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Rest in Peace, Robert Jordan

So I still need to post about the stethoscope ceremony and the first weeks of med school, the all-consuming experience of a first human dissection, the bewildering nature of a first standardized patient. But tonight, I’m going to interrupt the flow of this blog to note the passing of a wonderful author, Robert Jordan. You can find his Washington Post obit here.

The following is a cross post from my facebook ‘shared’ article page:

“If you’re reading this, you probably know by now that by the age of twelve I still didn’t know how to read. Which isn’t to say I didn’t love books. Fantasies especially were to my taste. I was passionate about several authors. Robert Jordan was perhaps the most influential of those. Each night, my father would read me less and less of the latest Jordan novel, often stopping at the most exciting parts. As you might imagine, I was so incensed I finally forced myself to do what years of special ed had failed to: I gained fluency literacy at the age of thirteen. If not for Jordan, I never would have made it to college or medical school. Nor would I have become a novelist. I owe him a great deal.

Jordan’s work was hugely successful, and therefore was widely criticized. I’ll admit that the books had their flaws, but I remained a true and faithful reader. I got to meet the author once with I was a fourteen-year-old babbling fanboy. I remember him as a patient, jovial, Southern gentleman. Learning that he had died, gives me a strange hollow feeling. I don’t think I can study any more tonight. I think I’ll look paw though his books and sigh for a few hours.”