Category: C.S. Lewis
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A Defense of Spoilers
Spoilers showed up this Christmas, my niece — who’s two years old — gave my sister-in-law and brother-in-law two presents. Both were wrapped. She’d decided exactly what she wanted to give to both of them. Each parent had helped her wrap the present for the other parent. And she wanted to give them first. On…
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Weakness of Journalism
“It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding.…
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Kvothe and Chandrian : What do they mean?
Spoilers in this post, as always, though I’ll remind you that I personally am okay with spoilers because only a culture starved for wonder would care about spoilers. In eras filled with wonder like the Middle Ages, they loved a good spoiler. Opera attendees still love good spoilers. The reason I don’t care about spoilers…
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Tehlu Caught and Felled Encanis — How does this Apply?
Spoilers for Kingkiller follow. Over on Reddit in response to the last post on Felling, /u/loratcha asked a question about Tehlu and Encanis: Question: I scanned your blog post quickly, and you don’t seem to mention that Felling is related to the capture of Encanis… On the eighth day, Tehlu caught and felled Encanis. (thus,…
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Felling and Man Waiting to Die : The Name of the Wind Prologue
We’re reading The Name of the Wind for the 10th Anniversary Edition in preparations for Doors of Stone. Today we’re focused on the prologue’s use of Felling and a man waiting to die — if you haven’t grabbed ahold of my 13 assumptions for any Kingkiller Reread, you might want to do that. Spoilers inside, of course, but as…
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The Name of the Wind Tenth Anniversary Reread : Appendices and Details
Well the last post on my The Name of the Wind Tenth Anniversary Reread accidentally blew up Google Alerts for some folk but it also got John Granger (the literary critic) to buy a copy of The Name of the Wind, so I consider it a net good. This one will focus on some new…
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Doors of Stone release prep : Kingkiller Reread Intro
Ten years ago, I read Name of the Wind and felt captured by a kindred spirit who cared deeply about the state of the world, the fantasy canon, and the capacity of prose to be poetry and myth. Five years later, I read Wise Man’s Fear and the feeling compounded as I started noticing layers:…
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Worldbuilding Checklist for Writers
Every story needs a small, believable world but when you’re worldbuilding for an epic fantasy or historical saga, what can you do? You can apply a simple checklist to the other worlds and cultures that interact with the small, knowable world of your main character — both his foreign and his familiar. I’ll elaborate on each…
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Follow Your Bliss : Results of Joseph Cambell’s Advice
Featured tool: I use this tool to discover new authors through whom I follow my bliss. Let me share it with you. Seldom do I mention this here, but I minored in ancient literature and mythology in college. In my last semester, the academic dean helped me build a one-on-one class with him that featured…
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A Defense of Criticism
Everyone’s a critic, but should they be? Everyone uses criticism, but does everyone do it well? We live in an age of criticism, an age that destroys a thing to find out what it is, an age that loves to criticize and has all but forgotten how to edify. For this reason, you’ll often find…
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A Defense of Poetry : Inconveniences Rightly Considered
This Defense of Poetry is the start of a poetry podcast in which I’m reading first from my book Inconveniences, Rightly Considered — a collection of poems I wrote since 2005.
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Spiva Center for the Arts : Rebecca Kanan’s Poem based on Mearcstapa
Thanks to F.C. Schultz for the heads up. Rebecca Kanan wrote a poem for Spiva Center for the Arts based on the album cover Mark Neuenschwander and Dave Mehrens made for my failed Kickstarter album: She wrote it for Spiva Center for the Arts “1,000 Words” project in which poets and tellers are invited to write…