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The Name of the Wind
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Abenthy and Schmendrick from Last Unicorn
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Looks like an Homage to me. Not a direct copy but obviously inspired by. Very cool IMO.
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Maybe not directly to his writing, but definitely to his life.
Hard to remember, it was a like 2 hours long!
I think this is just a beautiful homage. I'm sure he crafted Ben after this guy, but with heavy helping of love
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Look back at interviews from 2007, or even those from around the release of WMF. He talks about three works more than any others: The Last Unicorn, Cyrano De Bergerac, and Historie de ma vie. In fact, yup, he drops those in the interview Amber mentioned at around 50 minutes.
It's kind of amusing. He consistently answers the influence question with some form of, "I don't have influences," and follows it with those three texts.
The Last Unicorn isn't available for Kindle, which effectively means I haven't read it yet. I see the similarities between the passages you posted, though. I'd love to see any more stuff you find.
It was undoubtedly an influence and a work he's intimately familiar with. I got through half the interview trying to secure a direct quote for you. From his blog: (Dec 3, 2008)
"Peter S. Beagle is one of my favorite authors. I read The Last Unicorn about once a year, and every time it just breaks my heart. It’s the sort of story that I know I’ll never be able to write."
Yeah, the influence is there. It's impossible to not have that kind of influence, not when you love an author and their work so immensely.It's not a bad thing that the parallel exists. It's a rare glimpse into the mind of the author. A moment of kinship between two fans of a beautiful work. Schmendrick's line, "I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams" is just so shatteringly brilliant that I can't help but remember it. I can't help but commit the syntax, the wordplay, the underlying grammar of that phrase to memory.
I imagine it must have been the same for Rothfuss. He read Last Unicorn. Maybe two dozen times. Moments like that are so brilliant that you can't help but internalize it, and find little ways to replicate it in your own writing.
Honestly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Peter S. Beagle's line was actually somewhat influenced by T.H White's "Once and Future King," with Merlin's temper tantrums appended with colorful language.
"Castor and Pollux blow me to Bermuda!"
That's the thing about beautiful language. When you see a sentence you love, you start finding ways to make it your own. Its echoes appear in your own writing and your own speech.
It's really nice stumbling across one of Rothfuss's own little moments of inspiration. Maybe it's a conscious homage. Maybe an unconscious relic of Beagle's influence on Rothfuss. But it's there all the same. That, to me, is very cool.
Mod
In a similar answer he says, (this isn't a direct transcription) "It's not like I read La Belle Dame sans Merci and thought how could I use that." He goes on to talk about reading fairy tales for a year and a half and it all bubbling up from his subconscious. Funnily enough, in light of the interviewer's vicious ragging on Rowling, that's how she talks about writing, too.
Anyway, of course Keats influenced, directly or indirectly, Felurian. That he names the poem specifically is probably an acknowledgement of that. I was actually kind of stunned by a bit at the bottom of the wikipedia page for it:
"The best-known musical setting is that by Charles Villiers Stanford. It is a dramatic interpretation requiring a skilled (male) vocalist and equally skilled accompanist."
...which sounds a lot like The Lay of Sir Savien Tralliard.
Wow, very nice find!
Mod
Yah...I sorta had to split it into two days because I really needed to work on my yard LOL.
But I thought it was a great interview, I love when they are really long like that.
Have any of you read Cyrano De Bergerac? When I was transcribing The Story Board and he mentioned that name I had no idea what it was...took me like 5 hours to figure out how to transcribe it correctly. LOL!
Pat puts so much effort in his language and writing, choosing every word he uses with care and he is a huge fan of Peter S Beagle.There's no way this is unintentional.
Pat was kind enough to write back to me on this question, and said that Abenthy's line was a parallelism with The Last Unicorn. So, yes, the influence is totally there.That is so cool. I love finding little hints of an author's creative process! :)
Mod
That is so cool. I love finding little hints of an author's creative process! :) "
Fantastic! Thanks for sharing.
Rothfussians
Books mentioned in this topic
The Last Unicorn (other topics)Cyrano de Bergerac (other topics)
"I'll stuff you full of misery until it comes out your ears. I'll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into sheep. I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams."
Schmendrick says this to Rukh when the two of them are fighting, on page 36 of the Illustrated Edition. I remember the line because I thought the insults were particularly clever. And I got a good chuckle out of "I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams."
So today I'm listening to the Name of the Wind audiobook in the car.
Audiobooks are neat. My eyes can glaze over words on a page and skim through passages, but audiobooks force me to listen to every word. I noticed this passage, early in the book, when we first meet Abenthy:
The old man turned his back to his wagon and began to extemporize. "I'll turn you into butter on a summer's day. I'll turn you into a poet with the soul of a priest. I'll fill you with lemon custard and push you out a window."
You could argue that this is probably a coincidence, and just because Rothfuss enjoyed The Last Unicorn doesn't mean he was directly influenced by it. And I'd agree with you--mostly. Except Abenthy and Schmendrick are both crotchety old wizards, and the line "I'll turn you into a poet with the soul of a priest" is way too close to "I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams" line to be a total coincidence.
What do you guys think?