Chapter 15: Distractions and Farewells
In which Galatea finds reason to be kind.
Previously, in The Name of the Wind, Kvothe almost killed himself when he should have just needed to burp.
Confession time: I realised after posting the last installment that I totally fucked up my counts. I keep a running tally in a separate document to make it easier to keep track, and I think I forgot to update at some point so I was working from out-of-date totals. I think I fixed them all, but I did not anticipate how hard it would be to correct counts after the fact, so if I'm off by one or two...well, point it out, and I'll try to correct before I get too much further.
Anyhoo, something struck me as I was gearing up for this chapter: as much as there is to dislike about this book - and so far we've counted up *looks at counts* well over 500 reasons - it is surprisingly readable. What I mean by that is that, every time I read a chapter to make notes for this spork, I end up ten chapters ahead of where I need to be before I realise it. I'm at something of a loss to explain why that is, because I find this book utterly exhausting in so many ways. It's not a world I like hanging out in, like Harry Potter; nor does it have that "ooh, what happens next?" quality of a cheap potboiler. The short chapters have something to do with it, I think; we've already seen plenty of chapters that really should have been combined, and we're heading into another stretch of chapters that are fewer than ten pages apiece. Beyond that, though, it just feels like the reading equivalent of eating Saltines: I'm certainly not enjoying what I'm consuming, but before I know it I've snarfed the lot down anyway.
What's that you say? "Galatea, are you spinning your wheels again to avoid getting started on yet another Saltine of a chapter?"
Shut up.
Some undisclosed amount of time after Kvothe's falling-out with Abenthy, we stop briefly in a town called Hallowfell, and you know what? Aside from some of the usual bugbears and nit-picking, this is actually an excellent chapter. An excellent concept for a chapter, that is. In context, at least.
*sighs* Look, I'm trying to be nice, okay? The point is that this chapter is actually a major turning point for the novel, and by some miracle Rothfuss avoids repeatedly thwacking us over the head with that fact. It reads as a short, nostalgic portrait of a pleasant evening, but in just a few pages a major character departs, Kvothe is set on the path that he will follow for most of the rest of this book and the next, and a terrible tragedy is unwittingly set in motion. The inciting incident of the entire story is more or less a throwaway scene in this chapter, and that's pretty brilliant.
This relatively benign stop turns out to be the end of Abenthy's time with the troupe, because there's a pretty widow who's tailor-made for him. No, literally: Rothfuss needed to get Abenthy out of the narrative, so he created a female character whose sole purpose is to get Abenthy to fall in love with her. She doesn't even show up in the story proper. It's even written as though it might literally be some kind of trap, which I don't think is at all deliberate:
She was a widow, fairly wealthy, fairly young, and to my inexperienced eyes, fairly attractive. The official story was that she needed someone to tutor her young son. However, anyone who saw the two of them walking together knew the truth behind that story.
She had been the brewer’s wife, but he had drowned two years ago. She was trying to run the brewery as best she could, but she didn’t really have the know-how to do a good job of it. . . .
As you can see, I don’t think anyone could have built a better snare for Ben if they had tried.
Alert The Editor: 133
Ladies And Gentlemen: 23
That's one count for this female character existing for no other purpose than to get Abenthy out of the story (like Kvothe's mother, she doesn't even get a name); one for her seduction of him being described as a "snare", because it has that nasty undercurrent of "womanly wiles" about it; and one for the brewer's widow not having a clue how to operate the brewery, which I fucking guarantee you would not have been the case in a small town in this rough time period. Look, life was hard and dangerous before the Industrial Revolution (and during, but that's another issue), and so anyone who worked a physical trade for a living typically got the family in on it, partly for the extra pair[s] of hands and partly so they weren't left destitute if the primary breadwinner up and died. Farmers' wives could run the farm; potters' wives knew one end of the kiln from the other, and brewers' wives could brew.
The whole setup just leaves a sexist taste in my mouth. I think it speaks volumes about how Rothfuss writes women that his throwaway female characters - as in the ones he isn't trying to write as "strong" - enter the story needing a man to help them out of a bind. I recently watched Coco for the first time, and while I didn't love it as much as I expected to, I respected the hell out of its opening: a woman is left by her husband, who's the primary breadwinner and a musician, and instead of re-marrying, the woman learns to make shoes. Then she teaches her daughter to make shoes, and her daughter teaches her daughter, and before very long they have an entire matrilineal dynasty of self-sufficient shoemakers. I want to see more of that in historical[ish] fiction, please.
Because Abenthy's decision to leave roughly coincides with Kvothe's twelfth birthday, they decide to throw a big ol' party to celebrate and say goodbye.
That's pretty accurate. I ran follow-spot for a busker's birthday bash once, and it was the biggest, craziest show I have ever seen. Plenty of performers broke out brand new material for the occasion, and I can honestly say it's the first time I've ever seen a person ride a ten-foot unicycle while playing the national anthem on a kazoo disguised as a rubber chicken. It was also the first time I ever tried Tito's vodka, and just...don't. That stuff goes down like water and comes up like liquid hellfire.To truly understand what it was like, you must realize that nothing is so grand as a troupe showing off for one another. Good entertainers try to make each performance seem special, but you need to remember that the show they’re putting on for you is the same one they’ve put on for hundreds of other audiences. Even the most dedicated troupes have an occasional lackluster performance, especially when they know they can get away with it.
Small towns, rural inns, those places didn’t know good entertainment from bad. Your fellow performers did.Fuck you, Rothfuss. You were doing almost okay for a second there.
Stu Stew: 53
I'm calling this protagonist-centered morality, because that seems to be where I file Kvothe and Arliden being total snobs.
Really, though, the description of the party is lovely. Rothfuss does a good job of capturing a warm sense of nostalgia, and, despite how thinly-sketched these characters have been prior to now, Kvothe's affection for them comes through loud and clear. I don't even mind that it's all in the context of what these characters do for and give to Kvothe, since it is literally his birthday party. The other members of the troupe give Kvothe gifts that speak quite nicely to who they are and how they think of him, and he has a moment dancing with his mother that's sweet and warm and pleasant to read.
Shandi - who may have shown up in the narrative before now, but if she did it was as not much of anything - invites Abenthy to her wagon for a Very Special Dance.
Ladies And Gentlemen: 24
He's leaving because he has a girlfriend, Shandi. Keep your damn skirt on.
There's some more performance from the troupe, including a mock fight and some fire breathing, and then Kvothe's parents perform "The Lay of Sir Savien Traliard", written by Illien - who, as we learned a few chapters ago, was the troupiest trouper who ever trouped.
That's counter-melody, you tone-deaf dope.My mother sang the counter-harmony, her voice soft and lilting.
Face The Music: 11
Kvothe cries at the end of it, and makes a point of telling us that he still cries every time he hears it. As much as I feel a faint whiff of sexism coming off that - in the sense that Kvothe probably wouldn't have to justify weeping if he were a woman - I do respect a male protagonist who's okay with crying once in a while. I'll even go a step further and point out that Rothfuss actually has a pretty good sense of how and when to deploy Kvothe's manly tears for solid emotional impact, so...cool.
After Sir Savien, the entire troupe gangs up on Arliden for a preview of his song about Lanre, and Arliden reluctantly complies. Let's get the good stuff out of the way first. A few paragraphs I said that the inciting incident for the entire trilogy was barely more than a throwaway moment in this chapter, and Rothfuss admirably chooses not to beat us over the head with it. Well, this is that moment. Arliden bowing to pressure and singing a brief passage of the Lanre song to an audience is more or less what sets everything else in motion, and in this particular moment Rothfuss chooses to treat it as no more than a shared musical moment between performers. No brooding, no foreboding, no portentious purple prose: just a song that no one thinks to consider might have other people listening out for it.
Of course, once we hear the song, it becomes clear that the Chandrian (er...spoilers, I guess?) only take issue because Arliden is a TERRIBLE FUCKING POET.
Sit and listen all, for I will sing
A story, wrought and forgotten in a time
Old and gone. A story of a man.
Proud Lanre, strong as the spring
Steel of the sword he had at ready hand.
Hear how he fought, fell, and rose again,
To fall again. Under shadow falling then.
Love felled him, love for native land,
And love of his wife Lyra, at whose calling
Some say he rose, through doors of death
To speak her name as his first reborn breath.
Kvothe The Raven: 13
As per usual: imagery 101, scansion and rhyme all over the place, and some really clumsy wordplay. If I were a Chandrian listening in, I'd be right damn pissed that someone took over a year of research and tinkering to come up with that crap.
Kvothe's parents dance together, Kvothe's mother dances with Abenthy, Kvothe and Abenthy say farewell, and it's all pleasant, if a little much like padding for my liking. The next morning, Kvothe wakes to find a goodbye gift from Abenthy: a book, Rhetoric and Logic, with a note in the front.
“Kvothe,Nothing really to spork there - it's admirably concise. I include it to point out the final instance of something being done rather brilliantly in this chapter, and that's setting Kvothe on the path to the University. The subject has come up before, and it'll obviously come up again, but it drops in and out of the narrative, and after this it'll drop back out for quite some time. But when Kvothe makes his final decision to attend, it'll be this inscription from Abenthy that inspires that decision, and, once again, Rothfuss makes the surprising choice not to hammer us over the head with that now.
Defend yourself well at the University. Make me proud.
Remember your father’s song. Be wary of folly.
Your friend,
Abenthy.”
Kvothe briefly considers the thought of attending the University, has a bit of a cry at Abenthy's absence, and thereby ends the chapter. All things considered, it was a pretty good one.
Alert The Editor: 133
For the usual troupe of typos.
Over-Reliable Narrator: 9
For the sequence of the performers clamouring for Arliden's song being written in a way that would be pretty much impossible to convey orally.
See you in the next one!
No comments:
Post a Comment