![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
The Thousand Page Con Trick
Apr 2012
The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss - Gollancz, 2011
* * * * *
I must say that I am very disappointed with the experience of aging. I have long considered myself an overly impatient person, always wanting to move on to the next new thing. This I thought was due to excessive energy, a situation that would naturally right itself in time. Eventually as the fires of youth faded I would learn patience and serenity, and all would be well.
Ha! How naive. Yes, the energy levels have declined, but instead I find myself turning into a grumpy old man (my only comfort is that this seems to be happening to a number of my contemporaries as well). What I hadn't factored in was the increasing awareness of my own mortality and the concommitant rise in irritation with people who want to waste my time. I have become fairly good at giving very short shrift to doorstep salesmen, cold callers and religious proselytisers. I can tune out advertisements on TV or the web like a pro (middle-aged memory failure is mostly an annoyance, but it is really helpful in this case - the earworms and images that advertisers try to foist on us simply don't stick). But books are a problem. I almost never give up on a book that I have started, and this makes me particularly unforgiving when, looking back, I realise that the author has forced me to spend hours reading wodges of material that hasn't materially advanced the plot. Nowhere is this sin more common than in epic fantasy, hence my oft-repeated animadversions against fantasy author's bloat.
Well, in terms of plot development, Rothfuss has certainly been wasting my time. By the end of the thousand pages of The Wise Man's Fear, the main storyline has hardly advanced at all. But nonetheless, it's all thoroughly enjoyable - so much so that I still regard this as having the potential to be a classic. Which almost makes me more cross than if it hadn't.
Middle volumes of trilogies, of course, always involve a certain amount of trickery when it comes to plot development. The situation is generally set up by the end of volume one and the climactic confrontations have to be reserved for book three, so what do you do in between? Authors have come up with various answers, including fragmenting the party (Lord of the Rings), sending the heroes off on a wild goose chase (The One Tree), changing the protagonist (the Riddle Master's Game, Earthsea) and effectively finishing the main story arc at at the end of volume two and telling a different but related story in book 3 (the Assassin trilogy). Rothfuss does none of these things. Instead, the format is very similar to book 1, with Kvothe spending much of his time in a single location and then going off on a journey which develops complications.
The bloat occurs mostly in the first 350 pages, which are essentially a repeat of the second half of book one. Kvothe spends more time at the university hanging out with his friends Sim and Wilem and the ethereal Aulie, failing to connect with Denna or learn anything about the Chandrian, and deepening his antagonism with Ambrose and half of the professors. Eventually he gets sent to the south-east corner of the map to help the Maer (the local ruler) to court a woman that he is interested in (given that Kvothe is supposed to be sixteen at the time, this does seem a little implausible). Subsequently he meets the legendary siren Felurian and visits the world of the Fae. He also receives the promised sword-training with the Adem, a sequence with clear roots in the tropes of martial arts movies but with some interesting variations.
So all the ingredients for the classic fantasy hero - musician, thief, scholar, magician, politician, lover and warrior - have now been introduced. The only small problem is that they still haven't been used. Instead, we have a considerably deepening of the cultures of the world and its mysteries, and further hints given in songs and stories about what is going on. It's all maddeningly intriguing (and has spawned a mass of interesting comment and speculation, more so than any other series I can think of). We still don't know who the king is whom Kvothe will kill. We learn almost nothing more about the Chandrian. There are at least three locked boxes and doors concealing important things. Additional forms of magic that may or may not be related to the ones we already know are hinted at. And in the framing story, another day has passed and we still don't understand the motivations of the three main characters (though Bast in particular has become a lot more sinister).
This approach of distracting the reader from the plot by complicating the mysteries is interesting and effective - this is one of the few series where I really, really want to read the next installment, despite the fact that what we have so far is in effect two volumes of prologue. I am mildly ambivalent about it, however. I know I'm being hustled. It's like watching Steven Spielberg's E.T., where the emotional manipulation through music and scene composition is blatantly obvious but still succeeds in invoking a strong response. Damn it.
Like all cons, Rothfuss's runs the risk of eventually unravelling. There are so many hanging threads and unanswered questions that it's difficult to see how book three can possibly answer them all without serious inconsistency or lengthy exposition (the author has promised that this story will be complete in three books, though he may set others in the same world). And Kvothe is going to have to be much more conventionally action-heroic to justify the reputation that he has been given - the most disappointing outcome would be "he's not really a hero, he's just a very good showman with a modicum of talent and a gift for self-promotion" which is how he comes across so far. Still, the level of control and the quality of the writing gives me hope that Rothfuss, like his main character, will prove to be a much better conman than I think.
The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss - Gollancz, 2011
* * * * *
I must say that I am very disappointed with the experience of aging. I have long considered myself an overly impatient person, always wanting to move on to the next new thing. This I thought was due to excessive energy, a situation that would naturally right itself in time. Eventually as the fires of youth faded I would learn patience and serenity, and all would be well.
Ha! How naive. Yes, the energy levels have declined, but instead I find myself turning into a grumpy old man (my only comfort is that this seems to be happening to a number of my contemporaries as well). What I hadn't factored in was the increasing awareness of my own mortality and the concommitant rise in irritation with people who want to waste my time. I have become fairly good at giving very short shrift to doorstep salesmen, cold callers and religious proselytisers. I can tune out advertisements on TV or the web like a pro (middle-aged memory failure is mostly an annoyance, but it is really helpful in this case - the earworms and images that advertisers try to foist on us simply don't stick). But books are a problem. I almost never give up on a book that I have started, and this makes me particularly unforgiving when, looking back, I realise that the author has forced me to spend hours reading wodges of material that hasn't materially advanced the plot. Nowhere is this sin more common than in epic fantasy, hence my oft-repeated animadversions against fantasy author's bloat.
Well, in terms of plot development, Rothfuss has certainly been wasting my time. By the end of the thousand pages of The Wise Man's Fear, the main storyline has hardly advanced at all. But nonetheless, it's all thoroughly enjoyable - so much so that I still regard this as having the potential to be a classic. Which almost makes me more cross than if it hadn't.
Middle volumes of trilogies, of course, always involve a certain amount of trickery when it comes to plot development. The situation is generally set up by the end of volume one and the climactic confrontations have to be reserved for book three, so what do you do in between? Authors have come up with various answers, including fragmenting the party (Lord of the Rings), sending the heroes off on a wild goose chase (The One Tree), changing the protagonist (the Riddle Master's Game, Earthsea) and effectively finishing the main story arc at at the end of volume two and telling a different but related story in book 3 (the Assassin trilogy). Rothfuss does none of these things. Instead, the format is very similar to book 1, with Kvothe spending much of his time in a single location and then going off on a journey which develops complications.
The bloat occurs mostly in the first 350 pages, which are essentially a repeat of the second half of book one. Kvothe spends more time at the university hanging out with his friends Sim and Wilem and the ethereal Aulie, failing to connect with Denna or learn anything about the Chandrian, and deepening his antagonism with Ambrose and half of the professors. Eventually he gets sent to the south-east corner of the map to help the Maer (the local ruler) to court a woman that he is interested in (given that Kvothe is supposed to be sixteen at the time, this does seem a little implausible). Subsequently he meets the legendary siren Felurian and visits the world of the Fae. He also receives the promised sword-training with the Adem, a sequence with clear roots in the tropes of martial arts movies but with some interesting variations.
So all the ingredients for the classic fantasy hero - musician, thief, scholar, magician, politician, lover and warrior - have now been introduced. The only small problem is that they still haven't been used. Instead, we have a considerably deepening of the cultures of the world and its mysteries, and further hints given in songs and stories about what is going on. It's all maddeningly intriguing (and has spawned a mass of interesting comment and speculation, more so than any other series I can think of). We still don't know who the king is whom Kvothe will kill. We learn almost nothing more about the Chandrian. There are at least three locked boxes and doors concealing important things. Additional forms of magic that may or may not be related to the ones we already know are hinted at. And in the framing story, another day has passed and we still don't understand the motivations of the three main characters (though Bast in particular has become a lot more sinister).
This approach of distracting the reader from the plot by complicating the mysteries is interesting and effective - this is one of the few series where I really, really want to read the next installment, despite the fact that what we have so far is in effect two volumes of prologue. I am mildly ambivalent about it, however. I know I'm being hustled. It's like watching Steven Spielberg's E.T., where the emotional manipulation through music and scene composition is blatantly obvious but still succeeds in invoking a strong response. Damn it.
Like all cons, Rothfuss's runs the risk of eventually unravelling. There are so many hanging threads and unanswered questions that it's difficult to see how book three can possibly answer them all without serious inconsistency or lengthy exposition (the author has promised that this story will be complete in three books, though he may set others in the same world). And Kvothe is going to have to be much more conventionally action-heroic to justify the reputation that he has been given - the most disappointing outcome would be "he's not really a hero, he's just a very good showman with a modicum of talent and a gift for self-promotion" which is how he comes across so far. Still, the level of control and the quality of the writing gives me hope that Rothfuss, like his main character, will prove to be a much better conman than I think.