James Frazer and 'The Name of the Wind': Rothfuss, Sympathetic Magic, and Donuts

Now that my poster job run has come to end, I’ve finally gotten a worry-free day off. Although I still have a week as a poster job ‘helper,’ it’s a position with little to no responsibility and stress, which leaves me with un-weighted shoulders. Since my poster-partner Ian has gone on to other things, I decided to spend the day here in the recently-renovated Red Roof Inn, Secaucus, doing one of my favorite things – laying in bed all day reading, in pajamas, greasy-haired and sandy-eyed. I had pizza delivered and got out of bed long enough to go to Dunkin’ Donuts.



My book of choice was Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind. It is a fantasy story about a young orphan who goes off to magic school in order to become a conflicted but brilliant young magician, pretty much in the vein of Harry Potter and Ged of EarthSea. The main character, young Kvothe, is a clever and gifted boy with a traumatic past, who has an innate ‘knack’ for learning anything and everything, and who turns out to be an extraordinarily powerful magic-user. He is also witty, swaggering and brash, but with the appropriate amount of humility, self-consciousness and insecurity thrown in at all the right moments. He loves one girl with all his heart and hates the requisite pair of enemies - a petty, troublesome and jealous human rival as well as a more world-endangering, all-powerful, malevolent foe. He is part FitzChivalry, part Locke Lamora and, yes, part Harry Potter. In other words, he is a fantasy hero that reader’s love to love, an addictive, engaging and indisputably perfect protagonist.

Young Kvothe is also a trouper, a musician/actor/storyteller. Rothfuss has created a character who breathes stories, who recognizes and contemplates structures and archetypes. He is familiar with plays, poems and songs, and when in a bind, can pull an Indiana-Jones-buying-tapestries-at-the-castle and fall right into the needed persona. Stories and myth are a constant part of Rothfuss’ world and there is even a mythical hero for bards, Illien, who composed the most famous and best epics ever to charm the ear.

The Name of the Wind is a story concerned with stories, even down to its very shape. Within the arc of the book, our main character recites his own history to a listening bard, and the telling of that tale is meant to take three days. The first book of the trilogy, The Name of the Wind, is mostly made up of the first day of that telling, while the second and third books of the trilogy (I assume?) will cover the subsequent two days. After all, the subtitle of the book is ‘The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day One.’ Rothfuss here alludes to the tradition of oral poetry, a favorite topic for classicists. Twentieth-century research has emphasized the story-telling tricks of bards who can recite enormous epics over multiple days. It has been suggested, for example, that Homer’s Iliad was thus performed, broken up into three days.

Another feature of the epic tradition is repetition, and thus Rothfuss’ book begins and ends with ‘roughly’ the same passages, similar, in a way, to Robert Jordan’s 'Wheel of Time' ("The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades into myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again."). But for Rothfuss, although his corresponding prologue and epilogue surround a sonorous tale rife with music, singing, and the telling of tales, his repeated passage is a meditation on the three kinds of silence.

It is not just to the oral tradition that Rothfuss looks, but also to the early masters of anthropology, most recognizably Sir James Frazer. Frazer’s theory of magic finds its echo in the laws of magic found in Rothfuss’ world. I consider this worthy of note because 1) I’m interested in ancient magic, 2) I’m interested in historiography and religious theory and 3) I will be closely examining Frazer’s compatriots, The Cambridge Ritualists, in my dissertation. One of Frazer’s most indelible and long-lasting ideas was that of Sympathetic Magic. In his Golden Bough, he says “If we analyze the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious Magic.”

Kvothe, in a quite memorable scene from his time at the magical University, describes the laws of sympathetic magic thus: “First is the Doctrine of Correspondence which says ‘similarity enhances sympathy’…the more things resemble each other, the stronger the sympathetic link between them will be.” (Rothfuss, Kindle passages 5061-5073). He continues, lecturing to a class of students, “Second is the Principle of Consanguinity, which says, ‘a piece of a thing can represent the whole of a thing’…An easy way of thinking of it is, ‘once together, always together.’” (5061-5090). While explaining these things, our hero constructs a voodoo doll made of wax in perfect accordance with the idea of Sympathetic Magic that Frazer championed.

But Frazer believed the sympathetic magic system to be a “spurious system of natural law,” “always an art, never a science,” with its practitioners “in complete ignorance of the intellectual and physiological processes.” Rothfuss, in contrast, has created a system of magic that does bear the signs of science. He adds a law to Frazer’s list: “Third is the Law of Conservation, which says ‘energy cannot be destroyed or created.” (5061-7) His magicians (or arcanists, as they’re called) must be cognizant of energy sources and percentages of transference – magic requires energy, often heat, but the efficacy of one’s sympathetic working effects how much of that energy can be transferred in the whole process of ‘like produces like.’ That is, burning the foot of a voodoo doll with a candle won’t do much to the victim, since it is, after all, only a candle flame. An arcanist will have to find a more scorching heat to do any real damage. Meanwhile, to become effective magic users, Rothfuss’ University students must all have an understanding of other topics like anatomy, physiology, engineering, etc. We’ve moved beyond Frazer’s “spurious science” and “bastard art.” Rothfuss has concocted an endlessly interesting magical system that allows for a great deal of creativity on Kvothe’s part but that also has an inherent and stable logic.

On top of sympathetic magic, Rothfuss’ follows the general trend in emphasizing the power of names, but that’s a whole other barrel of fish which I’ll talk about some other day.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed The Name of the Wind. How could I not? It has all those elements that you’re supposed to enjoy: tragedy, dashing heroics, witticisms, lovelorn teenagers, and earthy idioms. If occasionally the characterizations were a little vague and unfocused around the edges, it didn’t matter much; my first act upon finishing the book was to try and buy the sequel. Alas, it’s not ready yet. Once again, the perpetual pain of starting a book series that hasn’t actually been finished. There’s always Frazer, though, if I’m desperate for some sympathy.

Emic and Etic: Anthropology and Aliens in SF

One of the hardest things about writing science fiction, I think, is the creation of alien cultures. Don’t get me wrong: it’s unlikely that I can toss out some hard science or mathematical theory and have it successfully shape an entire world, like the best science fiction writers do on a regular basis. But beyond the science, it’s the alien peoples who seem to be the most difficult to concoct, particularly because they are the aspects of a story that can fail the most spectacularly.

I recently read Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky, the prequel to his enormously successful A Fire Upon the Deep. Both were Hugo Award winning books, popular not just for their really stunning theoretical science but for the interesting alien cultures that inhabit them. I enjoyed them immensely, but like any theoretically sophisticated work should do, they invite you to critique them in order that we might move beyond them.

I do agree that Vinge’s alien races were quite compelling and that he really has a knack for some surprising and fascinating turns. There are Fire’s alien Tines, dog-like creatures that share a consciousness between 3-6 bodies. In Deepness, the aliens are arachnid-esque, hibernating below the earth every 60 years when their sun cyclically dies. The richness of their cultures and the charm of the alien characters is very attractive for readers who are looking for something truly different.

But are they that different? I was struck by how Vinge’s aliens were…well, so human, their histories and concerns following distinctly human lines. The cultural evolution of both the Tines and the Spiders mimic the rise of our own civilizations as the academics used to see it, moving from primitive to the most advanced. This reflects Vinge’s interest in technological singularity, the idea that as we become more and more intelligent, our machines will become more intelligent; our machines will then evolve faster than we, and that explosion of evolution will totally destroy all our paradigms and create something beyond any possibilities we could imagine. And so will begin the post-Human Era.

But for all his notions that AI’s crossing of the intelligence threshold will result in a future we can’t conceive, Vinge never applies the same theoretical gymnastics to culture and to the societies of his aliens. Their desires and fears, their relationships and motives, all fall within the human paradigm.

The Post-Human Era.

SF writers have been trying for years to create something utterly inhuman. The most popular alien life-form that is used in this context is the insect. Bugs are, after all, about as alien as you can get on the Planet Earth. There is something about them that not only frightens us entirely, but that is unknowable and strange. And thus Robert Heinlein, in his spectacular Starship Troopers, created mankind’s greatest enemy in the form of an insect. The Bugs have no personality, no history, no culture. They are the perfect enemy, completely de-humanized, bent on human destruction. They can be killed without guilt because, after all, there is nothing human about them.

Insect aliens have ever after been a favorite. Orson Scott Card’s Ender Wiggen battled Bugger’s who possessed the hive mind of bees, as did Wurts/Feist’s cho-ja in their fantasy Empire Trilogy. Perhaps, due to the difficulty of creating aliens as far beyond our understanding as aliens must be, insects are the best way to go.

On the first day of any anthropology-like class, the words emic and etic are defined on the board. They refer to the perspectives we can take as we try to understand cultures. Emic means that an explanation comes from someone within that society, since they have intimate knowledge of why certain things are done. An etic perspective is that of an outsider, the observer, the analytical researcher.

It seems that with respect to alien cultures, we have generally not moved beyond an emic approach; sitting within the shape of the human world, we can’t look outside, we’re insiders who can’t get to an etic perspective. Usually it's the outsider trying to look in, and unable to get the right ideas about things, but with respect to ET, we can't seem to get out. Aliens have myths, legends, fears, desires, and interpersonal conflicts just like any human. If not, then they are insect-like or they compete like mindless animals in the survival of the fittest.

Granted, I haven’t read every SF book ever written. But I’m hoping that somewhere out there are books that take the theoretical innovativeness applied to physics in SF, and instead apply that to alien culture (or lack-of-culture, or beyond-culture. You know what I mean). An insider emic approach is cool in many instances, but I can’t wait for some SF that tries to shake up the humanistic paradigm that dominates our favorite extraterrestrial.

The School's Secret Stash of Science Fiction and Fantasy

When people travel a lot, they tend to leave a trail of discarded books behind them. Once the books have been read, it’s rather pointless to let them weigh down your luggage; even better, most hostels and small hotels tend to have small collections through which you can rifle, leaving your book and taking a new one. The American School, like ex-pat places the world over, also has a collection. But I’d wager that ours is quite a bit bigger than most places, given the School's long history.

One of the more significant assortments to be found in Loring Hall was acquired from the Blegen/Hill estate. I’ve mentioned the Blegen’s and the Hill’s on repeated occasions, but it’s also good to know that not only did they leave an imprint on the political and social history of the School, but they also left behind quite a bit of material culture that has been absorbed into the School's physical landscape. Part of that material culture includes an enormous collection of mystery novels, dating from the 1930s to 1940s.

The Blegen’s and the Hill’s were best friends: Carl and his wife Elizabeth, Bert and his wife Ida. They shared a house in Athens at 9 Plutarch St. and when Blegen died in 1971, he left the house and everything in it to the School. The papers within it now form a large part of the School’s Archives, and bits of their furniture and other material culture spread out from there. The mystery books made it over to Loring Hall, where they are now in the TV Room.

It’s quite a collection. I asked Bob Bridges about it last night at Ouzo, and he told me that the books were mostly collected by Elizabeth and Ida, who actually had formed a little Crime club of sorts! The titles are in themselves amazing:

But it was not until two days ago that I actually discovered the School’s really secret stash of genre books. I was across the street in the Blegen Library and stopped in the lounge on the lowest floor. A small book shelf stood in the corner, and it was to here, I discovered, that the SF books of the School had been making their way. (NB: SF = Speculative Fiction = Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror/Comics/Etc.)

I’d been wondering about them, actually. With all the books that are collected here, why were there so few science-fiction and fantasy novels? People make jokes about nerdy sci-fi fans lurking at society’s margins, but in fact these marginal people are actually quite numerous (and in today’s comic book culture, nearly the majority of those under 30). So where were the books? Again, Bob Bridge’s held the key. Apparently, there were a fair number of not only speculative fiction titles floating around, but also harlequin romances. Bob was aware that there are certain types of books that certain people do NOT like to see; it was safer, then, to move those books elsewhere, to a place where they would not offend certain sensibilities. He was right to do so: it seems the harlequin romances were thrown out a few years back. But the speculative fiction books are still there, and are in fact quite impressive, very old school, with lots of Daw Books titles. Bob says he’s been grouping them together for as long as he’s been back at the School, since about 1982. Have a look:

The Secret Stash Discovery has been a highlight for me. Perhaps I’ll see how many 1930s mysteries and 1980s SF I can get through before Christmas. And let's hope the Secret Stash, no longer secret since I've revealed it on the Internet, survives and prospers. I'll make sure to add to it as much as I can.