Part of us---the innocent, giddy, childlike part---wishes we were at home finishing the final section of Patrick Rothfuss' Name of the Wind right about now, flashlight burning under the blanket. The other part---literary purveyors of high journalism---feels obliged to hold forth on our reservations about the text. Don't get us wrong. We're having a blast with this book and understand the huge, widespread appeal. But bear with us as we try to make sense of Rothfuss' rich, sometimes problematic world (and then you can tell us we're being ridiculous in the comments). Afterward, we can all get back to reading so we can finish it in time for next week's final discussion.
How’s life?
Katie Palmer: I would just like to say that I finished this installment on Saturday and it’s been hell waiting to keep reading until now.
Lexi Pandell: Ditto! It took a while for the book to hook me but, once Kvothe got to the University, I was all in.
Jay Dayrit: I certainly am enjoying the momentum of the book. It moves along at a nice pace. Rothfuss doesn’t stay too long in one place or meditate too much on one idea, except maybe the songs. Ugh, what’s with the song lyrics? Is that just a genre thing? Ancillary Justice had a lot of song lyrics. Too many for my taste. Are we supposed to find meaning in them? I must confess I just skim over the lyrics. Without a voice singing the lines, they just read like bad poetry. All lyrics are like that. I can’t be bothered. Tell me I’m missing something, please.
Jason Kehe: You clearly haven’t read The Hobbit.
Palmer: I’ve been noticing that too, especially since in our conversation Leckie talked specifically about how she tried to improve upon the way science fiction (and also maybe fantasy) deals with presenting music. I think both Leckie and Rothfuss write about the experience of music beautifully, but yeah, the lyrics lose me entirely. I wish I could hear the song that Kvothe won his talent pipes with and that brought everyone to tears. Maybe that’s what fanfic is for?
Let’s talk about the depiction of women in the story so far ...
Pandell: I cheered when Denna showed up at the tavern! I was hoping we’d meet her again, but we had some conflicting foreshadowing: When they part, Denna tells Kvothe that she’ll “just have to come looking for [him],” while Kvothe has a very certain sense that he will never see her again. In any case, she’s back and better than ever, with a different name (and a different boyfriend, it seems) practically every time we see her. She certainly knows how to wield her charm and looks to get who and what she wants. I want to believe her feelings for Kvothe are real, but only time can tell whether she’s merely toying with him. I’m also a big fan of Devi, but worried about what will happen when Kvothe can’t repay his debt, because that’s only a matter of time, right? And what’s up with the wild girl Kvothe meets on the roof while practicing his music? Before it was revealed that Denna was the one singing Aloine’s part with him at the tavern, I thought it might have been that girl ...
Sarah Fallon: I have some serious issues with how Rothfuss deals with women in this book. He seems incapable of putting a woman in a scene without sexualizing her in some way. Exhibit A: Page 250, the girl who is late to class gets told to cross her legs to close the gates of hell. Exhibit B: Page 282 the girl in the medical center has to say something about his skin that gets misinterpreted as sexual. Exhibit C: The girl Ambrose is coming on to becomes a pawn in their power struggle. Exhibit D: The constant leering at Fela in the Fishery. And then of course Denna, who seems to have no personality except to be beautiful and enigmatic and have a nice voice. She’s really just a plot device to move the action forward. AND DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON THE FLOWER CONVERSATION. “Ooooh, Kvothe, what kind of flower do you think I ammmm?” Flutters eyelashes, twirls hair.
Palmer: I gawped at the page for a full minute when I hit Exhibit A, Sarah. I was trying to figure out if Kvothe’s reaction to that comment is supposed to tell us something about his character. He seemed sheepish, as if he recognized its awfulness, but that was not enough for me. Man up, dude. If you’re gonna be such a rebel, maybe speak up when it’s not just in your best interest.
Gaia Filicori: I actually like Denna despite myself. To me, she reads as a scamp and a hustler. She’s up to something that is just out of Kvothe’s grasp. A girl’s got to #werk, and sometimes, that means issuing a BuzzFeed-esque "What Flower Am I?” pop quiz.
Pandell: That look of pity that Kvothe’s friend gives him as he leaves to walk with Denna makes me suspect that her act is just that: an act that she’s playing to gain ... something. Not sure exactly what it is yet. But I otherwise totally agree with your assessment. At least we get a little bit of criticism from Bast, who says, after noting that Denna had a crooked nose, “It’s just something I noticed, Reshi. All the women in your story are beautiful.”
Fallon: OK, so the narrator is a known unreliable witness. I have to say, while I find the dialog lacking, I absolutely loved his summary of a later conversation: “”So we danced very carefully, unsure what music the other was listening to, unsure, perhaps, if the other was dancing at all.”
Dayrit: Each time a woman enters the tale, I find myself cringing out of fear the story is about to switch genres from fantasy to period romance. The lady-as-flower conversion pretty much went there. When each women is flawlessly depicted, they’re rendered unbelievable, as mere instruments to move the plot along or simply make it more enticing. The literary equivalent to Photoshop. I yearn for Annie Proulx’s approach, imperfections throughout, something to make each character distinct, memorable, not just a crooked nose. And by the way, Bast’s observation about the crooked noses felt like an afterthought and not a sufficient counter-balance to the problematic representation of woman. Yes, I do understand that Kvothe, in the time of the story most populated by women, is a teenaged boy who is girl-crazy, but this a narration told by an older Kvothe, who should have learned a thing or two about women by now and whose enlightenment should inform the narrative. But no such enlightenment tempers his story, and thus it feel overwhelming juvenile.
Filicori: It’s a deeply held internal belief of mine that we are all, in fact, “known unreliable witnesses,” as Sarah said. But in this book, I wonder, what’s the point? Is there is a point being made by Kvothe being unreliable? If so, I think it should be more explicitly heavy-handed. I’m talking like Humbert Humbert in Lolita. He was delusional, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing. I didn’t trust him for a reason, and not just because he was a pedophile. I feel like Kvothe has changed character and shape under my fingers so many times while reading the book. I fear that it is Rothfuss who is unreliable, not Kvothe.
We know that Kvothe gets kicked out of the University. Let’s make some predictions.
Pandell: I’m unsure whether Ambrose will do something to get Kvothe expelled from the University or whether Kvothe’s own ego will undo him.
Fallon: I feel like that either-or is captured in the donkey song bit, where Kvothe makes up that naughty song, and then apologizes so scathingly in that letter he magics up all about the town. That was great.
Dayrit: I suspect Kvothe’s expulsion from the university will turn out to be a machination of his own doing or, at the very least, a disadvantage he cleverly turns into an advantage, which is a pattern thus far, a parley that is frankly getting a little too predictable. Kvothe’s precociousness is getting tiresome. He’s annoyingly good at everything, that kid in college who skipped three grades and is younger and smarter than everyone else. I’m not exactly on Ambrose’s side, but I’m getting there. Which begs the question, why does Kvothe the narrator have such a high opinion of Kvothe the younger? Why are there no elements of self-doubt? All that confidence deflates the drama, because we know whatever bind Kvothe finds himself in, his quick and clever mind is going to find a way out. There are no emotional sacrifices.
Filicori: Kvothe’s smarter than the rest. He’s told us this, many times. He’s going to call on some deep, dark, danky-dank magic and one day, the vote between the professors is not going to fall in his favor.
So is anyone else turning against Kvothe?
Pandell: We’re under the impression that we’re reading the story of a hero, but I’m beginning to wonder if we’re actually being introduced to someone who is far too complicated for that kind of simple label. Is this a look, for example, at how insufferable a hero with a conventional origin story would be in real life? Or is Kvothe not a hero at all? This could actually be a look at the making of a sort of villain. (After all, the nickname “Kingkiller” doesn’t seem particularly complimentary…”Kingslayer” is certainly used derisively in A Song of Ice and Fire.) Or can we not rely on traditional character types in this story at all? I have so many questions and so few answers.
Palmer: The more I hear of Kvothe’s story, and link those stories back to the fantastic tales that Chronicler had heard, the more I’m disappointed. He’s stinking Harry Potter! Talented, yes, but way too confident in his own abilities and deeply immature despite his fancy words. I keep on waiting for the moment where he accidentally hurts somebody he loves. I know it’s going to happen.
Dayrit: I’m not ready to turn against Kvothe, I just need him to be taken down a notch to keep things interesting. Yes, Katie! I hope he does accidently harm someone he loves. He needs that angst.
Fallon: Are you guys being kind of mean to him? He lost his whole family and his lute and lived like an urchin for three years. And was whipped and locked out of the library and he has to struggle for every darn penny he needs to go to school. Seems like he has plenty of angst for all of us. I’m fine with him being sort of a cocky always-figuring-it-out at the last second kind of guy. And Rothfuss does remind us that that’s the sort of person who ends up in stories (or that’s how the stories about some people end up looking). Kvothe is in the library and he picks up the book of faerie stories and doesn’t like it, because in it “brave orphans trick the Chandrian, win riches, marry princesses, and live happily ever after.” I’m very much enjoying the interaction between the role of fiction in the book, and the potential fictionality of his own tale.
Dayrit: OK, now I feel sort of bad. Kvothe has been through a lot, but not any more than your average Disney princess.
Filicori: Does anyone else just love the present day in the Wayfarer Tavern? Chronicler and Kvothe sitting around over some dark bread and hard cheese, Bast flitting in and out exuding warmth and concern. Those adorably oblivious farmer bros, shooting the shit at the end of their day, while the ominous spider not-demons are lurking in the outside world! When do you think we’ll get there? The present-day Kvothe can be dominating and intimidating (to Chronicler) and sweet and teasing (to Bast), he can be innocuous and warm (to the farm bros at the bar), and he can be calmly confident with a mano-y-mano innuendo (to the Forger). Fingers crossed he turns out to be slaughterer, though. Put down the strawberry wine, Kote, and pick up that sword that no one seems to have noticed you’ve mounted on the wall!
Do we think Kvothe will come back to study under Elodin?
Pandell: I love the scene where he tricks Kvothe into jumping off the roof, which totally serves to highlight Kvothe’s hubris. And Elodin is right! Kvothe’s not ready. Remember when Kvothe tried to call the wind with Ben and nearly killed himself? He needs time to mature, but I’m certain that he’ll come under Elodin’s tutelage at some point---after all, the rest of the masters’ skills may be helpful to Kvothe, but Elodin seems to be the master when it comes to finally learning the name of the wind. (Heyo, title drop!)
Dayrit: Maybe once Kvothe gets booted from the university, he goes to study with Elodin at the insane asylum, which is, after all, located a safe and deliberate distance from the university. Elodin does seem be the most powerful of the instructors, able to dissolve entire walls. Crazy though, but crazy is good in this overly perfect world. I don’t know. Too wild a theory?
Palmer: All I know is I want to see more of the world through Elodin’s eyes, the world that he can create with his magic. The threads of green, gossamer copper threaded through the stone that he disappears---that was the most gorgeous imagery. More more more.
Filicori: Points to Kvothe for his multidisciplinary interest, and points to Rothfuss for the drawing the Masters as distinctly different characters.
What about Kvothe’s male friendships?
Dayrit: Unlike Kvothe’s relationship to the women in the book, his relationship with his male friends at the university is believable and sweet. The way they take him under their wing, show him the ropes, the gentling ribbing, the jovial way they drink at the taverns, all very charming. I like Manet, the student who has been at the university so long he’s practically an instructor. I suspect Manet might be the character who most closely resembles Rothfuss, who, according to Wikipedia, spent nine years as an undergrad. Plus, he kind of looks like Manet, or rather, Manet kind of resembles Rothfuss.
