The Name of the Wind

‘It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man waiting to die.’

 Sometimes you write about something knowing fully well that is has been written about more times than you can count, better than you will ever be able to, and in a manner more creative than even your dreams.

This is one of those times.

You already know the story of The Name of the Wind. This is the first, most important thing about it. You know it, because it has been told to you throughout your life. You know, for example, the story of how a boy meets a girl and falls in love. You know the way that a hero saves a town from being burned down by dragons. You know how a young man, down on his luck, finds the murderer before he can kill his next victim. You know this, and you know more than this. But this story tells you again, and makes you wonder if you ever really knew those stories.

But I will try my best to not tell you anything concrete about the story at all. Though you know it, though it is inscribed in you from childhood, to tell you the story would be a sin.

Which leaves me stuck with the unique problem of telling you about a story without, in fact, telling you about the story. But how to do that? It is as Gaiman said: ‘One describes the tale best by telling the tale.’

So let me tell you not about the tale, but the writing of the tale. Rothfuss has a chilling ability, as evinced by that deadly line above, to evoke emotions in you. Imagine a line like that, ‘the patient cut-flower sound of a man waiting to die’.  

He has a striking, stupefying ability to make you feel. He writes poems and leaves them hidden in his books like acorns in the winter ground. When you find them, they are old oak trees, and their roots flow through the entire story.

How odd to watch a mortal kindle
Then to dwindle day by day.
Knowing their bright souls are tinder
And the wind will have its way.
Would I could my own fire lend.
What does your flickering portend?

Oh but he writes achingly (aching is a good word for it. It tugs at you, and leaves you with a faint sensation that something somewhere hurts, but in a good way that betrays that sometimes sadness is uplifting).

He writes of love:

‘We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.’

Of the road:

‘No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.’

And of music:

‘Music is there for when words fail us.’

He writes of these things because he knows them as well as you and I know them, and he can write about them better than anyone else I know. Let me be very serious: Patrick Rothfuss inspires more in me than almost any other writer I have read. His ability with words is matched, perhaps, by ten others alive today. And so, I cannot take from you that first encounter with him, when he weaves a story like the most patient master weaver: with painstaking care and deeply complex craft and insurmountable amounts of love.

So I hope to cheat, and not actually tell you the tale, and instead talk of how he writes. I hope to leave for you breadcrumbs that form a trail of words. And the trail will lead you there, to The Name of the Wind.

What is the point of telling you about it this in this manner? The point is that if you have not read this book, then maybe you will now read it. Maybe you will read it, and in that case I hope you enjoy it (no, I know you will enjoy it). And if (when) you do enjoy it, I really hope you tell me, because man, this book is great.

It deserves to be read, and loved, and shouted about from the mountaintops.

Here it is, my mountaintop.