An Unfinished Symphony
2007-09-17, 16:16

R.I.P. Robert Jordan, the Wheel is broken. He succumbed to his illness yesterday afternoon.

Like a lot of people, I think, I developed a love/hate relationship with The Wheel of Time. I've more than once shared the opinion that the cast of characters went into the desert in... book four? book five? and never really came back. Many fell victim to 'the bleakness', much like the Aiel in the story; going into denial, becoming hardcore defenders, disappearing or just trudging through aimlessly toward the end, just to get to the end. To new readers, I say, Be wary of reading past the taking of the Stone of Tear. Think of it as a barrier against the bleakness.

Why did the storyline meander? If I had to venture a guess, I think it was because Jordan was trying to move away from the episodic format of: a) learn of threat; b) travel; c) collect companions; d) get darkest before the dawn; e) defeat the boss in Epic Battle; and f) find our there's more to the story, setting up the next book. Not every book can end with the Epic Battle, especially if one expects each to be bigger than the last. So instead, it became a serial, spanning multiple storylines over multiple books. It didn't work, at least as it dragged on (and it did feel as if it dragged). Aes Sedai squabble! Nynaeve tugs her braid! Elaine cries! Rand thinks he's crazy! Mat just wants to get laid! The Aeil like schadenfreude! We get it already! Nothing was ever left up to assumption based on precedent.

And yet, a number of characters from the story have embellished themselves into my personal mythos, as well as serving as prime examples of classic archetypes: Rand, the classic farmboy-becomes-king character, with a nice twist of possible insanity; Mat, the Han Solo-style unwilling swashbuckler general and overall walking monkey wrench; Perrin, the peasant lord who revives the 'old ways'; Lan, the bastard child of Batman and Aragorn; Moiraine, the mother figure with her sights on the greater good; Egwene, the embodiment of Feminism; Elaine, the Most Annoying Female Character Ever Written. There's too many to list.

I think that the Wheel of Time also managed, especially as it grew in parallel with the Internet, to garner a revival of mainstream interest in Fantasy literature. Just Google 'WoT" and see how many sites are dedicated at least in part to the series or one of its characters. Bulletin boards were (and probably still are) always busy deliberating over theories and characters and storylines. Lots of geeky fantasy readers came together in centralized areas and got even geekier (a fansite is clearly geekier than the sum of its geeks).

I also liked the things that Jordan was trying to say with this series. The Male/Female dichotomy is, I think, the main one. An ancient break in the balance between man and woman nearly destroys the world, and only a reunion of that balance of powers can fix it. A lot of people have said that Jordan was misogynistic in his writing, representing women (in the form of Aes Sedai) mainly as squabbling nits when left to their own devices. Personally, I think he treated men just as harshly, representing them (in the form of male channelers) as psychopathic loners, tyrants and killers. The point was, everyone was bad off while men and women treated each other as adversaries.

I am selfish, of course, in that I do hope the series will be finished in some form or other. The book was well worked-on and he, according to reports, made sure all the pertinent info was passed on to the right people in case of the worst happening. It would be nice to see his legacy come to some conclusion.

We went to Geauga Lake on Saturday, and it was much like it was last year, cool and sparsely populated. It was also Oktoberfest, so the people that were there were mainly concentrated in the foodstuffs and beerstuffs area. It all made no sense to me that there's be people who'd pay amusement park prices for an opportunity to pay inflated prices for food and beer, and barely ride the rides. No wonder people hate America. I should have such disposable income. As it was, the only reason we were there was because our generous neighbor had tickets to spare and gave them to us.

My daughter is such an adrenaline junkie. Her favorite kiddie ride was the teacups - you know, where the base spins and the cups you sit in spin too? She insisted on having us spin the cup at full tilt, while she just leaned her head back over the edge looking up, smiling. She'd stumble out of the ride, dizzy, saying, "I want to go another time, and then another time, and then another time!" If she'd had her way, she would have just stayed on it until she passed out or puked or both. She also liked the trucks, the kind that are attached to a rail line and go slow on their own. Although the last time we went around the well-worn track, right before we left, she looked back at me and said, leaning back into her seat, "You drive, daddy." She had a good time, to be sure. I realize now that I'm not looking forward to that transition time when she's too much of a 'big girl' to ride the kiddie rides, but still too small for the real rides. Maybe we'll just avoid the place until she hits the magic 48-inch mark. That could be a while.

-- End of Line --