One of the things I have been doing has been work on a re-reading of Robin Hobb's works. I'm close to done with the first novel in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus, Assassin's Apprentice, and I confess to it being a strange thing to have the work come out across so long a time as it has. I've pushed out a chapter's write up on Monday and Friday of most weeks, advancing my account relatively slowly, especially relative to how quickly I still read. It's different from reading as I have read before, and many times, plowing through the books with abandon, spending hours turning pages and realizing only when the book was done that time had passed and I suddenly had a remarkably urgent need to piss.
I cannot do such things anymore, or I cannot do so often. I don't have the luxury of so much time to myself when I do not have to be doing other things--and I do not begrudge it. My life is better as it is than as it was, truly. But I do miss having so much access to that particular part of how my life was that was good. I've missed several such, though I've been taking steps to correct it, to access them again. I've been better off for it, so I might see about trying to return to some of my older reading habits. As much as the obligations I am happy to discharge allow.
Part of why I am doing the work is because I think it needs to be done. I am fond of Hobb's writing, and I do not think it gets enough attention or acclaim. Doing my small part to increase those quantities seems a fitting thing to do, therefore. Too, I continue to have some small part of myself engaged in academe, and doing the re-read allows me to play at doing something I thought would be a career, much as my participation in the bands I am in allows me to play at doing something else I thought would be a career. (I thought I'd be a band director when I grew up. I'm grown; I'm not a band director. But it works for me.) And I may end up getting one paper or another out of it, in time. (As it is, I've got an idea for a conference piece I might want to pitch. Maybe two. Or three...) So that would be to the good.
I doubt I'll ever have the chance to read the way I used to again. And I miss being able to immerse myself, lose myself in the words on the pages I would turn. But I do not miss it as much as I would miss what I have now, I think, were I to try to return to it.
Showing posts with label Hobb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hobb. Show all posts
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Sunday, June 2, 2019
20190602.0430
To follow up on yesterday's post and look back at what I have written in this webspace before, I'd note that 2 June has seen posts in each of the past six years (2013-2018). In 2013, I commented on Hobb's The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince; in 2014, I made some random comments. In 2015, I opined about an honorarium; in 2016, 2017, and 2018, I wrote poetry. As such, I have a few things I might look back on and discuss further. The 2018 poem, though, is one in a sequence of them, not really workable outside that context. The 2017 is, frankly, not very good; the 2016 is not much better, if at all. The former might as well be prose; the latter rhymes, at least, but in neither case is there a discourse to be found. They are, as it were, fruits without seeds, and while such may be good for eating, they don't do what fruit ought to do (if we can talk about "ought" in this context).
The 2015 piece reads to me as pompous. Even to my eyes, it seems the writer is struggling to bring in fancy words, and while I recall doing so in an attempt to be clear and exact in my language, I'm not at all sure it succeeds in that. Leaving aside the issue that assessing a piece by its writer's intent isn't a good approach--because I can only try to recall it at this point, and I can't be sure I remember it rightly--I'm not at all sure that what I write is clear. Bringing in the rarer words--not "bigger," because some of them are short, but less common and seemingly "fancier" as a result--seems to get in the way of easy reading; it comes off as showing off, as pompous. The refusal to use contractions reinforces the impression of arrogance; the removal from common speech patters marks off what should be an informal bit as trying to be more formal. It's wearing a tie when a t-shirt is expected.
The last bit, the metaphor about the tie and t-shirt, reminds me: I really seem to have been struggling to make the metaphor of falling fruit work in the 2015 piece. It's not a bad one, really; fruit dropping from trees before it's picked is windfall, and it's often the case that windfall produce starts rotting before a person finds it. Even if it hasn't yet, it still needs to be brushed off before eating. Where the metaphor uses that imagery, it works. But it pivots back into the kind of pompous language that marks the rest of the blog post, shifting away from what might actually work as evocative language and into stilted writing that does as much to say "look at me; I'm a professor--ain't I smart?" as it does anything else.
I was invested in coming off as smart, as deserving of an intellectual position. I was trying to get one at the time, as I am no longer, and I knew that I'd be researched by those I wanted to have hire me. But going about making myself seem a smart guy the way I did didn't work out (obviously). It might even have backfired; the case could be made, and easily, that I ought to have been working on researched writing rather than blogging. (It could be made now that I ought to be working on other projects than this webspace, others that I might use to at least try to make some money.) The 2015 piece was not my best work; understanding better why it wasn't can help in avoiding some mistakes later on.
The 2015 piece reads to me as pompous. Even to my eyes, it seems the writer is struggling to bring in fancy words, and while I recall doing so in an attempt to be clear and exact in my language, I'm not at all sure it succeeds in that. Leaving aside the issue that assessing a piece by its writer's intent isn't a good approach--because I can only try to recall it at this point, and I can't be sure I remember it rightly--I'm not at all sure that what I write is clear. Bringing in the rarer words--not "bigger," because some of them are short, but less common and seemingly "fancier" as a result--seems to get in the way of easy reading; it comes off as showing off, as pompous. The refusal to use contractions reinforces the impression of arrogance; the removal from common speech patters marks off what should be an informal bit as trying to be more formal. It's wearing a tie when a t-shirt is expected.
The last bit, the metaphor about the tie and t-shirt, reminds me: I really seem to have been struggling to make the metaphor of falling fruit work in the 2015 piece. It's not a bad one, really; fruit dropping from trees before it's picked is windfall, and it's often the case that windfall produce starts rotting before a person finds it. Even if it hasn't yet, it still needs to be brushed off before eating. Where the metaphor uses that imagery, it works. But it pivots back into the kind of pompous language that marks the rest of the blog post, shifting away from what might actually work as evocative language and into stilted writing that does as much to say "look at me; I'm a professor--ain't I smart?" as it does anything else.
I was invested in coming off as smart, as deserving of an intellectual position. I was trying to get one at the time, as I am no longer, and I knew that I'd be researched by those I wanted to have hire me. But going about making myself seem a smart guy the way I did didn't work out (obviously). It might even have backfired; the case could be made, and easily, that I ought to have been working on researched writing rather than blogging. (It could be made now that I ought to be working on other projects than this webspace, others that I might use to at least try to make some money.) The 2015 piece was not my best work; understanding better why it wasn't can help in avoiding some mistakes later on.
Friday, March 8, 2019
20190308.0430
I noted yesterday a concern that I will be diminished by excising from my collection a number of the printed pages for which I once had use but no longer do, and which are marked by my marginalia from the time now gone when I might have used such things. They relate, as I think on it, to earlier remarks of mine. Some time ago, before leaving The City, I made comments in this webspace about the nature of home, comments spurred by the imminence of leaving a home to try to make another elsewhere. (It did not work.) In them, I noted the idea of home as being a place where the internal is made at least partly external; that is, for me, a home is a place where I can allow my interiority to emerge into and be represented by the externalities of decor and paraphernalia. Marginalia is such an emergence, albeit one of more restricted scope--but that it is smaller does not mean it is less a part of me, the loss of which seems a painful thing.
Thinking on it leads me to other thoughts, though. A number of the books I have were owned by others before me. (The physical objects are what I refer to, here; my copy of, oh, Assassin's Apprentice is not the same thing as the novel itself. The latter exists whether I read it or not, whether I buy a copy or not, and it belongs to others; the former is my enduring access to it, an expression of my agency upon the text--but, again, the text exists whether I read it or not.) They have the marginalia others have left. When I look at them, they offer me some small insights into the minds and beings of those others. I get small glimpses of their stories, of their characters, and I find myself intrigued by them.
Sometimes, those marginalia are the work of elder members of my family, people I barely knew--if I knew them at all; the grandfather whose copy of Shakespeare I own died when I was 22, to be sure, but I did not see him much or often when I was growing up, and how well a child can know an adult, particularly one who gave every evidence of believing in the separation of those two states and in keeping things private, is an open question. (I make a clear distinction between childhood and adulthood, certainly, and there are things I do not discuss, but the boundaries are far more porous for me than they seem to have been for others in my family. Clearly, else I'd not keep several blogs across several years.) But in reading his margin notes, I get a sense of how he regarded texts with which I am familiar. I get a sense of who he was in earlier times, when he perhaps could be more himself and not so much himself-as-father or himself-as-grandfather.
Sometimes, those marginalia are the work of people altogether removed form me--save from the commonality of owning a particular copy of a text. I do not have the vested interest in knowing about them the things I learn about my family from reading their marginalia, to be sure, but I still learn of them, still gain some insight into who they were that they made the notes that they made about the things that they read--and I learn about myself from my consideration of those margin notes. And while this is hardly a revelation--there are scholars who make their whole careers looking at such things, though they tend to focus on the marginalia of the mighty, and I have not the holograph copies of such writers' works--the details of less famous lives are not less important for being less known.
I continue to be torn about the matter of my own side-scrawled pages therefore. I am vainglorious enough to want to be known and wondered about as those whose hands have marked pages I now own are. But I also think I want Ms. 8 to know me as me and not just me-as-father. (Or at least to know another performance of mine, if me-as-scholar is not me-as-me, which would be a legitimate argument to make.) So I am still uncertain as to whether I ought to release my things out into the world or continue to hoard them. I do not yet know which will be the greater good or the lesser ill.
Thinking on it leads me to other thoughts, though. A number of the books I have were owned by others before me. (The physical objects are what I refer to, here; my copy of, oh, Assassin's Apprentice is not the same thing as the novel itself. The latter exists whether I read it or not, whether I buy a copy or not, and it belongs to others; the former is my enduring access to it, an expression of my agency upon the text--but, again, the text exists whether I read it or not.) They have the marginalia others have left. When I look at them, they offer me some small insights into the minds and beings of those others. I get small glimpses of their stories, of their characters, and I find myself intrigued by them.
Sometimes, those marginalia are the work of elder members of my family, people I barely knew--if I knew them at all; the grandfather whose copy of Shakespeare I own died when I was 22, to be sure, but I did not see him much or often when I was growing up, and how well a child can know an adult, particularly one who gave every evidence of believing in the separation of those two states and in keeping things private, is an open question. (I make a clear distinction between childhood and adulthood, certainly, and there are things I do not discuss, but the boundaries are far more porous for me than they seem to have been for others in my family. Clearly, else I'd not keep several blogs across several years.) But in reading his margin notes, I get a sense of how he regarded texts with which I am familiar. I get a sense of who he was in earlier times, when he perhaps could be more himself and not so much himself-as-father or himself-as-grandfather.
Sometimes, those marginalia are the work of people altogether removed form me--save from the commonality of owning a particular copy of a text. I do not have the vested interest in knowing about them the things I learn about my family from reading their marginalia, to be sure, but I still learn of them, still gain some insight into who they were that they made the notes that they made about the things that they read--and I learn about myself from my consideration of those margin notes. And while this is hardly a revelation--there are scholars who make their whole careers looking at such things, though they tend to focus on the marginalia of the mighty, and I have not the holograph copies of such writers' works--the details of less famous lives are not less important for being less known.
I continue to be torn about the matter of my own side-scrawled pages therefore. I am vainglorious enough to want to be known and wondered about as those whose hands have marked pages I now own are. But I also think I want Ms. 8 to know me as me and not just me-as-father. (Or at least to know another performance of mine, if me-as-scholar is not me-as-me, which would be a legitimate argument to make.) So I am still uncertain as to whether I ought to release my things out into the world or continue to hoard them. I do not yet know which will be the greater good or the lesser ill.
Saturday, March 2, 2019
20190302.0430
Today
is Texas Independence Day, something I note even if I am, once again,
not in the state to celebrate it. It is not the first time I have marked
the occasion in this webspace--that would be here--and
certainly not the first time I have marked the occasion overall. But as
I looked back over the records I've left in this webspace to see what I
have said of the occasion before, I came across something else I've
commemorated here: the death of my maternal grandmother. Seeing it, my attention has been compelled by it, and I have thought upon that compulsion and what it calls forward from me.
I have to resist a tendency toward the maudlin as I write; it is something of a struggle for me at the best of times, and having the reminder of a death prompts many people towards it. But wallowing in that tendency and its results will do me no good, and I know it. And it has been four years since the death, now; such wounds as it left have closed by now, and, to borrow from one of my favorite authors, scars are not as good as the flesh they replace, but they stop the bleeding. So I should not allow myself to fall into the trap of cliché lamentation; the death is worth noting, worth considering, worth remembering sadly, and worth more than the hackneyed protestations that often accompany such things out of their exceeding words.
If the loss of the unifying figure who was my grandmother can be said to mark a major point of divergence for my family--and it can, for many reasons--then it behooves those of us who remain and remember to look back and see the ways things in the family have changed since the death. Such reflection is something that writing does well to facilitate; it is far easier to read the words written then and consider them against the words that are written now than to remember what was in the mind then and make the similar comparison. Indeed, it can be argued that the latter cannot be done, not truly, even as it is argued, truly, that both the recollection and the reading reflect only limited, parsed, curated, selected, partial truths of the moments concerned. Yet at least in the writing there might be some consistency of writerly persona, some focus and cohesion and comprehensibility imposed by enacting such a role that might help make sense of things that generally admit of little if any sense at all.
Then again, I would say such things, sitting with a doctorate in a humanities field as I do. I would be expected to rely on written words for meaning. But if I do, it is in large part because I was taught to do so--not only by my schooling, but before it, looking at the elder members of my family reading throughout the day and finding joy in it. And my late grandmother was one of the chief among them.
I have to resist a tendency toward the maudlin as I write; it is something of a struggle for me at the best of times, and having the reminder of a death prompts many people towards it. But wallowing in that tendency and its results will do me no good, and I know it. And it has been four years since the death, now; such wounds as it left have closed by now, and, to borrow from one of my favorite authors, scars are not as good as the flesh they replace, but they stop the bleeding. So I should not allow myself to fall into the trap of cliché lamentation; the death is worth noting, worth considering, worth remembering sadly, and worth more than the hackneyed protestations that often accompany such things out of their exceeding words.
If the loss of the unifying figure who was my grandmother can be said to mark a major point of divergence for my family--and it can, for many reasons--then it behooves those of us who remain and remember to look back and see the ways things in the family have changed since the death. Such reflection is something that writing does well to facilitate; it is far easier to read the words written then and consider them against the words that are written now than to remember what was in the mind then and make the similar comparison. Indeed, it can be argued that the latter cannot be done, not truly, even as it is argued, truly, that both the recollection and the reading reflect only limited, parsed, curated, selected, partial truths of the moments concerned. Yet at least in the writing there might be some consistency of writerly persona, some focus and cohesion and comprehensibility imposed by enacting such a role that might help make sense of things that generally admit of little if any sense at all.
Then again, I would say such things, sitting with a doctorate in a humanities field as I do. I would be expected to rely on written words for meaning. But if I do, it is in large part because I was taught to do so--not only by my schooling, but before it, looking at the elder members of my family reading throughout the day and finding joy in it. And my late grandmother was one of the chief among them.
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
20181127.0430
In conversations with my wife over the long weekend just past, I had occasion to remark about my involvement with various intellectual properties. In my younger years, I spent quite a bit of time, money, and energy consuming such narrative milieus as the Star Trek and Star Wars universes, of Middle-earth, of Asimov's sprawling future history that now looks so quaint even though the clarity of writing remains in force, of Donaldson's chronicles of unbelief and their turgid prose (and I am sure that one shows in what I write more than I might want it to--for several reasons), of Hobb's Elderlings corpus that led to my master's thesis, of Legend of the Five Rings and of roleplaying games more generally. And I am aware that most or all of them have surpassed my ability to access them fully; they are surrounded by critical and fandom apparatuses that exceed me (in most cases; fandom is largely beyond me, though I have a handle on criticism of one of the properties I've listed, at least).
I am not sure how I feel about the matter. I've noted in other places that I'm glad to be free of the dick-wagging that accompanies so much community engagement with the intellectual properties I've engaged with and those similar to them. I've also noted that I miss being able to devote myself to them as I once did--even though I know that engagement is far harder now than when I was young, given the proliferation of nostalgia and the products that cater to it, as well as increased access through various media technologies. There are not enough hours in the day to attend to them all even if that is all that gets attention, and I am not in a position to be able to give myself fully over as I used to be able to do. I cannot afford to be so selfish.
I am also not sure anymore that I want to be. Aside from the simple matter--but important to the kind of little shit that I was and that many people still very much are--of a sex life (which I do not discount), family life is fulfilling in ways that fandom never was for me. To be fair, I've been lucky in my direct experience of fandom; the communities in which I participated were relatively supportive, but part of that support came only because I had a place enforced upon me, and my challenges to it were in the forms accepted by those communities. Those in which I am still engaged are far more casual and more broadly supportive--but, again, I know I am lucky in finding them. Each of us within them has horror stories of others that were...not, and they do not except the "official" fandoms, those associated most closely with or outright endorsed by the owners of the intellectual properties involved.*
My family, though, my wife and daughter, particularly, are far better for me to have than a place among the various fandoms. I am an expatriate of those fandoms no less than of academe, and I return to them as I may, but I do not think I will seek to emigrate from that smaller, greater nation in which I now dwell.
*I am aware, at least peripherally, of the challenges of fan-work and, indeed, of fandom itself, to ownership of intellectual properties in a moral and ethical sense, though not so much in a legal one. The latter seems to be the common understanding, though, and given the general audience I presume to address in this webspace, it is the one with which I am working in this piece.
I am not sure how I feel about the matter. I've noted in other places that I'm glad to be free of the dick-wagging that accompanies so much community engagement with the intellectual properties I've engaged with and those similar to them. I've also noted that I miss being able to devote myself to them as I once did--even though I know that engagement is far harder now than when I was young, given the proliferation of nostalgia and the products that cater to it, as well as increased access through various media technologies. There are not enough hours in the day to attend to them all even if that is all that gets attention, and I am not in a position to be able to give myself fully over as I used to be able to do. I cannot afford to be so selfish.
I am also not sure anymore that I want to be. Aside from the simple matter--but important to the kind of little shit that I was and that many people still very much are--of a sex life (which I do not discount), family life is fulfilling in ways that fandom never was for me. To be fair, I've been lucky in my direct experience of fandom; the communities in which I participated were relatively supportive, but part of that support came only because I had a place enforced upon me, and my challenges to it were in the forms accepted by those communities. Those in which I am still engaged are far more casual and more broadly supportive--but, again, I know I am lucky in finding them. Each of us within them has horror stories of others that were...not, and they do not except the "official" fandoms, those associated most closely with or outright endorsed by the owners of the intellectual properties involved.*
My family, though, my wife and daughter, particularly, are far better for me to have than a place among the various fandoms. I am an expatriate of those fandoms no less than of academe, and I return to them as I may, but I do not think I will seek to emigrate from that smaller, greater nation in which I now dwell.
*I am aware, at least peripherally, of the challenges of fan-work and, indeed, of fandom itself, to ownership of intellectual properties in a moral and ethical sense, though not so much in a legal one. The latter seems to be the common understanding, though, and given the general audience I presume to address in this webspace, it is the one with which I am working in this piece.
Monday, November 19, 2018
20181119.0430
In my post yesterday, I make reference to "legitimate" scholarly topics. The specifics I refer to--and which I know I do not name--are those of my medieval studies work. My dissertation was on Malory and the process through which Le Morte d'Arthur became the canonical piece of Arthurian legend it is recognized as being. My conference papers have tended to address Malory, with a few ranging back into Old English works and a few others going in different directions entirely. My publications, few as they are, do not show up any kind of consistent agenda, except perhaps looking at locations and practices of teaching.
I did enjoy doing the work to make those things happen, to be sure. There is a certain amount of love for the thing that has to go into doing the work of writing theses over months or a dissertation over years. There is a certain amount of joy that inheres in finding places where knowledge is lacking and, through careful investigation and argumentation, correcting that lack. (Among others, and as I tell the students I reach in my expatriation, being the first to know a thing is rewarding.) But, as I noted yesterday and have noted elsewhen, the fields in which I tried to work as I sought to make myself a "real" scholar, one who has the luxury of living a life of the mind as a primary occupation, are not those that got me into scholarly work. They were, as it were, covers for the work I wanted to do--but I stopped doing the work I had hoped to use the "legitimate" work to enable. The cover became the primary thing--as much as research ever did for me. (I know part of why I was unable to get a full-time college or university gig was my too-short publication list.)
No, it was looking at things that many will deem silly that awakened in me the desire to make more knowledge. The roleplaying games that secured my undergraduate honors, the Robin Hobb novels I studied for my master's thesis, always seemed to me to need defending as objects of scholarly inquiry; I still struggle against the idea, just as I struggle with the notion that the work I do for the Tales after Tolkien Society needs defending. Such work may, but not for the reasons typically advanced, that the objects of such study are not worthy of such study. As much as anything else people do, they are--and I am not the only one of that opinion, else there'd be no other resources than those I've made. (I flatter myself that I've done pretty well with Hobb, though.)
If there is a benefit to the end of my pursuit of full-time scholarship to my scholarly work, it is this: I no longer need to work to hide my interests under "legitimate" work that I am increasingly unequipped to undertake. "Legit" work takes resources I no longer have easy access to--or much of any access. I keep what I can, but there's only so much I can do on that score. But I can do the kind of work I've done with RPGs and other pop-culture stuff still, and it's more of what I wanted to do, anyway...
I did enjoy doing the work to make those things happen, to be sure. There is a certain amount of love for the thing that has to go into doing the work of writing theses over months or a dissertation over years. There is a certain amount of joy that inheres in finding places where knowledge is lacking and, through careful investigation and argumentation, correcting that lack. (Among others, and as I tell the students I reach in my expatriation, being the first to know a thing is rewarding.) But, as I noted yesterday and have noted elsewhen, the fields in which I tried to work as I sought to make myself a "real" scholar, one who has the luxury of living a life of the mind as a primary occupation, are not those that got me into scholarly work. They were, as it were, covers for the work I wanted to do--but I stopped doing the work I had hoped to use the "legitimate" work to enable. The cover became the primary thing--as much as research ever did for me. (I know part of why I was unable to get a full-time college or university gig was my too-short publication list.)
No, it was looking at things that many will deem silly that awakened in me the desire to make more knowledge. The roleplaying games that secured my undergraduate honors, the Robin Hobb novels I studied for my master's thesis, always seemed to me to need defending as objects of scholarly inquiry; I still struggle against the idea, just as I struggle with the notion that the work I do for the Tales after Tolkien Society needs defending. Such work may, but not for the reasons typically advanced, that the objects of such study are not worthy of such study. As much as anything else people do, they are--and I am not the only one of that opinion, else there'd be no other resources than those I've made. (I flatter myself that I've done pretty well with Hobb, though.)
If there is a benefit to the end of my pursuit of full-time scholarship to my scholarly work, it is this: I no longer need to work to hide my interests under "legitimate" work that I am increasingly unequipped to undertake. "Legit" work takes resources I no longer have easy access to--or much of any access. I keep what I can, but there's only so much I can do on that score. But I can do the kind of work I've done with RPGs and other pop-culture stuff still, and it's more of what I wanted to do, anyway...
Friday, December 11, 2015
20151211.0622
Today will see the end of my exam-giving for the term. It will be the last time I see my students from the current term--save for a brave or foolhardy few whose names have appeared in the rosters for my classes in the term yet to come. If I am lucky and diligent, it will see the end of my grading work for the term, as well, save perhaps the few minutes I will need to spend to send my grades and materials along to where they need to go. That, though, is simply doing paperwork, which is not the same thing; it is not unlike my posting reports and the like to the blog and website I currently maintain for my teaching and other work.
That "other work" continues to increase. I have a new freelance piece in progress; I received the order for it not long after posting yesterday's blog. I am not far into the supporting reading at this point, as I felt I should take care of a few other things before turning to the new project, but what I have read, I like so far. It is making the work that I will need to do easier to do. Not all of the books I get to read for the freelance work do so; some of them have the opposite effect, whether because they are badly written (but still somehow attract attention and money; I have to figure out how so that I can do it) or because they are simply not concerned with such things (not that I really expect them to be). Having a piece that reads easily and facilitates writing up is therefore certainly welcome. I could stand to have more such pieces, indeed.
The "other work" also includes more research activity, not only in the conference paper I am expected to present at Kalamazoo and so must draft sometime between now and early May or the article I have begun to compile and hope to see published in a leading journal, but also my ongoing work on the Robin Hobb annotated bibliography I maintain on my website. A piece has arrived through interlibrary loan; I need to pick it up so that I can read it and offer a useful summary of it in my Fedwren Project. (I probably also ought to look at drafting a short essay explicating the title and the appropriateness thereof for the project.) How I will integrate that into the other work I have scheduled in the next few days is unclear to me, but it is clear that I will get the work done. There is no other way for matters to proceed.
So I shall press on through this day, seeing how much I can get done to clear me of the lingering duties of the term so that I can attend to the many other things that are mine to do. As ever, I look forward to a productive break. Perhaps this will be the time my hopes are realized.
That "other work" continues to increase. I have a new freelance piece in progress; I received the order for it not long after posting yesterday's blog. I am not far into the supporting reading at this point, as I felt I should take care of a few other things before turning to the new project, but what I have read, I like so far. It is making the work that I will need to do easier to do. Not all of the books I get to read for the freelance work do so; some of them have the opposite effect, whether because they are badly written (but still somehow attract attention and money; I have to figure out how so that I can do it) or because they are simply not concerned with such things (not that I really expect them to be). Having a piece that reads easily and facilitates writing up is therefore certainly welcome. I could stand to have more such pieces, indeed.
The "other work" also includes more research activity, not only in the conference paper I am expected to present at Kalamazoo and so must draft sometime between now and early May or the article I have begun to compile and hope to see published in a leading journal, but also my ongoing work on the Robin Hobb annotated bibliography I maintain on my website. A piece has arrived through interlibrary loan; I need to pick it up so that I can read it and offer a useful summary of it in my Fedwren Project. (I probably also ought to look at drafting a short essay explicating the title and the appropriateness thereof for the project.) How I will integrate that into the other work I have scheduled in the next few days is unclear to me, but it is clear that I will get the work done. There is no other way for matters to proceed.
So I shall press on through this day, seeing how much I can get done to clear me of the lingering duties of the term so that I can attend to the many other things that are mine to do. As ever, I look forward to a productive break. Perhaps this will be the time my hopes are realized.
Friday, November 20, 2015
20151120.0626
The weather around Sherwood Cottage continues to cool. I believe it might have gotten down to freezing last night or this morning, the first time since last winter ended. Soon, therefore, the Mrs. and I will be putting up the window film that we use to try to stifle some of the drafts in the place. There are many more that we cannot attend to in such a way, but each thing that we can do is a help to us. Maybe, maybe I will not have to fight the cats about it so much this year; maybe Ms. 8 will leave it more or less alone. It is doubtful, of course, cats being as they are and my daughter being as she is--a toddler. Still, I hope for many things that are not likely to come to pass--and Ms. 8 will eventually grow out of it. I think.
Work continues. I was able to post a short piece to the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, which is good, and I am reading the current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; there is, perhaps, another such piece waiting for me in its pages. I also continue to compile teaching materials, notably a revision to my teaching philosophy. I have a brief version already in place, and I have been using it to inform job applications I have been sending out. (It seems to help; I have received some favorable responses already. It is a good thing.) It needs fuller fleshing-out if I am going to post it to my more professional website, though, and I mean to put it there. It will help me to have it freely available, so that others can look at it as they research me. There are other ways it will help, as well, and possibly a number I cannot foresee. My studies are the past, not the future, after all.
In addition, there are a few projects I need to work on. One of them is the Robin Hobb annotated bibliography I maintain; I have a piece to read and summarize for it. I think I need to do a short explicatory piece to inform one of the choices I made regarding it, as well. I know I need to attend to my contributions to another annotated bibliography, but I recall that not taking long last year, so I am not as worried about it; it needs doing, and it will be done. I know, too, that a paper idea--one of many--I have had rolling about in my head for a while could use some attention. It is not leaving me; it is not subsiding in my mind. It would be well if I could at least get started on enacting it. I do not think I will be able to get it done in a day, not with the other things that need doing, but I can get started on it, and that will help.
I need all the help I can get.
Work continues. I was able to post a short piece to the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, which is good, and I am reading the current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; there is, perhaps, another such piece waiting for me in its pages. I also continue to compile teaching materials, notably a revision to my teaching philosophy. I have a brief version already in place, and I have been using it to inform job applications I have been sending out. (It seems to help; I have received some favorable responses already. It is a good thing.) It needs fuller fleshing-out if I am going to post it to my more professional website, though, and I mean to put it there. It will help me to have it freely available, so that others can look at it as they research me. There are other ways it will help, as well, and possibly a number I cannot foresee. My studies are the past, not the future, after all.
In addition, there are a few projects I need to work on. One of them is the Robin Hobb annotated bibliography I maintain; I have a piece to read and summarize for it. I think I need to do a short explicatory piece to inform one of the choices I made regarding it, as well. I know I need to attend to my contributions to another annotated bibliography, but I recall that not taking long last year, so I am not as worried about it; it needs doing, and it will be done. I know, too, that a paper idea--one of many--I have had rolling about in my head for a while could use some attention. It is not leaving me; it is not subsiding in my mind. It would be well if I could at least get started on enacting it. I do not think I will be able to get it done in a day, not with the other things that need doing, but I can get started on it, and that will help.
I need all the help I can get.
Friday, November 13, 2015
20151113.0624
Work continues, as ever it must. I am still working on grading, as should be no surprise; the end of the semester is coming, which means assignments are coming due and coming in, and each of them must be assessed. The process thereof is often unfortunately slow; reasons for the dragging on vary from simple fatigue to undesirability of the activity itself to attending to needs of family (for Ms. 8 still has her cold, and so she still needs the attention to get over it, which includes much snuggling on the dad-lap; it is evidently warm and cozy). It is in progress, though, which is to the good, and I did get several things done yesterday. Some job applications went out, which helps, and I did update the Fedwren Project a bit. (I also have interlibrary loan requests out for more materials to add to the work.) How much more I can get done today, I am unsure, but I will be working on things to try to push forward; there is still much, much to do. (I did not get the Tales after Tolkien Society piece done--or even well begun--and there remains the freelance writing to do.)
As the work continues, it does so amid increasingly cool weather. Temperatures around Sherwood Cottage continue to demonstrate that it is, in fact, autumn; there has been frost on windows, although it has not frozen here yet, and the highs do not reach "regular" room temperature. (The kind of normative assumptions that go into asserting what temperature a regular room ought to be had not occurred to me until just now, but there is a certain set of assumptions about comfort and propriety that seem to inform "room temperature," isn't there? Why 72 degrees Fahrenheit? Do I and others find it comfortable because it is or because we have been taught that it is? And for those who think it can only be the former: How much time do you spend naked, despite your natural state being in the nude? Unless your mother had a clothing store inside her uterus--which would make for a number of entirely impolitic jokes...) It is good weather for working; it does not distract so much with promises of outdoor splendor, particularly for such an indoorsman as I am.
The Mrs. and I have yet to turn on the furnace for the season, although we are using electric space heaters in our room and in Ms. 8's. We have yet to seal the windows (as much as the cats and Ms. 8's questing hands allow); the afternoons are cool, but opening the house to them is still worth doing. There will be months in which we cannot do such a thing, when we cannot freshen the air inside Sherwood Cottage, and so we are doing what we can to do so while we have it to do. That, too, is good for working, and since there is still so much of it to do, any aid in the doing suggests itself as welcome.
As the work continues, it does so amid increasingly cool weather. Temperatures around Sherwood Cottage continue to demonstrate that it is, in fact, autumn; there has been frost on windows, although it has not frozen here yet, and the highs do not reach "regular" room temperature. (The kind of normative assumptions that go into asserting what temperature a regular room ought to be had not occurred to me until just now, but there is a certain set of assumptions about comfort and propriety that seem to inform "room temperature," isn't there? Why 72 degrees Fahrenheit? Do I and others find it comfortable because it is or because we have been taught that it is? And for those who think it can only be the former: How much time do you spend naked, despite your natural state being in the nude? Unless your mother had a clothing store inside her uterus--which would make for a number of entirely impolitic jokes...) It is good weather for working; it does not distract so much with promises of outdoor splendor, particularly for such an indoorsman as I am.
The Mrs. and I have yet to turn on the furnace for the season, although we are using electric space heaters in our room and in Ms. 8's. We have yet to seal the windows (as much as the cats and Ms. 8's questing hands allow); the afternoons are cool, but opening the house to them is still worth doing. There will be months in which we cannot do such a thing, when we cannot freshen the air inside Sherwood Cottage, and so we are doing what we can to do so while we have it to do. That, too, is good for working, and since there is still so much of it to do, any aid in the doing suggests itself as welcome.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
20151112.0619
I noted yesterday that the weather around Sherwood Cottage was changing. The change appears to have gone through, with cooler air blowing in along the high winds yesterday; it is in the 30s Fahrenheit now (low to mid single digits for my Celsius friends) and promises only to get to the upper 50s or lower 60s. I am not aware that precipitation is forecast, but that means relatively little; that I do not know does not mean it is not there (maugre some old pronouncements of friends of mine--and, yes, I do have and have had friends). I am aware, however, that the winds yesterday knocked some parts out of trees on the Sherwood Cottage lot; I had to drag a sizeable chunk back behind the garage yesterday when I got home. I hope there has been no damage to the roof; the owner is not likely to be happy at another roof replacement.
Work continues, of course. There is grading to do again; I had my students work through one of my riddle exercises yet again (not this one), and so I have to assess the work they did on it. There is another exercise that I have allowed to languish and need to redeem from its sojourn amid my papers, as well. Too, I stumbled across a piece to treat in my Fedwren Project, an annotated bibliography I am compiling for reasons I explain on the relevant page (here); I ought to attend to it. Further, I have a budding idea for a bit of writing to do to contribute to the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, here; others' contributions remain welcome. And freelance work and job applications both continue to await me. So I am able to remain as busy as I could ever want to be for as long as I could ever want to be. There is somehow comfort in that.
Amid this, Ms. 8 continues to suffer the effects of her cold. It is trying to move into her chest yet; the Mrs. and I are working to hinder it, keeping our daughter hydrated and comfortable as much as we can. The girl seemed to be in a good mood yesterday and last night, if annoyed and distracted by fits of coughing. (If only the glazed donut impression annoyed her so much.) She is beginning to be more willful, however, which does not always work as well as she might hope; neither of her parents are as tractable as she might like them to be. Her father, for example, resents her attempts to eat his shoes (true story) or wrap herself around his feet while he is at his desk. She will grow out of such behaviors, I am sure. I can hope she will do so soon--although I hope for her to get over the cold sooner than that.
As I have noted, there is much for me to do. I suppose I ought to be about it; I suppose I shall have more to say tomorrow.
Work continues, of course. There is grading to do again; I had my students work through one of my riddle exercises yet again (not this one), and so I have to assess the work they did on it. There is another exercise that I have allowed to languish and need to redeem from its sojourn amid my papers, as well. Too, I stumbled across a piece to treat in my Fedwren Project, an annotated bibliography I am compiling for reasons I explain on the relevant page (here); I ought to attend to it. Further, I have a budding idea for a bit of writing to do to contribute to the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, here; others' contributions remain welcome. And freelance work and job applications both continue to await me. So I am able to remain as busy as I could ever want to be for as long as I could ever want to be. There is somehow comfort in that.
Amid this, Ms. 8 continues to suffer the effects of her cold. It is trying to move into her chest yet; the Mrs. and I are working to hinder it, keeping our daughter hydrated and comfortable as much as we can. The girl seemed to be in a good mood yesterday and last night, if annoyed and distracted by fits of coughing. (If only the glazed donut impression annoyed her so much.) She is beginning to be more willful, however, which does not always work as well as she might hope; neither of her parents are as tractable as she might like them to be. Her father, for example, resents her attempts to eat his shoes (true story) or wrap herself around his feet while he is at his desk. She will grow out of such behaviors, I am sure. I can hope she will do so soon--although I hope for her to get over the cold sooner than that.
As I have noted, there is much for me to do. I suppose I ought to be about it; I suppose I shall have more to say tomorrow.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
20150819.0548
Today, I am following up on something I did just over a year ago, for yesterday, I read Robin Hobb's most recent novel, Fool's Quest (ISBN 978-0-553-39292-0, US$28 in hardcover). I did so a week after its release, admittedly, so others will have already written and published reviews, but that does not mean I will not add my own, noting that the book is the second in the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy and so a furtherance of the narrative arc begun in 1996 with Assassin's Apprentice. In the text, Fitz experiences the consequences of his failures, not only of the guise of Holder Tom Badgerlock, but also of his older failures from earlier series (the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies); his daughter, Bee, has been taken, and he is not able to recover her, although he does retrieve others who had been assigned to his care. Oddly, however, his secret identity is revealed and he is exalted to the full royal dignity that had long been denied him due to his bastard birth--the "Fitz" with which his name begins is an accurate descriptor--and so removed from his earlier quiet work as a royal assassin. It does not remove him, however, from his desire for vengeance upon those who have wronged him and his, and the book concludes with Fitz en route to those who sent ruin upon him--and with his daughter, alive despite the beliefs and efforts of many, fleeing in an uncertain direction.
I have long expressed my appreciation for Hobb's work, both directly and tacitly in the form of several papers and my master's thesis focusing on her corpus. I will doubtlessly do so again. That does not mean there are not places where I find fault with the novel. The revelation of FitzChivalry Farseer as still alive (despite prevailing belief that he is decades dead) seems out of place, and while it is pushed through by a character whose mental deterioration becomes clear later in the text, it still reads as somehow inauthentic and sudden, out of place with the rest of the narrative. Consequences of that revelation seem somehow subdued; they occur, certainly, but not with the vigor that would be expected (and that the subject of the revelation, to his credit and his author's, does expect).
Even so, I find much to laud in the text. As ever, Fitz's narrative voice is strong and reads well. Bee's narrative voice, which emerges at points in the text, is also handled well, and is far more distinct from Fitz's than is the narrative voice of the Soldier Son trilogy. The welcome introduction of chapters with "outside" materials, present in earlier volumes of the work, continues, helping to orient the reader in broader understanding of the milieu. And the work does explore some of the implications of its milieu's features, as fantasy and science fiction do not do often enough. The growth and spread of dragons has consequences, and those consequences are made far more visible in Fool's Quest than in many other works. Too, the presence of an organized, generational group of prophets has terrible overtones, and those are explored, at least to some degree, in the novel. The line of reasoning Hobb explicates through The Fool is one that makes sense, corresponding with likely actions in the readers' world if there were to be such a thing as Clerres in it, making the impending confrontation in the third volume of the work--still yet to come--all the more ominous. Hopefully, Hobb will continue her practice of relatively rapid writing, not leaving her readers in the situation of Martin's; the third volume of Fitz and the Fool promises to be quite the read.
I have long expressed my appreciation for Hobb's work, both directly and tacitly in the form of several papers and my master's thesis focusing on her corpus. I will doubtlessly do so again. That does not mean there are not places where I find fault with the novel. The revelation of FitzChivalry Farseer as still alive (despite prevailing belief that he is decades dead) seems out of place, and while it is pushed through by a character whose mental deterioration becomes clear later in the text, it still reads as somehow inauthentic and sudden, out of place with the rest of the narrative. Consequences of that revelation seem somehow subdued; they occur, certainly, but not with the vigor that would be expected (and that the subject of the revelation, to his credit and his author's, does expect).
Even so, I find much to laud in the text. As ever, Fitz's narrative voice is strong and reads well. Bee's narrative voice, which emerges at points in the text, is also handled well, and is far more distinct from Fitz's than is the narrative voice of the Soldier Son trilogy. The welcome introduction of chapters with "outside" materials, present in earlier volumes of the work, continues, helping to orient the reader in broader understanding of the milieu. And the work does explore some of the implications of its milieu's features, as fantasy and science fiction do not do often enough. The growth and spread of dragons has consequences, and those consequences are made far more visible in Fool's Quest than in many other works. Too, the presence of an organized, generational group of prophets has terrible overtones, and those are explored, at least to some degree, in the novel. The line of reasoning Hobb explicates through The Fool is one that makes sense, corresponding with likely actions in the readers' world if there were to be such a thing as Clerres in it, making the impending confrontation in the third volume of the work--still yet to come--all the more ominous. Hopefully, Hobb will continue her practice of relatively rapid writing, not leaving her readers in the situation of Martin's; the third volume of Fitz and the Fool promises to be quite the read.
Monday, August 17, 2015
20150817.0630
I did a bit better today than I did yesterday with rising early, although not so well as I should have liked. I was out of bed at five this morning, which is good in that it afforded me a half-hour this morning I'd not otherwise have had. I had set my alarm for half past four, however, and I fought it with my snooze button this morning, so I did not meet my intended goal. Such is life.
Today, I begin teaching again. I have four sections of first-semester composition, the first of which begins in a scant two hours, and I am looking forward to having but one class prep to handle. I am less looking forward to the grading that will need doing throughout the term, though. The composition program requires four papers in multiple drafts reviewed by the instructor. I guess I am meant to earn my full-time status once again; I suppose I ought to be assiduous about tracking the time spent on the classroom work I do. Whether or not I would report that here or on the more "professional" site I maintain in support of my teaching and other work is unclear to me; perhaps I ought only to keep a time-sheet for my own purposes.
I was able to complete the freelance piece yesterday, which clears me to attend to other things today. Some of those things will be related to my teaching, of course; once the semester starts, there is always such work to do. I do have a job application on my desk that ought to go out today, so I will take care of that, certainly. Too, I am looking forward to reading the new Robin Hobb novel, which still sits in its shipping box on my desk, waiting for my attention. It has been a year since I read such a work, and I am eager to resume my long engagement with Hobb's corpus. Too, I feel as if I can get a fair bit of writing out of the work, not only in a blog post like last year's review, but also in my academic work. My master's thesis treated Hobb, after all, and I am not averse to revisiting the project, whether as a series of articles or as a shorter monograph. I certainly need the publication credits.
It is not only thence that I am poised to take them. I have, for instance, an accepted proposal waiting for my attention, and while I know the kinds of things I want to write in developing the paper from it (the piece is already structured; anticipatory abstracts are useful), I need to attend to actually writing the work. (Whether that happens before or after reading some other things, I am not yet sure.) I also maintain a list of ideas to treat, projects to complete, on my desktop. Some of them are recurring tasks, such as writing in this webspace. Others are long-term projects on which I work but slowly (oh, so slowly). Yet others are shorter papers, things to do as conference work or as short articles for minor publication. Each demands attention; somehow, I will ensure that each receives it, although it may take me a long time to do.
Today, I begin teaching again. I have four sections of first-semester composition, the first of which begins in a scant two hours, and I am looking forward to having but one class prep to handle. I am less looking forward to the grading that will need doing throughout the term, though. The composition program requires four papers in multiple drafts reviewed by the instructor. I guess I am meant to earn my full-time status once again; I suppose I ought to be assiduous about tracking the time spent on the classroom work I do. Whether or not I would report that here or on the more "professional" site I maintain in support of my teaching and other work is unclear to me; perhaps I ought only to keep a time-sheet for my own purposes.
I was able to complete the freelance piece yesterday, which clears me to attend to other things today. Some of those things will be related to my teaching, of course; once the semester starts, there is always such work to do. I do have a job application on my desk that ought to go out today, so I will take care of that, certainly. Too, I am looking forward to reading the new Robin Hobb novel, which still sits in its shipping box on my desk, waiting for my attention. It has been a year since I read such a work, and I am eager to resume my long engagement with Hobb's corpus. Too, I feel as if I can get a fair bit of writing out of the work, not only in a blog post like last year's review, but also in my academic work. My master's thesis treated Hobb, after all, and I am not averse to revisiting the project, whether as a series of articles or as a shorter monograph. I certainly need the publication credits.
It is not only thence that I am poised to take them. I have, for instance, an accepted proposal waiting for my attention, and while I know the kinds of things I want to write in developing the paper from it (the piece is already structured; anticipatory abstracts are useful), I need to attend to actually writing the work. (Whether that happens before or after reading some other things, I am not yet sure.) I also maintain a list of ideas to treat, projects to complete, on my desktop. Some of them are recurring tasks, such as writing in this webspace. Others are long-term projects on which I work but slowly (oh, so slowly). Yet others are shorter papers, things to do as conference work or as short articles for minor publication. Each demands attention; somehow, I will ensure that each receives it, although it may take me a long time to do.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
20150813.0646
I have to report to the office today for a series of meetings and workshops. The new semester begins on Monday, and I will be in the classroom at half past eight to greet it; I am not the only one, and the need to get things coordinated and consolidated is breaking upon us who will help a new set of college students transition into the kind of coursework they can expect for the next few years. (I am aware that many will complain that it lacks the rigor it ought to have. I am also aware that many would not do well with the kinds of work and the workloads many of the students now face. It is not as if a summer job pays a year's college expenses in most cases, or as if many degrees do not require more coursework than the 120 credit-hours traditionally associated with the baccalaureate--plus prerequisites for those courses that are nonnegotiable but do not count towards the degree. Not at all.)
It is not the only task that faces me today. Yesterday evening, a freelance order came in; I suddenly know what I will be doing with the free time available to me. The book is already bought and the write-up begun. (I follow a standardized template I have developed; the client approves of it, if the repeated acceptance of my submissions based upon it and repeated assignment of orders to me are any indication. Filling in the first few blanks is done quickly, supported by a glance at the table of contents and the copyright page.) I had meant to start reading it, but fatigue set in before I could do so; today will suffice for the reading, I think. The write-up will go through tomorrow and into the weekend, but I had not had other plans in any concrete sense (although I had hoped to do some other reading, and there is other writing that needs my attention yet), so I am not terribly worried about the matter.
Yesterday evening, I also received a package for which I have been waiting for some time. The new Robin Hobb novel is out, and my copy of it reached me at last. It is still in the box, waiting for my attention; I have other things that I must do before I may read it in good conscience. Too, if I know myself, I will likely read the thing in a night, staying awake far later than I ought to do so, and writing a review and commentary on it the next day in this webspace. (I have done something similar a few times before: here, here, here, and here.) I look forward to doing it, as well as to plumbing the text and the greater narrative arc of which it is part for more information from which to conduct part of my part of The Work. For the fact of teaching does not diminish that I am still called as I am to scholarship and the development of new knowledge and understanding, even if it does combine with other paid work to complicate my ability to get such things done.
It is not the only task that faces me today. Yesterday evening, a freelance order came in; I suddenly know what I will be doing with the free time available to me. The book is already bought and the write-up begun. (I follow a standardized template I have developed; the client approves of it, if the repeated acceptance of my submissions based upon it and repeated assignment of orders to me are any indication. Filling in the first few blanks is done quickly, supported by a glance at the table of contents and the copyright page.) I had meant to start reading it, but fatigue set in before I could do so; today will suffice for the reading, I think. The write-up will go through tomorrow and into the weekend, but I had not had other plans in any concrete sense (although I had hoped to do some other reading, and there is other writing that needs my attention yet), so I am not terribly worried about the matter.
Yesterday evening, I also received a package for which I have been waiting for some time. The new Robin Hobb novel is out, and my copy of it reached me at last. It is still in the box, waiting for my attention; I have other things that I must do before I may read it in good conscience. Too, if I know myself, I will likely read the thing in a night, staying awake far later than I ought to do so, and writing a review and commentary on it the next day in this webspace. (I have done something similar a few times before: here, here, here, and here.) I look forward to doing it, as well as to plumbing the text and the greater narrative arc of which it is part for more information from which to conduct part of my part of The Work. For the fact of teaching does not diminish that I am still called as I am to scholarship and the development of new knowledge and understanding, even if it does combine with other paid work to complicate my ability to get such things done.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
20440817.0907
I recently received a copy of Robin Hobb's Fool's Assassin (ISBN 978-0-553-39242-5 and US$28.00 in hardcover), the first book of the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy and a continuation of the Realm of the Elderlings stories begun in 1996's Assassin's Apprentice. It traces later adventures of FitzChivalry Farseer as he lives for many years in the guise of Tom Badgerlock, Holder of Withywoods--a gentry position as a caretaker for a high-ranking noble's estate. In the course of the novel, he and his wife, Molly, experience a miraculous late birth and the unusual consequences of it, as well as the tragic return of an old friend from a faraway land. Compelling and accessible, the book shows that the trilogy it begins has great promise as a successor to the Farseer and Tawny Man Trilogies.
That said, there are some problems in the text. At several points, the actions taken by the eponymous protagonist seem out of line with his character, as demonstrated in the six books which narrate his earlier life. For example, his inability to maintain upkeep on Withywoods even before the unfortunate events there (that understandably distract him) seems at odds with his long life with Hap near Forge from the beginnings of the Tawny Man series. His inattention to certain other characters is also...odd for him. Too, there is the issue of Bee; she seems to be the product of particular bloodlines discussed in earlier Elderlings books. In itself, this is not a problem--but her full sister, Nettle, shows none of the traits of that descent despite having the same parentage. A Punnett square could demonstrate why this occurs, of course, but the descriptions of those bloodlines in the earlier texts seems to indicate that the confluence of them operates outside normal genetics.
Even so, Fool's Assassin is an engaging read. Hobb continues to use the first-person retrospective narration that typifies the novels dealing with FitzChivalry Farseer--although there is an interweaving of narration from another character that came as a bit of a shock initially. Hobb also continues to use the device of opening chapters with snippets from in-milieu documents, offering context for the narrative and extending the correspondence of her Tolkienian sub-creation to the readerly primary world. (The device extends at least as far back as Asmiov's opening the chapters of many of his Foundation novels with quotations from the Encyclopedia Galactica. Its deployment embeds Hobb thoroughly in the conventions of traditional fantasy and science fiction, making her departures from those generic norms more acceptable to readers accustomed to them.) The nuancing of distinctions among the gentry--although not as much among the nobility--of the Six Duchies is also helpful; one of the common features of mainstream fantasy literature is the relative non-distinction within broad social strata (noted here), and the inclusion of more detail in that line helps to make the milieu more authentic. Scholars will have much to say about the text, and more general readers will doubtlessly find it worth the time it takes to read; what more can be asked of a text?
That said, there are some problems in the text. At several points, the actions taken by the eponymous protagonist seem out of line with his character, as demonstrated in the six books which narrate his earlier life. For example, his inability to maintain upkeep on Withywoods even before the unfortunate events there (that understandably distract him) seems at odds with his long life with Hap near Forge from the beginnings of the Tawny Man series. His inattention to certain other characters is also...odd for him. Too, there is the issue of Bee; she seems to be the product of particular bloodlines discussed in earlier Elderlings books. In itself, this is not a problem--but her full sister, Nettle, shows none of the traits of that descent despite having the same parentage. A Punnett square could demonstrate why this occurs, of course, but the descriptions of those bloodlines in the earlier texts seems to indicate that the confluence of them operates outside normal genetics.
Even so, Fool's Assassin is an engaging read. Hobb continues to use the first-person retrospective narration that typifies the novels dealing with FitzChivalry Farseer--although there is an interweaving of narration from another character that came as a bit of a shock initially. Hobb also continues to use the device of opening chapters with snippets from in-milieu documents, offering context for the narrative and extending the correspondence of her Tolkienian sub-creation to the readerly primary world. (The device extends at least as far back as Asmiov's opening the chapters of many of his Foundation novels with quotations from the Encyclopedia Galactica. Its deployment embeds Hobb thoroughly in the conventions of traditional fantasy and science fiction, making her departures from those generic norms more acceptable to readers accustomed to them.) The nuancing of distinctions among the gentry--although not as much among the nobility--of the Six Duchies is also helpful; one of the common features of mainstream fantasy literature is the relative non-distinction within broad social strata (noted here), and the inclusion of more detail in that line helps to make the milieu more authentic. Scholars will have much to say about the text, and more general readers will doubtlessly find it worth the time it takes to read; what more can be asked of a text?
Friday, August 1, 2014
20140801.0643
I have been awake for about an hour
No alarm rang to roust me
A different call, oddly situated to be from a mother
Shook me from slumber
And once I was up
I decided to stay that way
Whether it will do me any good to be awake this morning
I do not know
Yesterday would have been a good day to do it
Yesterday had tasks for me to face
And I faced them
But I am not so certain of today
I never am
I think none of us really are
We cannot be
Yesterday happened
And even in cyclical time it has passed
The wheel turned on
While today has yet to happen
And the rocks the wheel will hit are not yet seen
Fools in writing sometimes think they see
But I am not such a person
For while I may be a fool
I am not The Fool
And I write more than I am written
So far as I know
I will have to have a talk with my author
No alarm rang to roust me
A different call, oddly situated to be from a mother
Shook me from slumber
And once I was up
I decided to stay that way
Whether it will do me any good to be awake this morning
I do not know
Yesterday would have been a good day to do it
Yesterday had tasks for me to face
And I faced them
But I am not so certain of today
I never am
I think none of us really are
We cannot be
Yesterday happened
And even in cyclical time it has passed
The wheel turned on
While today has yet to happen
And the rocks the wheel will hit are not yet seen
Fools in writing sometimes think they see
But I am not such a person
For while I may be a fool
I am not The Fool
And I write more than I am written
So far as I know
I will have to have a talk with my author
Monday, July 28, 2014
20140728.0728
With my long engagement in a number of things that are definitively nerdy--role-playing games, for example, or fantasy authors such as Tolkien and Hobb, and even the very fact that I am a scholar in the academic humanities--it may be something of a surprise that I am not a great attender of conventions. I have never gone to either the San Diego Comic Con or the New York Comic Con, and only twice (and as an undergraduate) did I go to Gen Con in Indianapolis; I have not been to either of the other two. I do not even go to more local cons, accepting as valid the reasons of cost and time that would preclude going to the major conventions. Yet it seems like the kind of thing that a nerd ought to do, and to do often.
Again, though, cost is an issue. Time is also an issue. And I do something not unlike convention-going in my conference attendance. Both are gatherings of like-minded people who come together to share insights and attempt to convince others of their own rightness, and they center around intellectual and artistic exercises that the main thrust of US popular culture only tangentially addresses. Yes, comic book movies are big business. The books themselves are not as much. Nor yet are various cartoons and games, or cosplay taken from the lot. Yes, colleges and universities are big business (which is its own problem). The classroom itself is not as much. Nor yet are various subjects and research apparatus, or the ideas taken from the lot. I admit that the dress-up play at academic conferences is not as pervasive as cosplay at conventions, but it does happen, and it is sometimes quite...ornate. It is also more likely to end up in actual blows traded; judicial duel reenactments happen. And it is the case that conferences will talk about comic books and movies, television shows and games, popular fiction and fan culture; my own work has done so on more than one occasion, and I am far from alone in giving such talks. Even though I do not attend conventions, then, I still get experiences much like them. (I suppose it once again links nerdiness to scholarship. Somehow, it is not a surprise.)
I do not disdain conventions, certainly. I recall my attendance at Gen Con 2013 and Gen Con 2014 with fondness; I was in good company and did a number of nifty things with them and with other people entirely. But I have to wonder if the convention experience is not for me a thing done in youth, to which I may not or cannot return as a full adult with responsibilities that exceed doing well in my own classes. I have to wonder even how much conference work I can continue to do, given the costs involved and the obligations I have at home. Some must be done, of course, and I am happy to do it. But how much more, and how much longer, I am not at all certain.
Again, though, cost is an issue. Time is also an issue. And I do something not unlike convention-going in my conference attendance. Both are gatherings of like-minded people who come together to share insights and attempt to convince others of their own rightness, and they center around intellectual and artistic exercises that the main thrust of US popular culture only tangentially addresses. Yes, comic book movies are big business. The books themselves are not as much. Nor yet are various cartoons and games, or cosplay taken from the lot. Yes, colleges and universities are big business (which is its own problem). The classroom itself is not as much. Nor yet are various subjects and research apparatus, or the ideas taken from the lot. I admit that the dress-up play at academic conferences is not as pervasive as cosplay at conventions, but it does happen, and it is sometimes quite...ornate. It is also more likely to end up in actual blows traded; judicial duel reenactments happen. And it is the case that conferences will talk about comic books and movies, television shows and games, popular fiction and fan culture; my own work has done so on more than one occasion, and I am far from alone in giving such talks. Even though I do not attend conventions, then, I still get experiences much like them. (I suppose it once again links nerdiness to scholarship. Somehow, it is not a surprise.)
I do not disdain conventions, certainly. I recall my attendance at Gen Con 2013 and Gen Con 2014 with fondness; I was in good company and did a number of nifty things with them and with other people entirely. But I have to wonder if the convention experience is not for me a thing done in youth, to which I may not or cannot return as a full adult with responsibilities that exceed doing well in my own classes. I have to wonder even how much conference work I can continue to do, given the costs involved and the obligations I have at home. Some must be done, of course, and I am happy to do it. But how much more, and how much longer, I am not at all certain.
Monday, February 3, 2014
20140203.0623
(I had intended to write about something else entirely, but I received some fine news this morning, and so I am going to trumpet it instead.)
Despite its seeming inability to spell, the Tales after Tolkien Society is a major concern of mine. As I am one of the people whose papers gave rise to it, I think I may safely consider myself something of a charter member of it. Certainly, when I go to this year's International Congress on Medieval Studies, I will be attending the Society's business meeting, and I have ideas for an agenda to push.
It is because of my association with the Society and my own predilections that, when I saw this CFP from Society founder Helen Young, I responded to it with glee. And I am glad that I did; I received an email this morning saying that my submission has been accepted. I would seem to have a book chapter on the way, and I am thrilled about it!
Before the commercial questions come up: I do not know what kind of compensation I will receive for my contribution to the volume other than the line on my CV--although having the publication credit demonstrably contributes to my ability to get jobs in academia. I may get a little bit of money for the work. I may get one or two copies of the text for my own. But I am not sure.
I suppose that some comment may be made regarding the exploitation of the scholarly. We labor in our cells in the ivory tower despite the uncomfortable chairs, toiling away at The Work and the teaching with which we justify our existence to the outside world. (And teaching is work for which many of us are not paid as we ought to be, with many teaching for less than $3,000 for a fifteen-week course--with no benefits and before taxes, I might add. That comes out to $200/week/course, with most courses meeting for three hours weekly, so, yes, $66/hour of contact time. But no instructor I know or have known, from the lowliest adjunct to the most venerable professors emeriti, is only at work during the nine hours per course; I spent at least thrice that on one of my freshman classes last week once lesson planning and grading are taken into account, and I did much the same while I was an adjunct.) When at last we have something to show for the labor, a finely written piece of criticism that advances human knowledge and understanding, we more or less give it away, satisfied in large part to have helped people to know more (despite ourselves knowing that few will read what we write) and to get the CV line in the hope of getting a job / grant funding / etc.
Despite that, though, I remain happy to be getting my work back into the scholarly public. Maybe I will be lucky enough to hear myself cited at a conference again; it is quite a nice feeling.
Despite its seeming inability to spell, the Tales after Tolkien Society is a major concern of mine. As I am one of the people whose papers gave rise to it, I think I may safely consider myself something of a charter member of it. Certainly, when I go to this year's International Congress on Medieval Studies, I will be attending the Society's business meeting, and I have ideas for an agenda to push.
It is because of my association with the Society and my own predilections that, when I saw this CFP from Society founder Helen Young, I responded to it with glee. And I am glad that I did; I received an email this morning saying that my submission has been accepted. I would seem to have a book chapter on the way, and I am thrilled about it!
Before the commercial questions come up: I do not know what kind of compensation I will receive for my contribution to the volume other than the line on my CV--although having the publication credit demonstrably contributes to my ability to get jobs in academia. I may get a little bit of money for the work. I may get one or two copies of the text for my own. But I am not sure.
I suppose that some comment may be made regarding the exploitation of the scholarly. We labor in our cells in the ivory tower despite the uncomfortable chairs, toiling away at The Work and the teaching with which we justify our existence to the outside world. (And teaching is work for which many of us are not paid as we ought to be, with many teaching for less than $3,000 for a fifteen-week course--with no benefits and before taxes, I might add. That comes out to $200/week/course, with most courses meeting for three hours weekly, so, yes, $66/hour of contact time. But no instructor I know or have known, from the lowliest adjunct to the most venerable professors emeriti, is only at work during the nine hours per course; I spent at least thrice that on one of my freshman classes last week once lesson planning and grading are taken into account, and I did much the same while I was an adjunct.) When at last we have something to show for the labor, a finely written piece of criticism that advances human knowledge and understanding, we more or less give it away, satisfied in large part to have helped people to know more (despite ourselves knowing that few will read what we write) and to get the CV line in the hope of getting a job / grant funding / etc.
Despite that, though, I remain happy to be getting my work back into the scholarly public. Maybe I will be lucky enough to hear myself cited at a conference again; it is quite a nice feeling.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
20131224.0724
I am rereading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings...again. I have lost track of how many times I have read the piece; in my adolescence, when I first encountered it, I read the text repeatedly, and in my adulthood, I have read it annually or more often. Tolkien's masterwork has informed my writing; my master's thesis works with his commentaries, and I offer conference papers that invoke him at greater and lesser length. (I know the links are to a website that I am not diligent in maintaining. I am working to improve.) So it is...accurate to say that I view Tolkien's writing as important.
That I do will mark me in the eyes of some as being...flighty. I carry with me the nagging suspicion that I am viewed by those who prize the older iterations of my profession of professing as something of a scholarly dilettante, wasting my time on trifles instead of working with the mighty works of the traditional English-language canon (and I suppose it means that I worry about that dilettantism myself). And perhaps it is the case that I look largely at the relatively recent works of Tolkien and of his successors--notably Robin Hobb--because I cannot handle the "serious" pieces of writing. Or, more likely, I look at writing because I cannot handle the "real" world of business, politics, or the STEM fields; I delve into letters not because I am stupid--which I like to think is clearly not the case--but because I am weak (again, the nagging suspicion of how I am viewed and the similarly nagging self-doubt).
My self-doubt aside, the view that the writing of the past is of more value than that of the present is wrong. I am aware that there is a lot of insipid pap available; I am also aware that we have only a small part of the writing that has been done, and even among that small portion, there is a fair bit that is simply bad. It does not get carried forward as much as the "great" works, admittedly, but the fact that it is there to be seen demonstrates that the writers of the past were of as varied quality as the writers of the present. (Tim William Machan has somewhat to say about it.) We simply see more of the variety now because we live now; had we lived then (and been able to read), we would have seen much the same proportion--and the proportion itself is an issue. There is much more to read now than before, even with the Internet; is not most online content written even now? That does mean there is more crap through which to sift, but it also means that there are more treasures to be found. Jewels in raw form may need cutting and polishing, I admit, but that does not mean they are not worth value. And some have already been burnished to a shine through much handling.
I will go add another gleam to the Middle-earth corpus.
That I do will mark me in the eyes of some as being...flighty. I carry with me the nagging suspicion that I am viewed by those who prize the older iterations of my profession of professing as something of a scholarly dilettante, wasting my time on trifles instead of working with the mighty works of the traditional English-language canon (and I suppose it means that I worry about that dilettantism myself). And perhaps it is the case that I look largely at the relatively recent works of Tolkien and of his successors--notably Robin Hobb--because I cannot handle the "serious" pieces of writing. Or, more likely, I look at writing because I cannot handle the "real" world of business, politics, or the STEM fields; I delve into letters not because I am stupid--which I like to think is clearly not the case--but because I am weak (again, the nagging suspicion of how I am viewed and the similarly nagging self-doubt).
My self-doubt aside, the view that the writing of the past is of more value than that of the present is wrong. I am aware that there is a lot of insipid pap available; I am also aware that we have only a small part of the writing that has been done, and even among that small portion, there is a fair bit that is simply bad. It does not get carried forward as much as the "great" works, admittedly, but the fact that it is there to be seen demonstrates that the writers of the past were of as varied quality as the writers of the present. (Tim William Machan has somewhat to say about it.) We simply see more of the variety now because we live now; had we lived then (and been able to read), we would have seen much the same proportion--and the proportion itself is an issue. There is much more to read now than before, even with the Internet; is not most online content written even now? That does mean there is more crap through which to sift, but it also means that there are more treasures to be found. Jewels in raw form may need cutting and polishing, I admit, but that does not mean they are not worth value. And some have already been burnished to a shine through much handling.
I will go add another gleam to the Middle-earth corpus.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
20130731.0830
Those who have read what I have written know that I discuss my work as a college-level English teacher--a work that I am moving to Oklahoma to be able to continue with some sense of security. I assign my students a fair amount of writing, even though I know that many of them are entirely unaccustomed to doing such work. I also try to model the kind of behavior I want to see from my students, and so I end up doing the same assignments I give them. When I assign them a short essay--say, a summary of an article from the New York Times--I do so from having written a number of them and doing yet more at odd intervals, and the same is true if I ask for a short contrastive essay, or yet other kinds of papers.
One that I assign to my first-year composition classes and my literature classes is a conference-length paper, one intended for a fifteen- to twenty-minute presentation--although, given the relative newness of the experience to my students and the demands on my own time, I tend to work at the shorter end of what is acceptable for such a thing. Since I am teaching one section of first-year composition and one section of literature this term, I have drafted two such papers (and recently!); the second, a piece on Robin Hobb's Words like Coins, is of particular note for me, offering something of a new experience and what might be a small foray into digital humanities work, broadly defined.
It is so because I have Words like Coins only in e-book format, and working with it in that format was my first experience with inserting marginalia for my own use into an electronic document. (I tend to grade papers in digital form, but there is a marked difference between writing comments for students who too often do not read them and leaving notes for myself to follow later as I draft papers.) The process is a bit unwieldy for me, given the number of clicks necessary for the input method to work, and I am still not able to scan through an electronic document as quickly as a print one to find individual notes and comments. Still, the notes are typed rather than scrawled out in my less-than-elegant pen-hand, and they mark out the text to which they refer more clearly than my analog scribblings, so there is something worth pursuing in the process.
I have long since decided that the e-reader my lovely wife bought for me a few years back would be the venue through which I will read most of my leisure reading (I maintain a subscription to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as I have since 1999, and still receive it and some other magazines in print). My library remains (if a bit leaner due to packing for the move), and it still receives additions, but those are typically critical materials and gift/display copies; the throwaway books with which I occupy myself on planes and trains are being moved to the e-reader. I do a fair it of work with such materials, however, and it is good to know that I can do so in the digital as well as in the print.
One that I assign to my first-year composition classes and my literature classes is a conference-length paper, one intended for a fifteen- to twenty-minute presentation--although, given the relative newness of the experience to my students and the demands on my own time, I tend to work at the shorter end of what is acceptable for such a thing. Since I am teaching one section of first-year composition and one section of literature this term, I have drafted two such papers (and recently!); the second, a piece on Robin Hobb's Words like Coins, is of particular note for me, offering something of a new experience and what might be a small foray into digital humanities work, broadly defined.
It is so because I have Words like Coins only in e-book format, and working with it in that format was my first experience with inserting marginalia for my own use into an electronic document. (I tend to grade papers in digital form, but there is a marked difference between writing comments for students who too often do not read them and leaving notes for myself to follow later as I draft papers.) The process is a bit unwieldy for me, given the number of clicks necessary for the input method to work, and I am still not able to scan through an electronic document as quickly as a print one to find individual notes and comments. Still, the notes are typed rather than scrawled out in my less-than-elegant pen-hand, and they mark out the text to which they refer more clearly than my analog scribblings, so there is something worth pursuing in the process.
I have long since decided that the e-reader my lovely wife bought for me a few years back would be the venue through which I will read most of my leisure reading (I maintain a subscription to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as I have since 1999, and still receive it and some other magazines in print). My library remains (if a bit leaner due to packing for the move), and it still receives additions, but those are typically critical materials and gift/display copies; the throwaway books with which I occupy myself on planes and trains are being moved to the e-reader. I do a fair it of work with such materials, however, and it is good to know that I can do so in the digital as well as in the print.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
20130602.0957
This morning, I read Robin Hobb's The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince. The text expands upon a narrative thread referenced (among others) in one of the commentaries that Hobb uses to introduce chapters in her Six Duchies novels--in this case, an excerpt from the "Legend of the Piebald Prince" (Royal 641-42). In doing so, The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince does seem to engage in a bit of a temporal paradox, but even so, it offers an entertaining and well written story that offers a useful glimpse of the implied history of the Six Duchies.
That the tale suggests its narrator is somehow aware of future events is noted fairly early in the novella. The narrator remarks on the name of a character: "His name was Lostler. Now some will say that his name was Sly, and some will even call him Sly o' the Wit when they sing of him. I never heard him called by such a name" (38-39). The name is the same by which the character is referenced in the "Legend," and while it is true that the perceptions of names change over time (as Hobb addresses elsewhere in her Six Duchies corpus), the change seems a bit too rapid to be described as taking place within the frame of the novella. The narrator reports events she witnessed, marking the shift as taking place within living memory--and the change from "Lostler" to "Sly" is a bit much for one or two generations of speakers to make. It suggests, rather, a bit of narrative slippage, and one consonant with the awareness of future time the Willful narrator exhibits from the beginning of the text (9).
Even so, Hobb writes an excellent story, one well worth the short time taken to read it (my copy offers less than 175 pages of text, and that in a large and easily-read print). The narrative voice is again in the first-person retrospective that typifies much of Hobb's corpus, a humanizing gesture that does much to foster willing suspension of disbelief. The suspension is further eased by the ample establishment of the narrator's particular authority to discuss the matter; the repeated insistence on providing a true and faithful account is one likely to ring true for early twenty-first century readers who are themselves concerned with offering what may be taken as authoritative assertions of personal and historical authenticity.
In addition, Hobb continues to work in The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince to present whole, detailed characters, rather than the flat archetypes too frequently present in fantasy literature. Each of the prime actors in the text is possessed of sensible motivations, qualities that are themselves virtuous, and all too human flaws that render those virtues far less at times. In brief, those in the text read as people, rather than as mere characters or caricatures; there is an evident sense of history and doings unseen in the narrative yet present and relevant somehow to the main story presented in the text. It is quite compelling.
Of particular note to me is that the text avoids a flaw I have unfortunately had to point out in some of Hobb's other work. Although the novella is rather short, it does not feel unduly rushed. The denouement is brief, yes, but its brevity makes sense, in terms both of form and of content. It is swift but not frenetic, which I appreciate greatly. And if it is the case that a particular plot point at the end of the book is fairly common, it is one that is foreshadowed within the text itself and in some of the comments in earlier volumes of the Six Duchies works, so that it feels and organic part of the text rather than something forced into it.
Also, Hobb again manages to address social issues in the work. Queer studies will have something to say about The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince no less than other works in the Six Duchies milieu, as will gender studies. Marxist criticism is likely to be particularly applicable to the text, as well. The question of what certain major threads of the Six Duchies milieu signify is also further complicated by the text, so that my own work with Hobb's corpus will find more to do--and I appreciate having tasks to which to turn my mind.
Works Cited
~Hobb, Robin. Royal Assassin. New York: Bantam, 1997. Print.
~---. The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince. Illus. Jon Foster. Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2013. Print.
That the tale suggests its narrator is somehow aware of future events is noted fairly early in the novella. The narrator remarks on the name of a character: "His name was Lostler. Now some will say that his name was Sly, and some will even call him Sly o' the Wit when they sing of him. I never heard him called by such a name" (38-39). The name is the same by which the character is referenced in the "Legend," and while it is true that the perceptions of names change over time (as Hobb addresses elsewhere in her Six Duchies corpus), the change seems a bit too rapid to be described as taking place within the frame of the novella. The narrator reports events she witnessed, marking the shift as taking place within living memory--and the change from "Lostler" to "Sly" is a bit much for one or two generations of speakers to make. It suggests, rather, a bit of narrative slippage, and one consonant with the awareness of future time the Willful narrator exhibits from the beginning of the text (9).
Even so, Hobb writes an excellent story, one well worth the short time taken to read it (my copy offers less than 175 pages of text, and that in a large and easily-read print). The narrative voice is again in the first-person retrospective that typifies much of Hobb's corpus, a humanizing gesture that does much to foster willing suspension of disbelief. The suspension is further eased by the ample establishment of the narrator's particular authority to discuss the matter; the repeated insistence on providing a true and faithful account is one likely to ring true for early twenty-first century readers who are themselves concerned with offering what may be taken as authoritative assertions of personal and historical authenticity.
In addition, Hobb continues to work in The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince to present whole, detailed characters, rather than the flat archetypes too frequently present in fantasy literature. Each of the prime actors in the text is possessed of sensible motivations, qualities that are themselves virtuous, and all too human flaws that render those virtues far less at times. In brief, those in the text read as people, rather than as mere characters or caricatures; there is an evident sense of history and doings unseen in the narrative yet present and relevant somehow to the main story presented in the text. It is quite compelling.
Of particular note to me is that the text avoids a flaw I have unfortunately had to point out in some of Hobb's other work. Although the novella is rather short, it does not feel unduly rushed. The denouement is brief, yes, but its brevity makes sense, in terms both of form and of content. It is swift but not frenetic, which I appreciate greatly. And if it is the case that a particular plot point at the end of the book is fairly common, it is one that is foreshadowed within the text itself and in some of the comments in earlier volumes of the Six Duchies works, so that it feels and organic part of the text rather than something forced into it.
Also, Hobb again manages to address social issues in the work. Queer studies will have something to say about The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince no less than other works in the Six Duchies milieu, as will gender studies. Marxist criticism is likely to be particularly applicable to the text, as well. The question of what certain major threads of the Six Duchies milieu signify is also further complicated by the text, so that my own work with Hobb's corpus will find more to do--and I appreciate having tasks to which to turn my mind.
Works Cited
~Hobb, Robin. Royal Assassin. New York: Bantam, 1997. Print.
~---. The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince. Illus. Jon Foster. Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2013. Print.
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