Reading Robert Jordan's WHEEL OF TIME -- Part II
This post celebrates and honors Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, which I've just completed after 27 years. Part I had focused on my reading timeline; Part II here focuses more on reflection.
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Reading a massive series over 27 years produces strange consequences. I began the books as a 13-year-old kid for whom all fantasy was new; I finished as a 39-year-old married college professor trained in literary criticism.
One important thing of note: a lifetime of the life of the mind has done nothing to impair my ability to enjoy or appreciate fantasy. Quite the opposite, actually. Anyway, you know the old criticism; we've all heard complaints about how over-analysis (or even any analysis) kills the pure love of reading. For my part, though, the same things that thrilled me about Wheel of Time , not to mention fantasy in general, as an adolescent still thrill me as a world-weary cynical old adult -- the scope of fantasy, the weightiness of events, the sense of a world; amazement as things come together.
Yet, though my love for the genre remains undiminished, I'm personally almost completely different from when I was a kid. My life situation has changed drastically, and that cannot but help affect my reactions to what I read. Being happily married, for one thing, seems to make a big difference. Although I've never read for "escapism" (whatever that means), epic fantasy certainly let me feel things as a lonely teenager that I otherwise couldn't feel. Today, though, books simply don't have that same surrogate-role in my life. The difference isn't one of maturity but of situation -- 27 years ago, I would read a fantasy masterpiece, and feel as if I was the only person in the universe who truly understood. Now, I finish the book and, despite its power, go back to my regular life, my wife and my cat and my fulfilling career. Neither reading situation is better or worse; just different.
But now I'm also a savvier, more knowledgeable reader. For example, considering that I hadn't read The Lord of the Rings until my early 20s, I had never quite understood the typical charge of genre fantasy as "formulaic." Only now do Jordan's similarities to Tolkien stand out. Rand, Mat, and Perrin are basically hobbits who leave their Shire-like Two Rivers, under the tutelage of Moirane (i.e. Gandalf in a skirt), to defeat the typical fantasy Dark Lord and his Ringerbearer-like Forsaken. Moiraine, for gosh sakes, even "dies" and returns. Other similarities are too numerous to mention . . . but there are deep differences, too. The idea of reincarnation would have horrified Tolkien as a Catholic, and Jordan furthermore does a lot of different other things as well, too numerous to mention -- although he's much more quintessentially American, for one thing, and more egalitarian, and so forth.
But my general cultural and literary knowledge has also increased dramatically. Hence, things that leap up at me that I've never previously noticed. I kept marking up my copy of The Gathering Storm, for example, just as I would any novel I was "studying;" the themes and motifs, including narrative and stylistic quirks, jump out in a way they never had previously.*** The depth of Jordan's borrowing from the Western tradition also flew right past me. For example, I vaguely realized that his names for characters like Gawyn and Galad were taken from Arthurian knights, but I had a face-palm moment when I connected the Amyrlin Seat with "a-MERLIN". Likewise, while the Children of the Light clearly fit the Spanish Inquisition, only now do I recognize how clearly Matrim Cauthon has been modeled on Odin.
All in all, my enthusiasm for The Wheel of Time doesn't quite extend to calling it a great work of fantasy literature -- what greatness it has (and which it has undeniably) lies in its breath-taking size and sheer awe-inspiring world-building coherence. But because it lacks the thematic ambition of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant or, more recently, The Broken Earth trilogy, better adjectives might be extremely good rather than great, plus also important, plus also impressive -- something, certainly, worthy of more academic study, if only good and talented critics would decide to produce high quality work on genre fantasy. Alas, that doesn't now seem to be the case outside biggies like Tolkien or Lewis.
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*** The harmless but clear-cut sexism of the Jordan books, though, was obvious to me even as a teenager.
------------------------------------------------------------
Reading a massive series over 27 years produces strange consequences. I began the books as a 13-year-old kid for whom all fantasy was new; I finished as a 39-year-old married college professor trained in literary criticism.
One important thing of note: a lifetime of the life of the mind has done nothing to impair my ability to enjoy or appreciate fantasy. Quite the opposite, actually. Anyway, you know the old criticism; we've all heard complaints about how over-analysis (or even any analysis) kills the pure love of reading. For my part, though, the same things that thrilled me about Wheel of Time , not to mention fantasy in general, as an adolescent still thrill me as a world-weary cynical old adult -- the scope of fantasy, the weightiness of events, the sense of a world; amazement as things come together.
Yet, though my love for the genre remains undiminished, I'm personally almost completely different from when I was a kid. My life situation has changed drastically, and that cannot but help affect my reactions to what I read. Being happily married, for one thing, seems to make a big difference. Although I've never read for "escapism" (whatever that means), epic fantasy certainly let me feel things as a lonely teenager that I otherwise couldn't feel. Today, though, books simply don't have that same surrogate-role in my life. The difference isn't one of maturity but of situation -- 27 years ago, I would read a fantasy masterpiece, and feel as if I was the only person in the universe who truly understood. Now, I finish the book and, despite its power, go back to my regular life, my wife and my cat and my fulfilling career. Neither reading situation is better or worse; just different.
But now I'm also a savvier, more knowledgeable reader. For example, considering that I hadn't read The Lord of the Rings until my early 20s, I had never quite understood the typical charge of genre fantasy as "formulaic." Only now do Jordan's similarities to Tolkien stand out. Rand, Mat, and Perrin are basically hobbits who leave their Shire-like Two Rivers, under the tutelage of Moirane (i.e. Gandalf in a skirt), to defeat the typical fantasy Dark Lord and his Ringerbearer-like Forsaken. Moiraine, for gosh sakes, even "dies" and returns. Other similarities are too numerous to mention . . . but there are deep differences, too. The idea of reincarnation would have horrified Tolkien as a Catholic, and Jordan furthermore does a lot of different other things as well, too numerous to mention -- although he's much more quintessentially American, for one thing, and more egalitarian, and so forth.
But my general cultural and literary knowledge has also increased dramatically. Hence, things that leap up at me that I've never previously noticed. I kept marking up my copy of The Gathering Storm, for example, just as I would any novel I was "studying;" the themes and motifs, including narrative and stylistic quirks, jump out in a way they never had previously.*** The depth of Jordan's borrowing from the Western tradition also flew right past me. For example, I vaguely realized that his names for characters like Gawyn and Galad were taken from Arthurian knights, but I had a face-palm moment when I connected the Amyrlin Seat with "a-MERLIN". Likewise, while the Children of the Light clearly fit the Spanish Inquisition, only now do I recognize how clearly Matrim Cauthon has been modeled on Odin.
All in all, my enthusiasm for The Wheel of Time doesn't quite extend to calling it a great work of fantasy literature -- what greatness it has (and which it has undeniably) lies in its breath-taking size and sheer awe-inspiring world-building coherence. But because it lacks the thematic ambition of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant or, more recently, The Broken Earth trilogy, better adjectives might be extremely good rather than great, plus also important, plus also impressive -- something, certainly, worthy of more academic study, if only good and talented critics would decide to produce high quality work on genre fantasy. Alas, that doesn't now seem to be the case outside biggies like Tolkien or Lewis.
-----
*** The harmless but clear-cut sexism of the Jordan books, though, was obvious to me even as a teenager.
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