Chapter 17: Interlude - Autumn
In which Galatea teaches Rothfuss how to people.
Previously, in The Name of the Wind, Rothfuss gave us all an object lesson in why writers sometimes need to kill the things we love. He did this by killing everyone Kvothe loves, and driving his editor to drink.
Since it's been three years since I last updated this spork regularly, I took most of yesterday to do something incredibly necessary, and just as annoying.
I re-read the entire book.
I wanted to remind myself of what was coming, and also to make sure that what I'm planning to say still has value, both for myself and for whoever might be reading this. I've changed some over the last three years, and - particularly during the pandemic - I've softened a lot of my stances. Everyone's reacted to pandemic stress a little differently, and I'm glad to say that mine has mostly been to become more empathetic and forgiving. I didn't plan it that way; I think I just kept getting hit with the fact that literally everyone is having a pretty shitty time right now, so I'm not going to waste time getting mad at people for things that aren't actually truly harmful. The point is, I thought there was a chance I'd return to the rest of the book and come out the other side thinking, "That wasn't so bad. Maybe I don't need to spend more of my time tearing it to pieces."
Readers, all I can say to that is...thank God I read fast like a freak.
If I were a slower reader I don't think I'd have made it. I read on my laptop so I can copy/paste and use search functions, but I had visions of myself tearing the book in half down the spine that were so strong I was tempted to buy a physical copy just so I could make that vision manifest. If I'd thought for half a second that I couldn't choke down the entirety of The Name of the Wind in an afternoon, I'd have given up the whole thing as a bad idea.
Because here are the other things that have happened during lockdown:
- I've done quite a lot of professional editing, writing, and teaching. That means that bullshit-spotting skills that were pretty sharp already have been honed to a razor's edge, allowing me to uncover heretofore-unplumbed depths of Rothfuss-wank in this housebrick of a book.
- I've discovered that I have absolutely zero patience for men who can't write women.
A couple of weeks ago, I watched the latest Charlie Kaufman movie, I'm Thinking of Ending Things. At time of writing the movie's still quite new, so consider everything between ***SPOILER*** and ***END SPOILER*** below a massive spoiler, and read at your own risk.
***SPOILER***
Over the course of a really weird visit to her boyfriends' parents, the main character - played beautifully by Jessie Buckley - comes to realise that she is, in fact, imaginary: that her "boyfriend" met a version of her at a bar, was too scared to ask for her number, and has been living out this fantasy of having her as his girlfriend for literal decades. It's based on a book in which, after a terrifying experience that confirms to her what's going on, the protagonist decides to kill herself, freeing herself from the boyfriend's imagination and also helping the boyfriend, now an elderly and depressed janitor, end his own life.
I like that concept. The self-actualisation of an imaginary girlfriend is a fascinating premise for a psychological horror, not to mention a commentary on the more insidious kinds of toxic masculinity and nice-guy-ism. The book's ending, which gives the girlfriend agency over the end of her story even at the cost of her own life, is pretty compelling. Then the film goes and fucks it all up.
See, in the film, at the point in the book where the girlfriend takes agency, we dive fully into the boyfriend's mind and the girlfriend drops right out of her own story. There's a weird fantasy ballet sequence of "what might have been", then the boyfriend gets to give a rousing final musical number to his assembled friends and family, including all the high school kids who alienated him, and the ghost of his imagined girlfriend. They rise to their feet in support of him. His delusion is complete; his imagined life has meaning. There's some implication that the elderly janitor dies at the end, but the girlfriend has nothing to do with it. She's left the story by then.
In other words, Kaufman took a book about a fascinating female character trapped in a nightmare of toxic masculinity, cast the incredible Jessie Buckley in a powerhouse of a role, and then re-oriented the whole thing around the mediocre boyfriend's man-pain.
I cannot begin to tell you how angry I was at the end of that film. All that skill, all that writing, that wonderful performance, some truly virtuoso filmmaking, just to completely miss the point. To deny the agency and characterisation of a woman who has been the literal narrator of the story for most of its runtime. To sweep her right out of the narrative so that a miserable old man can have his one exhale of relief before his death.
***END SPOILER***
When I say "I have zero patience for men who can't write women", that's what I mean. I can get past clumsy descriptions of breasts and eyes and "curves in all the right places". I can handle a little stereotyping about cliques and cattiness. We all make mistakes when we write outside our own experience. But there's a certain kind of writing that honestly scares and angers the hell out of me, because it tells me that the author simply cannot conceive of putting the complex interiority of a woman on the same level of that of a man. That's what happened in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and that Kaufman managed to do it in a film in which the literal narrator is a woman is astounding.
And that's what Rothfuss does with The Name of the Wind.
We're in the seventeenth chapter of a ninety-four chapter book (including Prologue and Epilogue), we're at a Ladies and Gentlemen count of 25 already, and we haven't even met the love interest who's the main reason I included that count in the first place. And on my lighting-fast, gritted-teeth re-read through this monster, it was her, as well as all the other women in this story who exist just to be collections of cliches with legs, that made me go "Fuck you, Rothfuss: I'm still doing this". There's music fail aplenty, the language fail gets hilariously awful, the worldbuilding continues to suck and I'm even going to get to trot out You Fucking Sociopath a few more times before the end.
But in the final equation, what we truly have here - and what I truly need to spork - is an author of a major fantasy bestseller, out there saying all kinds of dumbass shit about writing and worldbuilding, who lacks the imagination to even conceive that a woman has independent thought.
Hyperbole? Maybe. And we're a long way from hitting the parts of the book where this really makes me want to tear the thing in half. As much as anything, I'm writing this now to remind myself, tens of chapters from now, why I didn't look at the break I've taken and the work left to do and go, "You know what? I can live a perfectly fulfilled life without doing this." I'm writing it now, as well, so you know what kind of rage to expect from me when the Ladies and Gentlemen count really hits its stride.
And I'm also writing it now because this is a real nothing of a chapter with very little worth a spork.
We're back at the Wayside so Bast and Devan can react to what Kvothe just told us. Actually, it's mostly so Bast can react - Devan still basically exists as a simple facilitator for Kvothe's story, but Bast gives us one of those examples of men being emotional that I actually quite like in this book:
Bast looked close to tears. “Oh, Reshi,” he choked out. “I had no idea.”If your book has to be cishet teenage boy wish-fulfillment, showing said cishet teenage boys that it's okay to feel and show emotion is a good move.
Kvothe gave his student a severe look. “What, Bast? Should I weep and tear my hair? Curse Tehlu and his angels? Beat my chest? No. That is low drama.” His expression softened somewhat. “I appreciate your concern, but this is just a piece of the story, not even the worst piece, and I am not telling it to garner sympathy.”
Is This The Real Life: 23
But...but this is the "worst piece" of the story. I'm entirely, 100% serious. I've read both The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear cover to cover, multiple times, and nothing happens that is close to the level of tragedy of, I don't know, KVOTHE'S ENTIRE FUCKING FAMILY BEING MURDERED BY SUPERNATURAL FORCES.
I'm sure this is once again just Rothfuss writing a cheque that the third book needs to cash, but given that Rothfuss' editor hasn't seen a word of Book 3 manuscript in ten years, let's not hold our collective breath.
Over-Reliable Narrator: 13
Not sure where else to file "narrator insists death of his entire family is comparatively not that bad".
Kvothe says he's popping out to get firewood - with another "gesture" because Rothfuss has no idea how people actually use their bodies - and Bast and Devan chat a bit before coming to an uneasy truce. Rothfuss insists on adverbing all his reporting verbs and there's another "as if" in there...
“I beg your pardon?” Chronicler said reflexively. He shifted awkwardly in his seat, as if he wanted to get to his feet, but couldn’t think of a polite way to excuse himself.
Simile Soup: 83
...but it doesn't bug too much. This is the tiniest sliver of the conversation we should have got to hear back in the last interlude, in which they "began a tense, halting conversation as Kvothe moved into the kitchen". At the time, I said:
Devan, an educated pragmatist who does not believe in demons except that he survived being attacked by them a couple of nights ago, just encountered a member of the Fae for the first time. Bast, who has been hanging around the Waystone without incident for ages, confident that no one who shows up in the middle of nowhere will so much as recognise him for what he is, just got magically bound by a complete stranger. Bast is thoroughly invested in returning Kvothe to the Kvothe he once was, and Devan's come digging to do just that. The things these two could discuss with each other are fascinating - far more fascinating than re-hashing the same old same old about Kvothe looking more or less like an innkeeper than he normally does. So, of course, we don't get to hear a word of it.
Well, this time we do! Get to hear...about three words of it. Bast admits he's glad Devan's around. Devan apologises for trying to bind him. Bast describes getting kicked in the nards the experience of being bound:
Bast shook his head. “You were just surprised, but you only tried to bind me.” His expression grew a little pained. “Not that it was pleasant, mind. It feels like being kicked between your legs, but all over your body. It makes you feel sick, and weak, but it’s just pain. It wasn’t like you’d actually wounded me.” Bast looked embarrassed. “I was going to do more than hurt you. I might have killed you before I even stopped to think.”
I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it many times more, but Rothfuss sucks at describing human action and emotion. Any time someone uses their face to express something, Rothfuss writes "His expression did something" - or, as in "Bast looked embarrassed", just tells us what emotion is happening without bothering to describe it. Any time someone uses their body for expression, they "gesture adverbly", or "make a sweeping gesture". It makes it feel like walking through some kind of low-rent video game or animated movie, in which all the characters are based off the same model and rigging, so no matter who they are they all have the same moveset and facial expressions.
And the reason this sucks is that two people can feel the exact same emotion, but how they actually express that emotion tells us volumes about who they are. A hothead feeling embarrassment might clear their throat as a flush rises high in their cheeks; an introvert might round their shoulders and avoid eye contact; a jokester might exaggeratedly cover their mouth and wipe imaginary sweat from their brow. By way of example (and to break up this ever-expanding wall of text), check out how the animators on Big Hero 6 show us each of the main characters doing something as simple as "sitting in a chair":
None of these characters just "sits in a chair". Instead:- Baymax, ignorant of his own bulk, lowers himself neatly into a chair that can't hope to contain him.
- Tadashi pulls a chair out just the right amount and plants himself, both feet on the ground, the perfect distance from the table.
- Gogo spins a chair around effortlessly so she can straddle it, biker-style, as she owns the room.
- Cass folds herself into a chair, tucking her legs underneath her so her back can finally shed the weight of all the responsibility she carries around.
And so on.
This is even more important for a character like Bast, who isn't human and whom we know to have a little trouble with normal human interactions. Writing something like "Bast's lips drew thin in what Chronicler suddenly understood to be embarrassment" lets Rothfuss play with that line between human and non-human, allows Devan to cross it (thereby earning some credibility with Bast) by recognising the emotion behind an unfamiliar expression, and gives Bast some much-needed specificity to his physicality.
I have to give a couple of counts for kicking us in the nuts with what it feels like to be kicked in the nuts:
Simile Soup: 85
And there's one more bit of that interaction that really irritates me:
It wasn’t like you’d actually wounded me.
Okay, but why? Sometimes I feel like Rothfuss goes to great lengths to show us that his characters aren't in any real peril, particularly the ones we like. In fact, I thought that last chapter, when Kvothe woke up in a wagon that was on fire, but was able to calmly gather his things and escape without so much as a smoky tickle in his nose. It is, if I'm honest, one of these:
Stu Stew: 54
It's something I see in fanfic a lot: a complete inability to calibrate the appropriate level of threat to a beloved character. I think we're more used to the version wherein something relatively minor is treated as the end of the world and a reason to quote My Chemical Romance lyrics, but the opposite is often true as well: a character is in some kind of danger, but the author just has to wink to the readers and reassure us that it's okay, it wasn't really going to wipe them out of the story.
I struggle a little to say why this is. I'm a spectacularly sadistic author, so I can't honestly say I've ever felt the tendency. Maybe it's a reassurance to the reader that they can love this character for the long haul; it might be an author's own attachment to a character and resulting reluctance to see them harmed.
But we need the threat of harm to create story, just as we need it to truly engage the reader. If a character walks through the story safely encased in plot armour, the readers can safely disengage from what happens to them. Explosion? Dragon? Trapped in a radioactive submarine? Eh, if the tension's too high just skip a few pages, knowing that everyone you care about will be fine. It's part of what caused the last couple of seasons of Game of Thrones to go so far off the rails: at a certain point, it became clear that certain characters were going to survive. In a show that was so subversive early on for its willingness to kill off major characters without warning, introducing plot armour really took the teeth out of it.
So anyway, here it's a relatively minor thing: there's no reason for us to expect, want, or need Devan to have killed Bast with the binding. But the fact that the binding never put Bast in any real danger...well, that kind of removes any of the threat that Devan might have presented to Bast or Kvothe, and robs these interludes of a lot of their tension. It's simply more interesting at this stage to present Devan as someone who could put one foot in Kvothe's world if he wanted to; depriving him of the power to actually hurt Bast or Kvothe keeps him at arm's length, and neuters most of his interactions with Bast. Only one of them holds any power; the binding back in chapter 13 was a red herring and a waste of time.
Nearly done. Bast and Devan come to an uneasy truce, with two more metaphors than are really necessary.
Simile Soup: 87
Devan notices a bruise on Bast's wrist:
Bast self-consciously pulled his cuff back into place. “From when he grabbed me,” he said quickly. “He’s stronger than he looks. Don’t mention it to him. He’ll only feel bad.”
Of course he is, and I doubt he will.
Stu Stew: 55
I'm going to give this chapter its Alert the Editors now, and - to my amazement - there are only two. One's a blanket count for some clumsy verbiage and sentence structure, and one's for somehow forcing "he extended his hand" to act as a reporting verb, which is just painful. Aside from that, this is a remarkably clean chapter, which supports my suspicion that a lot of the Interlude work was done very late in the game.
Alert The Editor: 145
I'm getting that out of the way because this chapter ends with what might be the best-written three paragraphs in the entire book. I won't quote the whole thing, but Kvothe leaves the bar, goes outside into the autumn air...
Title Drop: 25
...and starts gathering firewood from a stack behind the inn. Then:
As he continued to load the barrow, he moved slower and slower, like a machine winding down. Eventually he stopped completely and stood for a long minute, still as stone. Only then did his composure break. And even with no one there to see, he hid his face in his hands and wept quietly, his body wracked with wave on wave of heavy, silent sobs.
Goddammit, Rothfuss. You stuck the fucking landing.
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