Hum.
I HAVE SO MANY FRIKKIN MOSQUITO BITES. IT'S MAKING ME ANGRY.
Also, trawling Scott Lynch (author of The Lies of Locke Lamora)'s journal, I found this, and found it so ...
Well, I had to share.
"Jim Rigney, better known to literally millions as Robert Jordan, passed away this weekend. I read this at Nielsenhayden.com last night and found myself in an unexpected funk.
I was not a fan of the Wheel of Time books, probably because I came to them in my twenties with my tastes already fairly developed. I was never able to get past the opening of the second book, and those of you who've known me for ages I'm sure absorbed my criticism and invective years ago. I once wrote at excruciating length upon the weaknesses of the books as I perceived them, and while I thought it was extremely clever and somehow necessary at the time, the years since have drastically mellowed my taste for mocking the work of other authors who aren't huge assholes in person or pushing a distasteful agenda with their work. About the best I can say for my mosquito bites is that I sincerely hope Jordan himself never had them called to his attention. Something tells me he would have given them the eye roll they deserved.
I was bitten at a very impressionable age by the Hugely Epic Series bug. I read L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth decalog starting in fifth grade, and was too young to realize that it was schlocky, thinly veiled Scientology propaganda. Somewhere in the back of my mind I still have the glowing impression of my personal Misconstrued Mission Earth, a heroic galaxy-spanning epic that seemed to unfold endless promise in front of me. And if that glowing feeling is what kindled in the minds of Jordan's readers when they thought of the Wheel of Time sequence, then he helped them conjure something to be treasured.
It's pretty fashionable, in the online goldfish bowl that seems to be the majority of genre criticism, to reflexively spit on the very concept of the fantasy series. But fuck 'em. Snark is the cheapest of all forms of prose, and it comes no cheaper than from those who never had the vision or the persistence to create something grand with their own words and time. Robert Jordan brought a huge audience a little dose of the numinous; something that caught their imaginations and helped the slow and painful parts of their lives pass more quickly. It takes a freakish combination of drive and ambition to lay out the architecture of a literary work so vast, let alone actually write the damn thing.
What Jordan created was grand, and worthy, and special. I regret that the words at the end of the last page will trail off into nothingness, and that he didn't get whatever time would have been needed to close the sequence as he saw fit. I envy his readers who found themselves caught up in a private magic while reading his books.
His was a good work, and a difficult work, and the rest of us should be so goddamn lucky as to do what he did.
My condolences to all of you who were his family, friends, and readers."
RJ. I MISS YOU.
Also, trawling Scott Lynch (author of The Lies of Locke Lamora)'s journal, I found this, and found it so ...
Well, I had to share.
"Jim Rigney, better known to literally millions as Robert Jordan, passed away this weekend. I read this at Nielsenhayden.com last night and found myself in an unexpected funk.
I was not a fan of the Wheel of Time books, probably because I came to them in my twenties with my tastes already fairly developed. I was never able to get past the opening of the second book, and those of you who've known me for ages I'm sure absorbed my criticism and invective years ago. I once wrote at excruciating length upon the weaknesses of the books as I perceived them, and while I thought it was extremely clever and somehow necessary at the time, the years since have drastically mellowed my taste for mocking the work of other authors who aren't huge assholes in person or pushing a distasteful agenda with their work. About the best I can say for my mosquito bites is that I sincerely hope Jordan himself never had them called to his attention. Something tells me he would have given them the eye roll they deserved.
I was bitten at a very impressionable age by the Hugely Epic Series bug. I read L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth decalog starting in fifth grade, and was too young to realize that it was schlocky, thinly veiled Scientology propaganda. Somewhere in the back of my mind I still have the glowing impression of my personal Misconstrued Mission Earth, a heroic galaxy-spanning epic that seemed to unfold endless promise in front of me. And if that glowing feeling is what kindled in the minds of Jordan's readers when they thought of the Wheel of Time sequence, then he helped them conjure something to be treasured.
It's pretty fashionable, in the online goldfish bowl that seems to be the majority of genre criticism, to reflexively spit on the very concept of the fantasy series. But fuck 'em. Snark is the cheapest of all forms of prose, and it comes no cheaper than from those who never had the vision or the persistence to create something grand with their own words and time. Robert Jordan brought a huge audience a little dose of the numinous; something that caught their imaginations and helped the slow and painful parts of their lives pass more quickly. It takes a freakish combination of drive and ambition to lay out the architecture of a literary work so vast, let alone actually write the damn thing.
What Jordan created was grand, and worthy, and special. I regret that the words at the end of the last page will trail off into nothingness, and that he didn't get whatever time would have been needed to close the sequence as he saw fit. I envy his readers who found themselves caught up in a private magic while reading his books.
His was a good work, and a difficult work, and the rest of us should be so goddamn lucky as to do what he did.
My condolences to all of you who were his family, friends, and readers."
RJ. I MISS YOU.