and in this case it's less annoying than kind of adorable.
Anyway, on to the stuff that's actually annoying.
This is a very short chapter, and its only real purpose is to introduce us both to Abenthy and to the basic magic system of the Kingkiller-verse.
Abenthy was the first arcanist I ever met, a strange, exciting figure to a young boy. He was knowledgeable in all the sciences: botany, astronomy, psychology, anatomy, alchemy, geology, chemistry. . . .The four-dotted ellipsis is right there in the text - I promise you it's not mine. Same goes for the comma splice.
Alert The Editor: 51
I also have questions. "Psychology" is the sumac of this litany of scientific disciplines: it doesn't really belong and it once again brings up the unanswerable question of when the hell we are. Psychology wasn't considered a science until the late 19th century; before then it was considered a branch of philosophy. Based on the level of technology and enlightenment so far in the Kingkiller-verse we could be anywhen from the early Renaissance to the beginning of the 19th century, but we're definitely pre-Industrial Revolution, so listing "pscyhology" as a science is anachronistic. Also: I see you sneaking "alchemy" into the list of sciences, Rothfuss. I think it's an attempt to ease us into the idea that certain types of magic are treated in a supposedly scientific way, but it's still as much a needle-scratch as "psychology".
I Have An Interrogative: 34
All of that said, I actually like the introductory description of Abenthy. It fairly bursts with personality and doesn't feel tropic, giving you a good sense of Abenthy's eccentricities while still making him feel human.
See, even though it's mostly a list of informed attributes, this is a good paragraph. The language flows nicely and I like the way Abenthy is portrayed as a good guy but not a saint. Whether Rothfuss lucked into this paragraph early on or added it in a rewrite with the benefit of more maturity, he clearly wrote this paragraph with love.He spoke gently, laughed often, and never exercised his wit at the expense of others. He cursed like a drunken sailor with a broken leg, but only at his donkeys. They were called Alpha and Beta, and Abenthy fed them carrots and lumps of sugar when he thought no one was looking. Chemistry was his particular love, and my father said he’d never known a man to run a better still.
Sadly, this is also the paragraph that broke the book for me, and it's not Abenthy - it's those damn donkeys. More specifically, it's their names.
"Alpha" and "Beta" are the first two letters of the Greek alphabet - in fact, they're where we get the word "alphabet". To all intents and purposes, Abenthy named his donkeys "A" and "B", or "Donkey One" and "Donkey Two". Okay, so far so adorable - and if they were, indeed, named "Donkey One" and "Donkey Two" I think I'd find it rather amusing.
But they aren't: they're named Alpha and Beta. They're named for Greek letters...in a world that never had the fucking Greeks.
It seems like I'm nitpicking but I'm not. Etymology matters in fantasy because it's a component of worldbuilding, and the secret to good worldbuilding is not complexity or uniqueness, but permanence: the sense that the world you have created existed before the beginning of the book, and will go on existing after the book ends. Middle Earth has permanence; Westeros has permanence; Pern has permanence; even the wizarding world of Harry Potter has permanence. The authors behind each might not explain exactly where every little thing comes from in their respective worlds, but they create the sense that each element of that world - language, geography, culture and so on - has an origin that exists within that universe and independently of our own.
By naming Abenthy's donkeys in a language that does not exist in the Kingkiller-verse but that does exist in ours, Rothfuss effectively destroys that sense of permanence. I'm not kidding when I said this is what broke the book for me: my suspension of disbelief, already tenuous thanks to all the goddamn wheel-spinning in the early chapters, shattered into a million pieces at this sudden, glaring evidence of the Hand of the Author. Abenthy can't possibly know the words "Alpha" and "Beta" because they literally do not exist in his world: the only way they can be in the book is by Rothfuss shoehorning them in there.
It's worse, too, than Rothfuss naming the book's first whore "Hetera" in an obvious play on the Greek "hetaira". Hetaira is a relatively obscure Classical Greek word, and the name "Hetera", taken alone, can be handwaved as a pleasing collection of syllables that happen to relate to Hetera's profession. You always get some wiggle room for that with characters' given names because it's generally accepted as a mechanic by which clever authors can hide details about their characters. You can't make the same excuse for Alpha and Beta, because Abenthy named them, giving them a level of separation from authorial cleverness, and because the two names are meant to be heard and understood in context: it's Alpha and Beta together that become a joke about Abenthy's laziness in donkey-naming. That means Abenthy has to understand the words "Alpha" and "Beta" to give them to his donkeys, and he cannot possibly do that because the words cannot possibly exist in his universe.
You can't hand-wave it away by imagining that there's a Greek-like language somewhere just as Aturan - the language Kvothe and most other characters commonly speak - appears to be English-like. Rothfuss squashes that excuse flat later when he tries to invent his own etymology for Aturan, and for a language nerd like me it's like having needles shoved under my fingernails. No, the only explanation for the nomenclature fail of those fucking donkeys is Rothfuss thinking it would be funny to name a pair of donkeys "Alpha" and "Beta", and completely, utterly failing to consider the implications of doing so to his fantasy universe. Rothfuss' linguistic laziness broke the fucking book.
In short: Alpha and Beta my ass(es).
Mother Tongue: 12
I Have An Interrogative: 35
Eagle-eyed readers will notice, by the way, that the book should have broken two chapters ago, when Kvothe makes his wretched joke about the "Aleph" creating the universe. It's the same exact fail for the same exact reason - just Hebrew instead of Greek - and the only excuse I have for not noticing it the first time I read the book is that the joke was so wretched it literally eclipsed the book-breaking. That's a really wretched fucking joke.
Anyway, in the now-broken book, Kvothe tries to get Abenthy to tell him about being an arcanist. Abenthy explains the difference between regular ol' magicians and real arcanists, displaying a level of disdain towards the former that goes a long way towards explaining why he fits in so well with the Edema Ruh:
Abenthy made a dismissive gesture. “No, no, boy. I’m talking about arcanists. Not some poor chill-charmer who works his way back and forth across caravan routes, trying to keep fresh meat from rotting.”I swear to God, no one in these books gets that there is nothing wrong with just making a fucking living. They're like the tech startup asshats who think you shouldn't be within ten feet of a computer if you aren't a genius with code, never mind that the modern world pretty much rests on the shoulders of all the perfectly competent non-geniuses who work in IT departments.
Kvothe, of course, has no issue with Abenthy's looking down his nose at all the other wizards in the world, and persuades Abenthy to tell him about "real" arcan...ism, which introduces us to "sympathy", the basic mechanic of the Kingkiller-verse's magic system.
“You’d probably call it magic,” Abenthy said reluctantly. “It’s not, really.”Yes it is.
Is This The Real Life: 16
Abenthy tells Kvothe that being an arcanist involves going through the Arcanum at the University, and I have to take a moment to say: it's a genuine shame that the book-breaking had to happen here. This is actually a decent chapter, all told. It's short and to the point, it's a fairly effective introduction to what will become a key magical principle in the books, and Rothfuss even does a pretty good job of depicting Kvothe as a precocious child. To wit:
This small prompt was all the excuse I needed. “I heard from a boy in Temper Glen that if your arm’s cut off they can sew it back on at the University. Can they really? Some stories say Taborlin the Great went there to learn the names of all things. There’s a library with a thousand books. Are there really that many?”
Is This The Real Life: 17
See? Kid Kvothe is an annoying pain in the ass, but he's a believable annoying pain in the ass, and that makes all the difference to how much I want to read about him.
Abenthy proves my earlier point by literally using Edema Ruh vs other travelling performers to illustrate the difference between arcanists and regular travelling magic peddlers. To demonstrate, he shows Kvothe his Arcanum guilder, a lead pendant that makes Kvothe's arm go numb when he holds it. Not the first time we've seen a magical pendant in-story; smart money's on the guilder being more than meets the eye, though Abenthy tells Kvothe it's just a way for an arcanist to demonstrate his legitimacy, as opposed to someone with a gift for more mundane sorts of magic.
Mention of more mundane magic reminds Kvothe that Trip - the juggler-cum-carnival-barker from the last chapter - has a knack for rolling sevens. Abenthy is properly cynical about this, figuring Trip can stack dice or cheats with loaded ones, but Kvothe insists that Trip can't cheat to save his life, and that sevens just roll themselves around him.
I Know Stuff: 11
Trip can cheat. Rothfuss has clearly never spent time around professional variety performers: cheating is a hobby. As a juggler, Trip can almost certainly stack dice and play the shell game, and there's a vague suggestion that he might be a company magician as well, which means he can cheat at cards too. I'm not saying Kvothe's wrong about sevens rolling themselves in Trip's presence - that's consistent with the magical elements present in the story so far. I'm just saying that variety performers know how to cheat, not out of malice or dishonesty but because it's consistent with their skillset. The same skills of dexterity and misdirection that go into cheating at cards or dice are used to build tricks and routines; it's a form of practice as much as anything else. Speaking as someone who's spent a lot of time with buskers and travelling performers, the idea of one who can't cheat just sounds ludicrous. It would have rung much more true if Kvothe had agreed that Trip can stack dice, but that he rolls sevens even when he isn't cheating.
Anyway, their conversation returns to the University, the Arcanum, and all the things one might learn there, with Kvothe momentarily jumping into Abenthy's head to tell us how amused he is by all Kvothe's questioning.
Kvothe asks Abenthy to teach him some of the things one might learn at the University, and Abenthy agrees.
Over-Reliable Narrator: 2
Kvothe asks Abenthy to teach him some of the things one might learn at the University, and Abenthy agrees.
"Slipstick" is a glaring anachronism: it's US slang for "slide rule" and its first recorded use is in the early 1920s. As a Brit, I hadn't even heard the word before I read it here and then spent way too long trying to track down its first recorded use to justify my anachronism alarm going off (the January 1925 edition of The Armour Engineer, thank you very much).Abenthy proceeded to give me a brief overview of each of the sciences. While his main love was for chemistry, he believed in a rounded education. I learned how to work the sextant, the compass, the slipstick, the abacus. More important, I learned to do without.
Mother Tongue: 13
Stu Stew: 34
The only point of learning "to do without" the standard tools for navigation and complex mathematical functions is to make prepubescent Kvothe look especially impressive.
Within a span I could identify any chemical in his cart. In two months I could distill liquor until it was too strong to drink, bandage a wound, set a bone, and diagnose hundreds of sicknesses from symptoms.
Stu Stew: 35
So is that.
I knew the process for making four different aphrodisiacs, three concoctions for contraception, nine for impotence, and two philtres referred to simply as “maiden’s helper.” Abenthy was rather vague about the purpose of the last of these, but I had some strong suspicions.HE'S ELEVEN.
KVOTHE IS ELEVEN YEARS OLD.
ABENTHY IS TEACHING ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD KVOTHE HOW TO MAKE KINGKILLER-VERSE VIAGRA AND ADDYI. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
Jesus fucking Christ: if Abenthy were doing this in the real world he'd end up on the kind of list that prohibits him from living in the same county as a school! The fucking fucking fuck was Rothfuss fucking thinking?
Stu Stew: 36
Oh yeah: he forgot that in this scene Kvothe is ELEVEN FUCKING YEARS OLD.
If I weren't reading this on my laptop I'd be throwing this book into the nearest ocean right about now.
*shudders* Abenthy keeps teaching Kvothe things and Kvothe keeps picking them up preternaturally quickly because at this point Rothfuss is just wanking right onto the page. Which might explain this:
HE'S ELEVEN.It felt the same way your body feels after a day of splitting wood, or swimming, or sex. You feel exhausted, languorous, and almost Godlike. This feeling was similar, except it was my intellect that was weary and expanded, languid and latently powerful.
I seemed to gain momentum as I progressed, like when water starts to wash away a dam made of sand. I don’t know if you understand what a geometric progression is, but that is the best way to describe it.I could point out that Kvothe is still narrating to the highly-educated Devan, who went to the University and so most certainly knows what a geometric progression is.
Simile Soup: 44
Instead I choose to say: fuck you.
I Know Stuff: 12
Stu Stew: 37
The chapter ends ridiculously abruptly, and I don't care because I have to go bleach the thought of eleven-year-old Kvothe brewing up Viagra out of my brain with a Scotch that's older than he is.
Alert The Editor: 56
Fuck this book.
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