Before commenting on this book, I need to give you
some background. Just eleven days ago, BuzzFeed Books online posted “The 51 Best Fantasy Series
Ever Written.” It listed Rothfuss at the top with his novel The
Name of the Wind. Yesterday I drove to my
local library, but that novel was checked out. So I grabbed his book
The Slow Regard of Silent Things
instead. I read it the same day. It's a short book.
Now
we've all run across these sorts of online lists before. Last year I
found the site “BestFantasyBooks.com, which boasts several lists:
100 Best Fantasy Novels, 100 Worst Fantasy Novels, Best Fantasy for
Women, Best Fantasy for Children, Fantasy with Dragons, etc. And
after recognizing some of the entries, some of which I'd read and
considered crap, coupled with the fact that the site is maintained by
a book critic whose writing – spelling errors and bad grammar
galore – failed to inspire confidence in his skills in discernment,
I ultimately dismissed that site as a waste of time.
Which
might seem odd considering that back in my early twenties, when I
wasn't the curmudgeon I am today, fantasy fiction was my favorite
genre. I preferred stories about knights and elves and dragons much
like a widow or a single mom might gravitate toward romance novels or
erotica. But I was a child with regards to literature back then,
having yet to experience Bradbury or Davies or Nabokov or Salinger or
Steinbeck. In other words, I'd essentially lived on drive-thru fare
and had never been to a four star restaurant. What did I know about
fine dining? I was too busy championing the convenience of bland
burgers sealed in Styrofoam.
In
fact, by the time I'd reached the bottom of the book barrel of
fantasy fiction in my mid-twenties, having already read Tolkien's
Rings Trilogy, Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, and George McDonald's
Princess duology, I moved on to the transient trash of some of the
more contemporary fantasy writers. (I won't name names.) It was round
this time that, in a moment of desperation, I accepted a boxed
trilogy from a friend. A Dragonlance series by the writing couple
Tracy Hickman and Margaret Wies. It shames me to recall that I
actually recommended the first book to another friend who has since
published nearly a dozen novels. This friend has read hundreds and
hundreds of books.
Needless
to say, he knew the difference between quality and crap. And I'll
never forget what he said when I asked him what he thought of Dragons
of Autumn Twilight, book one of that trilogy. His critique made me
reconsider the quality of the junk food I'd been scarfing down my pie hole. I'm paraphrasing. “Pretty shallow. For one, the characters
are flat. A bunch of stuff happens but nothing of real consequence to
the story. There's no depth, no substance. Sheer escapism, really.
Not my thang.”
Once
I'd recovered from this bombshell I asked him whether he knew of any
fantasy fiction that offered the kinds of things he was talking
about. He recommended Stephen R. Donaldson's Covenant Chronicles.
Anyone who knows me knows about my love affair with Donaldson's
genius. Those books fried my brain. I soon realized not only what was
possible but what awful rot I'd been reading. It was because of
Donaldson that I became a writer.
The
point is I'm no longer the indiscriminate fantasy fiction fan. In
fact, I hesitate to mention this, but I've become that literary snob
you were taught to avoid. I don't want to be cast out of the reading
circles for my heresy before I'm ever invited, but I can't lie and
pretend I fell in step with the Rowlings' fan base and her Harry
Potter stuff. I read the first three books stoned, and it still
didn't help. After reading masterpieces like Ivanhoe, Ben-Hur, The
Iliad, the Odyssey, and Don Quixote, it's hard to find pleasure in
R.A. Salvatore or Richard Monoco. (Okay, so I'm naming names after
all.)
Before
you dismiss my criticism as the ravings of a prude, I'd love to crack
open any novel by, say, Graham Greene or Kipling or Mary Stewart and
compare it to your favorite passages in, say, Terry Brook's Sword
of Shannara. Then you can tell me whether Brooks' prose, in
contrast, doesn't stink to high Heaven. After spending a few minutes
examining some of the greats, I believe that you, too, will begin to
recognize the difference between inspired storytelling and meandering
muddle.
While
I can't bemoan the realities of an indiscriminate fan base that
devours mediocrity without question, I don't have to buy into the
hype. There's a story about a certain publisher of fantasy fiction
who was asked by a colleague about her decision to publish a certain
work many regarded as a piece of shit. Her response was, “Look,
most of our readers are children. They've read The Lord of the Rings 50
times. They want something new. They don't have discriminating
tastes.”
I
can't tell you how many times I've read reviews on Amazon.com in
which the reader says, “Two out of five stars, but I'll probably
read the rest in the series.” I can't help but wonder why, when
there's so much wonderful literature out there, unless of course said
reader is partial only with regards to genre.
Having
said that, and to show what a hypocrite I am, I still plan to read
the books listed on BuzzFeed's site, the ones I haven't read already,
even though most of the few I've read on that list were of poor
quality. One of the reasons I've decided to do this is because I
write fantasy, and I think it's important to know the market. Not to
be cruel, but one can learn from bad writers too, if only to confront
what not to do. I've said this before: no serious writer has any
legitimate excuse for pushing a bad manuscript anymore, to say
nothing of some of these publishing houses that ship out this drivel.
With access to writer's workshops and books that teach the mechanics
of storytelling, character and plot development, as well as friends
willing to read one's stuff and tell him or her whether what they've
written is crap, we the reading public should be spared the
inglorious experience of second rate novels.
With
that in mind, I refer you to something Rothfuss said in the Author's
Forward of his book The Slow Regard of Silent Things. “You
might not want to buy this book.” Gratefully, I got my copy for
free at the public library. “First, if you haven't read my other
books, you don't want to start here.” Fair enough. I appreciate the
heads-up. A few paragraphs later, he writes, “Second, even if you
have read my other books, I think it's only fair to warn you that
this is a bit of a strange story.” Had I known Rothfuss' definition
of 'story' was 'a series of scenes lacking any character apart from
the protagonist with no dialogue and no plot and no gradual building
toward an ending let alone a climax,” I certainly would've dropped
the book in favor of anything else from my stack of
Books-To-Read-This-Year.
At
the same time, and to be fair, I've read, and have enjoyed, plot-free
novels. Though my friends enjoyed Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine more
than I did, that's one example. Steinbeck's Travels with Charlie,
which I thoroughly enjoyed, is another. And in Rothfuss's defense, I
should point out the guy's not an awful prose writer. In fact, I'd go
so far as to say his style, though rough round the edges, has a
certain charm. Like Nabokov, he evidently enjoys word games and
playing with homonyms. But Nabokov's word games never distracted from
the flow of the writing. With Rothfuss, it's beyond distracting; it's
downright confusing at times. I'm grateful this vignette is only 150
pages or so since I couldn't have gotten through a novel length
version of what amounts to a meandering rough draft.
Lastly,
at the back of the book, at the Author's Endnote, Rothfuss writes
about this book: “It was weird and wrong and tangled and missing so
many things that a story is supposed to need.” Having read the
thing, I'd agree. He goes on to say that he'd never intended to write
this 'story' and that he'd argued against the merits of this 'story'
with a friend who claimed to like it. He goes on to talk about his
writing in general, how “The Name of the Wind does a lot of things
it's not supposed to do. The prologue is a laundry list of things you
should never do as a writer.” He then justifies this approach by
arguing that “Sometimes a story works because it's different.”
Different and doing “... a lot of things it's not supposed to do”
are two entirely different things. Look, I can empathize. I've
written stuff I'll never show to anyone. But that's the difference. While I
celebrate those hypnotic writing sessions when the Muse is whispering
in your ear and you're typing furiously to keep up if only to
discover what will happen next, there's a difference between this
practice and the final performance or end product. Just ask any
recitalist. Don't fall prey to what one critic has distinguished by
saying “That's not writing; that's just typing.” If you publish
your ramblings, expect to be chided.
As
any good writer will tell you, part of the manuscript writing process
involves dumping sometimes tens of thousands of words. Of my 150K
word manuscript, I tossed at least that much, and yes, I would've
preferred some anesthesia during some of that surgery. False starts,
weak scenes, bad lines, and so on must be expunged from your finished
work. Unless they're like me and frequent the public library, readers
pay good money for books and deserve better.
Again,
Rothfuss shows promise, and I think he could achieve great things. I
was encouraged to read that he has dozens of beta readers. I wish I
could lay claim to dozens. I just wish his beta readers had more
discriminating tastes or demanded the sorts of things good stories
require, such as a plot, character development, and scenes that
effect the story's outcome. But I'm not about to outline what any
number of good books on the subject could teach him.
