Rothfussians discussion

All of the following are simply my suspicions:

Tolkien, because he influenced everyone. But more because of specific things like writing the history of his world and then setting a story somewhat near the end of that history. There are some other elements, but these are the main ones.

The Last Unicorn, from a thread posted in this section. I haven't read the book myself, but the evidence is pretty compelling.

A Wizard of Earthsea, which is essentially a series with the magic of naming at its heart. Additionally, it features a magic school with nine masters (including a master Namer).

Note: The intention here is not to imply that PR is derivative, I don't find that to be the case. It's just that I see clear elements from classic works that creep into his writing. And I'm wondering if there are any others anyone can see.

terry Pratchett! once you read a few discworlds you can see where pat got some inspiration, he even emulates some of Pratchetts drier humor... in WMF when Bast and K are watching the infant for a few minutes and the baby decides "yes, it would in fact like to have a good cry" it always makes me think of Terry's choice of wording.

also, the "meddling with dark forces better left alone" is the similar stance members of the discworld take to wizards... even down to the wording.

I agree, this isn't a jab at pat, its like finding Easter eggs in his books... any one who looks at his reviews knows he LOVES Terry, and these all seem like graceful nods to the authors he loves

Bill wrote: "All of the following are simply my suspicions..."

I think you can feel pretty confident about Tolkien. He comes up in several interviews, like the ones I mentioned in this thread, just in a different way. I'd characterize his attitude as reverent, prolly. He talks about other fantasy borrowing too heavily from Tolkien and wanting to avoid doing so: no orcs, no prophecy, no dragons, dwarves, hobbits... I think a good case could be made for him devouring even the posthumous releases. Eld Vintic poetry is pretty much Norse Eddaic poetry, and the descriptions thereof use similar language to Tolkien's. We argued about it over on Tor until someone got an answer on reddit confirming it. There's a lot of love there.

It's the same with The Last Unicorn. There's a conscious effort not to write that book again, and yet, as Eveningstar2 pointed out, there are passages that appear almost in homage.

You can see echoes of Cyrano de Bergerac in Kvothe's youthful arrogance and exceptional ability. Heck, he almost gets run down by a carriage one time. He's infuriatingly unable to express his love. He woos a woman for another man.

I don't think it's insulting or diminutive at all to take note of these things.

This list, ultimately, could get really long. I appreciate folks providing examples of why. I'm not real familiar with Pratchett, so thanks.

Regarding A Wizard of Earthsea, he's pretty resistant to the comparison. He's read it, of course, but mostly denies anything more than a superficial similarity: naming, wizard school. It stands out.

He openly acknowledges the similarity to Harry Potter but he was trying to sell his story before he read it. I sorta think the use of ferula is a winking nod toward it.

This interview mentions some other interesting influences :

While the expected science fiction and fantasy names often surface around Rothfuss—Joss Whedon, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis—some unexpected literary influences come up just as quickly. Rothfuss, who lacked cable TV as a child, was a voracious reader. He had a steady diet of books like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Dragonriders of Pern.

There’s a kindness to this guy as he explains for perhaps the thousandth time that he may have always been in the process of writing a book. But what sealed his focus on telling the story of Kvothe, a warrior, performer, and magician, may have been, of all things, the 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rothfuss loved the poetry of the play, the marvelous character of Cyrano, and the deep tragedy of a man who died in the arms of the woman who for years he had loved from afar.
Rothfuss paints the scene of his awakening: “It was like this beautiful sunny Saturday. I had the house to myself. I’d been there in college for three years. I’m reading this play and its beautiful language.
“For the last quarter of the book, it’s just heart wrenching. I’m reading it and I’m wiping the tears out of my eyes. I finished the play and I’m like ‘Geaahh. I’ve got to move on with my life.’ I go upstairs and I walk around and I’m just crying. I go back downstairs and I’m still crying.
“After I got control of myself, I wondered how come I’ve never read a fantasy book that is this good.”
Around that time, he had picked up the autobiography of Casanova, an eighteenth century Italian nobleman who gambled, seduced women, and had many scandals and adventures. “It was amazing, the story of this man’s life. He was so full of himself. He would take these incredible risks and make these huge mistakes,” says Rothfuss. Again, he wondered why he had never found anything like it in fantasy. In some ways, Rothfuss’s books are like Casanova’s story, full of adventures and exploits, told in the first person by an imperfect hero.
Finally, when it comes to influences, Rothfuss brings up Gwendolyn Brooks, the African-American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. Not only was he caught up with the music of her poems, but her live reading astonished him. “It was one of the first in-person readings I ever attended,” he says. “Everyone was gripped.” In between her poems, she would tell these great little stories about her life and how her poems came to be. “That’s what I remember from that,” he says.

http://wsm.wsu.edu/s/index.php?id=102...

I know he is really into Gaiman too.

However the only direct influences I've ever heard him acknowledge on his actual writing were Cyrano De Bergerac and Joss Whedon.
Cyrano De Bergerac apperantly changed the man's life. LOL.

The other's I've only read or heard him acknowledge as fantasy he read and enjoyed. The Last Unicorn and The Hobbit being his all time favorites, I think they get mentioned in almost every single interview he does.

He also seems to have a bit of an affinity for Terry Brooks - though I've yet to be able to wade my way through one of his books.

I've said on the threads before I think Kvothe's story will end on a profoundly bitter-sweet note. I get this idea from Pat's love The Last Unicorn. And again we see the sadness with Cyrano de Bergerac. I'm thinking Rothfuss loves him some sadness.

I dug this out thinking that, maybe, it'd be interesting to Bill and the rest of the folks looking at the thread. I made a passing reference to it above, but folks might be interested in how specific you can get with this sort of thing from time to time.

J.R.R. Tolkien (and Christopher Tolkien)'s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun came out right in the middle of the wait for The Wise Man's Fear and Clash of the Geeks was released about six months before publication. Those dates make what follows reasonably likely. The post from the ASoIaF boards went up before the month was out, four weeks after publication. The sort of synchronous reading and specialized knowledge happened to be in the right place at the right time, but it sat there for more than a year as a curiosity, uncorroborated. Then a quibble over the possible inspiration for a seemingly inconsequential bit of world building brought it up again.

Which is all a way of saying I really dig how discussions like this one can make the readership as a whole incredibly perceptive.

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Beowulf and Old English in particular are a good supposition, particularly when that's what your familiar with. Tor's own review of Clash of the Geeks (link) by John Klima shared this view:

Rothfuss wrote in the style of epic poetry, which was weird because I’ve been reading Beowulf recently**** and I can say for certain that he has the style and tone of the epic poem down. It would have been easy for the content of this project to be quick-and-dirty, but it’s not.

**** My wife is taking a mythology class and they’re reading Beowulf, which just happens to be one of my favorite English-language pieces, so I decided to read it again. Really.

However, Pat blogged about the project (link) and referenced both the eddas and Tolkien. His language is sorta why I'm being particular about this. He clearly loves Tolkien, but, y'know, I figure one must expect to be held to one's own standards.


So there I am, utterly confusticated and bebothered. This is the first piece of short fiction I’ve agreed to write, and all I can think is, “What the fuck can I possibly write about this?”

This question spins around in my head for a couple days. I think, “Can I write a story about Scalzi and Wheaton playing D&D? Is that too geeky? A holodeck adventure? Too cheap? Do I dare write the absolutely forbidden, ‘It was all just a dream’ story?”

Then it occurs to me that I’m approaching this from the wrong direction. I shouldn’t be trying to turn this picture into a joke. I shouldn’t try to be cute or gimmicky.

No. The events taking place in this picture are obviously epic. My story needs to be epic. And since it can’t be epic in length, it has to be epic in form….

So that’s how I ended up writing a poetic edda. For those of you who aren’t complete geeks, an edda is an old alliterative poem. Like Beowulf. Or the old Norse legends Tolkien ripped off when he was writing the Lord of the Rings.

Once I knew how to handle the story, I ended up having a ton of fun with it. I even brought in a certain celebrity in a cameo role…

Of course poetic edda aren’t supposed to be written in modern English, so I ended up spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to get the meter right. But you know my motto: if it’s worth writing, it’s worth obsessively revising.


Going back to that post from ASoIaF (link), the commentor quotes from Tolkien's notes on eddaic poetry in The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún. He specifies the surprising similarity between Pat's description of Eld Vintic and Tolkien's of Old Norse; in particular the physicality of the metaphor.

There remains too the impact of first hearing these things after the preliminary struggle with Old Norse is over and one first reads an Eddaic poem getting enough of the sense to go on with. Few who have been through this process can have missed the sudden recognition that they had unawares met something of tremendous force, something that in parts (for it has various parts) is still endowed with an almost demonic energy, in spite of the ruin of its form. The feeling of this impact is one of the greatest gifts that the reading of the Elder Edda gives. If not felt early in the process, it is unlikely to be captured by years of scholarly thraldom; once felt it can never be buried by mountains or molehills of research, and sustains long and weary labour.

This is unlike Old English, whose surviving fragments (Beowulf especially) — such at any rate has been my experience — only reveal their mastery and excellence slowly and long after the first labour with the tongue and the first acquaintance with the verse is over. There is truth in this generalization. It must not be pressed. Detailed study will enhance one's feeling for the Elder Edda, of course. Old English verse has an attraction in places that is immediate. But Old English verse does not attempt to hit you in the eye. To hit you in the eye was the deliberate intention of the Norse poet.

The poster admits imperfect familiarity with the form, but nowhere other than S&G and WMF saw such vital terminology. Looking at the introduction, the bits already quoted suffice, but the whole chapter could descibe Eld Vintic. In fact, he goes on to say that the most forcible and heroic of the Eddaic poems leap across the language barrier, echoing Sim's experience quite closely.

Ultimately Sim's poetry may not follow either rule set exactly. Even as unfamiliar as I am, I could start making a case for differences from both Beowulf and the Elder Edda. In fact, the argument for and against is already spinning a bit in the old noggin'. But I think there's a decent case for the descriptive framework probably being inspired by S&G.

In one of [Tolkien's] lectures he said: ‘In Old English breadth, fullness, reflection, elegiac effect, were aimed at. Old Norse poetry aims at seizing a situation, striking a blow that will be remembered, illuminating a moment with a flash of lightning – and tends to concision, weighty packing of the language in sense and form . . .’

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About a month after that, Pat confirmed it during his reddit AMA:

If a fan wanted to try their hand at writing some Eld Vintic poetry, are there set rules to this form?
Read some of the old Norse Eddas....