The Wheel of Time: Knife of Dreams

I broke in our new apartment with this book. Every reading space was utilized: the couch, the loveseat, the dining table, the bathtub, the bed. I read leaning against the kitchen counter waiting for the tea to boil, I read at my computer desk, I read to avoid my inevitable next step in life: looking for a new job. There are few things worse than looking for a new job, and few things I like more than sitting around reading, cooking, going for long walks and generally being a housewife without kids. So, that is what I have done for the past month.

Going from New York City to Peru and finally to Minnesota left me exhausted, and so I chose a book that would keep me entertained and easily distracted, something I could sink into without effort. That said, I finally picked up the latest (and eleventh) volume of the Wheel of Time Series. I discovered this series in high school where I was an avid, though particular, reader of fantasy. I have since kept up with each new volume as they have appeared, and each time I have had to re-read the preceding the volume in order to reinsert myself into the world.

What a world it is! I wouldn’t say Robert Jordan is the greatest craftsman when it comes to the nitty-gritty of actual writing, but he is a magnificent storytelling, a master inventor. He has created an alternative world of such size and complexity that I think few writers (aside from Tolkien) could compare in that regard. The Wheel of Time Series, eleven volumes (so far) ranging from 600-1000 pages each, incorporates a cast literally of thousands. These thousands, however, are not just masses of soldiers like in a William Wyler epic, no when I say a ‘cast of thousands’, I mean characters who have names, purposes, personalities. I have no idea how Jordan keeps track of all of this. I imagine he has reams of paper with each character cataloged alphabetically, or perhaps by their first appearance in the story. So far, the world consists of, as I can remember, five major cultures: the main European-like one, the Aiel (a Bedouin, Native American-like culture), the Seanchan (think Vikings and ants, literally), the Sea Folk (a nautical society), and the Ogier (here is the only non-human culture, most similar to Tolkien’s Ents). This is not the end however. The main Euro-culture is split off into numerous kingdoms, each with their own complex society and cultural norms. There are in turn many separate societies based on magic (the Aes Sedai and the Asha’man are the most significant) and there are rogue cultures like the Children of Light (zealots not unlike early American pilgrims) and the Tinkers (similar to the British Isle’s travelers). These brief descriptions do not do Jordan or his creations justice and are merely meant to give one a sense of the largeness of this epic. The cultures are complex, vital, and when they act (or react)—as individuals or in a group—they do so in incredibly realistic ways and within their singulars culture’s parameters. I have no doubt Jordan must be a passionate student of history.

If one studies history, one knows that most of history is not about cultural stagnation, but rather about change. One of my favorite aspects of this series is how adeptly Jordan portrays a world undergoing great, tumultuous change. In the beginning of the series, Jordan sets up numerous rules (big and small) for his world, its cultures, and their relationship(s) to magic. Then he proceeds with beautiful adeptness to stretch these rules, to break them altogether, and finally shatter the world he has created. And how do his characters react to their once stable world becoming new, bright, terrible? As all humans act when confronted with what they thought not only would never occur, but could never occur: disbelief, terror, denial, finally grudging almost desperate acceptance (that is until the next great change is wrought). The Wheel of Time is the fall of the Roman Empire, the Mongol horde, World War II; it is civilizations under incredible distress and pressure.

In Jordan’s mileu there are characters who not only rise above this change, they cause it. Egweme, Mat, Elayne, and Perrin: each inflicts change where they must, but it is Rand Al’Thor, the protagonist of the series if there is one, who unleashes the greatest changes. Rand is the Dragon Reborn, which means he is the classic Chosen-One of fantasy literature and mythology. He must do battle with the Shadow, and in doing so break the world and himself. He is as much Christ and Buddha, as he is Achilles, Seigfred, Cuchulain, Arthur/Merlin, Aragorn, and Luke Skywalker. Throughout the epic, we watch Al’Thor go from a young village boy, naïve and likeable, to a tormented cold-as-steel demi-god. This process, slow (which is one of its great pleasures: the time Jordan takes to wrought it) yet inevitable, is fascinating to watch. Whenever I begin a chapter is centered on Rand, I get giddy. As interesting and engrossing as nearly all the characters are, Rand stands out. Perhaps, it is because his story is set upon at least five thousand years of ‘Chosen-One’, ‘Self-Sacrifice’, ‘Resurrection’ tales. It is a tale that never gets old.

Just this year Robert Jordan has been diagnosed with a rare and often fatal blood disease. It is incredible to think that the man who has spent the last fifteen years writing and creating his magnum opus may not be able to finish. He is currently undergoing treatment at the Mayo Clinic, and he is nothing if not a fighter. In fact his response to his diagnoses is truly inspiring (see http://www.tor.com/jordan/). He is optimistic he has decades of life before him. I join many others and take this moment to say: “Mr. Jordan, keep fighting!”


Purchased at a thrift store in Brooklyn for an amazing price

The Wheel of Time: Knife of Dreams

By: Robert Jordan

Tor Fantasy, 2005

Hardcover, 784

ISBN: 0312873077

Bleak House

I read Charles Dickens’ Bleak House while traveling for six weeks in Peru. I probably should have spent that time reading some South American master, like Borges or Marquez, or most importantly Llosa, since he is Peru’s most celebrated writer, but instead I chose Dickens. I think it was because I liked the idea of reading something completely distinct from where my travels lead me, to sit in Chesney Wold while sitting on the cold, desert Peruvian shore, to walk through grimy, smoky 19th Century London while walking in the clear pampas of the Andes, to roam the dark, labyrinthine rooms of Chancery while roaming the dark, labyrinthine, yet living, jungles of the Amazon Basin. In the chance of encountering a squirrel monkey not unlike Jo, a tapir for Tulkinghorn, a spectacled bear for George, lay a certain mystifying joy, a kind of realization of the wideness of the world.

I also wanted a large, hefty book that would last most of the trip, something epic in scope to alleviate all the children’s literature I had read recently. And having worked at the bookstore during the Bleak House miniseries on the BBC, I listened to many Bleak House-centered conversations. One patron exclaimed that Charles Dickens was the world’s greatest writer—only, of course, after Shakespeare—and Bleak House his masterpiece. Such effusive exclamations certainly made the decision to make Bleak House my Peru book easier.

Enough on decision-making (although that is one of the great pleasures of reading!) and onto Bleak House. During the first three weeks of my trip and the first half of the book, I found myself disappointed. Or perhaps a better word is confused. I kept wondering where was this novel going? How would Dickens tie all these disparate characters together? Really, what was the point of all this? Sure, the writing was wonderful, the characterizations excellent, and many of the scenes were very funny, but I felt as though I struggled through the pages looking for a through-line, grasped in the dark for a string to get me through this seeming labyrinth of a book (if you haven’t guessed it already that is the word of this entry: labyrinth). Perhaps, I was too distracted by the stressors of the trip to catch on to the groundwork Dickens was laying. Perhaps, I was too accustomed to children’s literature where the first chapter always contains significant movement on plot and theme. I found myself almost bored.

I have read Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, and Hard Times, so it’s not like I came into this unaware that much of Dickens work is stuffing—and that is also one of the great joys of Dickens and many other 19th Century artists; they throw everything into their artistry, every bit of fluff, scrap, and rags they can manage. How different, and more perfect, a scarecrow looks when he is filled out, when he looms in a cornfield like a fat man after a satisfying meal than when he is nothing but an empty shirt, empty pants, and brainless bag for a head, which is how I often view contemporary literature: all plot, no stuffing; all action, no nuance; all bold strokes, no details. So why wasn’t Bleak House speaking to me? Perhaps, too much stuffing, so that it’s spilling out of the book, like a scarecrow split open by crows’ beaks? Or maybe I was simply too dim-witted.

Whichever way it falls, the light bulb between my head and the work eventually did go on. It was almost five hundred pages though before it fired. A few chapters before Esther becomes sick, the light began to come in fits and spurts, shedding a little illumination into the shadows. And then once she fell ill, it came on full, and for the rest of the book I was engrossed, I was devouring, I was in awe at Dickens’ ability to take all these disparate elements and make, dare I say it, a masterpiece. I remember, mid-day in the Amazon, laying on my mosquito-netted bed, and tearing through the revelation of Esther’s parentage. In fact, this is one of my favorite memories of the trip!

Now, looking back, the first half of the book makes complete sense. It is the set-up, the introduction of all these elements, characters, and plot points that really began to interconnect and play themselves out through the second half in such surprising and ultimately satisfying ways. It is a dark book, but beautifully so. I found myself surprised as to where Dickens would take so many of his characters (death, ruination, corruption, despair, murder, spontaneous combustion).

It is a book really about the society’s impact on the young, on the innocent, on those just coming into the world. In the micro version of this, you have the effect of parents (or guardians) on their children, Esther and her Aunt, as well as Esther and her birth parents, Mrs. Jellyby’s effect on Caddy (and on all her offspring), Mr. Jarndyce influence over Ada, Esther, and Richard (though he ultimately rejects it), and subsequently Mr. Skimpole and Mr. Vholes parentage over Richard, and finally George and Mrs. Rouncewell. Presiding over both Sir Leicester Dedlock and his wife are those illustrious aristocratic ancestors. As they move along the Ghost’s Walk, they remind us of the pressures on these two characters left to them by parental figures long dead. Sir Leicester Dedlock’s sporadic gout is another indication of his deeply ingrained inheritance. It is so delightful then when at the end of the novel he throws off much of his parentage and strikes a new, though still constrained, path. Finally you have those characters entirely without guardians, such as Jo and Nemo. Very little good can come to them.

At the macro level all the characters in the Bleak House have one patriarch, a stern, unyielding, and absurd father called Chancery Court. This is societies answer to bad-parenting: create a far worse, almost omnipotent monster. Ridiculous though the court may seem, it is ruthless, destructive, devouring. It eats not only money, but hope, youth, innocence, and entire lives. Only the few characters that are able to cut themselves truly off from Chancery Court, and subsequently Jarndyce and Jarndyce, come off well. The rest meet dim, pathetic ends. To tie one’s self to this Cronus means to meet repetitive humiliation, and eventually ruination.
Dickens seems to be making a comment, or many comments, on parenting. Children must break free of bad parents and strike out on their own. If the parent is good however, a certain degree of closeness is not only all right, but necessary (witness George and Miss. Rouncewell, as well as Richard’s demise after rejecting a ‘good parent’). This may seem quite a simple lesson, but it is not. It is a condemnation of every aspect of 19th Century British society, which in Dicken’s view had created a terrible, many-headed parent. The only comfort were the few individuals, like Mr. Jarndyce and Esther, who were able to offset some of society’s, and parent’s, wrongs through acts of selflessness.

Bleak House remains topical. Chancery Court could be the American Health Care system, or the trappings and ridiculousness of our Senate, Congress, and President. We too live in a time of bad, bad parenting. Obscurity remains: absurdity is taken for rationality, rule of law is merely rule of the indifferent, and a sense of hopelessness—of an inability to escape our dissembling parents—descends on us all. To quote the justly famous opening chapter of Bleak House: “Fog everywhere”.

Book purchased from Amazon.

Bleak House

By: Charles Dickens

Penguin, 2003

Paperback, pages 1037

ISBN: 0141439726