Robin Hobb’s SF Reading: a Wonderful End to a Trying Week
A perk of being a freshman novelist is how that status motivates ones to meet personal heroes. Not that there was anything stopping me from accessing authors before I had a book contract; most writers go to great lengths to make themselves available. But, previously, I never would have thought to seek out authors I admire. Now that I’ve gotten in the habit, I can’t recommend it too highly to anyone who enjoys writing or reading.
Those familiar with fantasy will recognize Robin Hobb as a master of the field. She’s been producing wonderful work for decades now. In fact, the first book I ever read entirely to myself was her Assassin Apprentice, in 1995. When looking back on how the genre has developed, I think we really must credit Robin (along with Ursula K. LeGuin) as being the first to develop a style that envelopes what I call “the quotidian in the epic”. Which is to say that Robin’s characters are amazingly, starkly alive and real. Often when telling epic stories, fantasists tend to push their characters toward larger-than-life personas. We loose a sense of their daily victories and frustrations. Robin’s work accentuates the struggles of day to day life while still telling a story that is epic in scope and wonder. Those curious should google her or check out her fansite, The Plenty. Also of interest might be an audio posting of her recent reading.
In any case, after making contact with Robin on her newsgroup, I high-tailed it up to the city yesterday to meet her for lunch before her reading a Boarderlands. She is a remarkable woman with much to say about the writing life and life in general. We enjoyed the food at The Phenoix (my favorite pub in the city) and then walked over to Dave Egger’s famous Pirate Supply Store. Afterwards I enjoyed listening to hear read at Boarderlands and picked up a signed copy for myself.
This was a tremendously relief. Some of you might have bumped into me online or in person during the week and wondered if I was going to live. My lungs it seems were fighting of a very nasty bacterial bronchitis that was threatening to develop into pneumonia. So after a number of harrowing nights, a few chest X-rays, and a wonder dosage of Azithromycin, I’ve begun to recover. Now all I need do is catch up on all my reading (ironically) in microbiology and immunology.
Comments
4 Responses to “Robin Hobb’s SF Reading: a Wonderful End to a Trying Week”
Mervi
5:50 pm Jan-20-2008
Oooh, thanks for the plug!
Jack Kincaid
10:08 pm Jan-20-2008
I would envision meeting the writers of works that I have long admired to be a very strange experience, one to avoid, maybe even be afraid of, but that comes through my filter and my relationship with fiction as a reader. The only experience I can fathom which would be stranger is the same situation with the roles reversed. I’m sure it is, at least in part, due to the actor that still lives in me and remains fervently superstitious about the fourth wall.
Get better and finish that reading.
blakecharlton
3:39 pm Jan-21-2008
No problem, Mervi!
Jack, man, what would happen that would make you afraid? Or is this a comment about the kind of author’s you admire
But I think I understand a bit of what you’re talking about with regard to an authors ‘internal actor’; I think we’ve all got them. Mine, not having spent much time on stage, doesn’t seem to care much about the fourth wall. Maybe you could try for the “all the world’s a stage” idea?
Jack Kincaid
6:24 pm Jan-21-2008
Sometimes that idea can give you some space to move around in, but I’ve never been fond of interactive theatre. *grin*
Yes, I believe everyone does have an internal actor-the one that crafts the mask for any given social occasion. I think it too true that all the world is a stage in the sense that people chronically lie and project illusions to hide if not protect the vulnerable things behind their curtain. Maybe crazy things too. The masks we put up are our fourth walls. Shamefully, I’m no good at maintaining the fourth wall that stands in reality, the one between people. I have trouble “playing” a self who is *not* my self, but then the latter is so dynamic that it exposes my inability to be ‘one person’ (which does not bother others as much as it bothers me apparently). At times I romanticize my lack of consistent substance in an effort to make myself feel better about it, but really it’s a hell of a thing not to be able to count on the thing in the mirror or the voice from your own mouth.
As for the writer to actor comparison: what is writing a book but performing improvisional theatre, playing every role, on the stage of the reader’s mind?
There you have so much more to use as a means of expression. More than lighting and sound and your body. You have all five senses as a canvas, and more. You have everything. You have unlimited range. It’s sublime. It’s the ultimate.
It’s … cool.
And I really need to stop blogging in your blog, man. (: