As I continued my Robin Hobb Rereading Series into the middle of July 2024, I noted resuming work on one of my efforts to keep at least a toe in the great flow of scholarship: the Fedwren Project. As part of that resumed work, I read Matthew Oliver’s “History in the Margins: Epigraphs and Negative Space in Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice.” While the Project contains a summary of the piece, here, and I’m happy to have the summary, I’m not happy to have only the summary. No, as has happened to me more than once before–such as here–I feel I have to respond in some way to what I have read. Not because it is bad, no, but because it is good–if limited.

I want to stress that I do find Oliver’s article to be a good one. I agree with the central idea–that the epigraphs in Assassin’s Apprentice and Fitz’s own unreliability as a narrator serve as reminders of or parallel the constructed nature of “history.” What is recorded about what happened in the past is very much a function of those doing the recording (an adage about writing and winners comes to mind). A number of the secondary points also ring true for me. The epigraphs do add to the “authenticity” of the text, yes, contributing to the verisimilitude Hobb is on record as prizing and helping to fix Hobb as a participant in dominant literary traditions even as she moves away from them in decided ways. Too, there is no small irony in an overtly fictional text making much of its realism. (Whether this makes it Frankfurtian bullshit, I am not certain; I think it is a question worth considering. But then, I would, as witness this and certain items here.)

That I think Oliver’s article good, however, does not mean I find it without issue. The chief one I find with it is its limited scope. While I am well aware that a journal article can only take in so much and still carry out the kind of discussion it needs to, I am also well aware that there are many more novels in Hobb’s corpus than Oliver treats. There are many more Fitz-centric novels than Oliver treats. Even just the two sequels in the Farseer trilogy move away from some of the details Oliver relies upon in making his argument. For example, Oliver makes the comment that the epigraphs in Assassin’s Apprentice are all Fitz’s, and this is not the case with Royal Assassin (as witness the epigraphs to chapter 8, “The Queen Awakens”; as well as chapters 26, “Skilling”; 27, “Conspiracy”; 30, “Dungeons”; 31, “Torture”; and possibly some others) or Assassin’s Quest (as witness the epigraph to chapter 25, “Strategy”, and possibly others). It is certainly not the case with the Tawny Man novels–and the Fitz and the Fool novels throw that completely out. Nor yet is it necessarily the case with Assassin’s Apprentice, itself. The introduction to chapter 18, “Assassinations,” is a partial subversion, with Fitz quoting Chade’s notes at length; that to chapter 20, “Jhaampe,” is not partial, being explicitly taken from another in-milieu document. Further, while some of the materials Oliver cites in making his argument about the introductory frustration of narrative objectivity are right at the time, later events in the Realm of the Elderlings Corpus (this and this come to mind) belie them, at least to some extent; Fitz has more memories than he necessarily wants to face.

(Admittedly, there are questions about the order of composition within the milieu to address. My impression–which gets some confirmation here–is that the texts of many of the Fitz-centric novels are private writings–one option Oliver admits of [45]–with much of the Farseer novels composed before the events of the Tawny Man books, and those composed in advance of and into the Fitz and the Fool novels. The last series does confound that impression to some degree, although the extent to which it does escapes me at the moment. I’ll stumble into it, I’m sure.)

Had Oliver’s article been earlier than it is, the restriction of its discussion would make more sense. But it is relatively late against the Realm of the Elderlings corpus; the novels that belie many of his details were well in circulation when the article was released. Even taking into account commonplaces about academic production–journal articles can take years to hit print from acceptance–leaves at least the Tawny Man novels available for consideration and comment. And, for me, the omission of so much other material seems…other than optimal.

There is some justification for the restriction to the first novel, however. Again, as noted above, there’s only so much a journal article can take in; there is always necessarily some selectiveness at work in doing that kind of scholarship. Too, and this goes to discussion from the Tales after Tolkien Society’s paper session at the 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies, in which Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun asked an excellent question about whether the dragons can be considered parallels to indigenous North American populations,* Assassin’s Apprentice is…not as…willing to move away from the dominant Tolkienian tradition of fantasy literature as later entries in the Realm of the Elderlings Corpus are. It’s a first effort, and a fine one, well worth reading (and amply read, not just recreationally, and not just by scholars of fantasy literature within scholarly circles when read as an object of study), but it is, in some ways, finding its way. Even the structural concerns on which Oliver focuses echo Tolkien’s work–while Oliver points out that Tolkien largely eschews epigraphs in Lord of the Rings (46), it is a commonplace that the text and its companions, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion are, in fact, in-milieu compositions “translated” by Tolkien, not at all unlike the personal narrative Fitz provides and supplements. In brief, Assassin’s Apprentice is more derivative than its successors, and to a substantial degree. That separation perhaps justifies the narrowed focus in an article that, again, makes an excellent central argument that is well worth attention.

*For the record, my answer then was “no,” and it remains “no.” During the discussion, I made comments much like those in the paragraph–namely, that the North American-ness of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus was not something initially meant (insofar as authorial intent ever matters), but something that grew up and emerged in the texts as the series continued.

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A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned (here) that my daughter was away at camp. It was not the first week she’d been away; she’s had a busy summer so far, and she’s not yet done with it at this point. For a month, she was with her grandparents and attending a day-camp theatre program. When I noted she was away, she was in the first of two weeks at Girl Scout camp in central Texas. As I write this, she’s in another day-camp theatre program (although it’s closer to home, so that she’s with her mother and me at night), and she’s got a week-long day-camp cheer program coming up soon. (Nor yet is it a summer-only thing; come the fall, she’s going to be on her school’s student council, as well as taking up the tuba–yes, tuba–and continuing in her cheer program and yet another theatre program, in the last of which she will be exploring costuming and related work.)

It is, admittedly, a lot. I was not nearly so active at her age as she is now; my own summers then were taken up with household chores and more reading than was likely good for me, at least until I got big enough that I could actually begin to do some work and earn some money helping my great uncle on electrical jobs. Too, I was not an only child as my daughter is; it’s easier to provide so much for one child than it is for two. There were other factors, too, the details of which I will omit here, thank you kindly; it will suffice to say that matters were otherwise then than they are now, and not only in the differences in personality between my daughter and me.

Such differences do have a lot to do with my daughter being so much more engaged in the world than I was (and, it might well be argued, still am). She’s always been far more outgoing than I was at her age (I return to the phrasing again and again because it really is not fair to compare a forty-something man to a girl roughly a quarter his age), and I’ve made a point of reinforcing that behavior with her. She’s far more pleasant to be around than I was, certainly, less apt to point out how those around her are in error when it doesn’t actually make a difference to how things are going, less determined to prove she’s the smartest person in the room in every room she’s in. (It didn’t work out well for me.)

Instead, my daughter is open to new experiences and people, willing to do things other than her normal routines (although she would like to sleep in more than a lot of things allow). She, by inclination and training, makes a point of thanking those with whom she works for taking the time to work with her, and she continues to approach activities with enthusiasm and a joy that I find refreshing to see in the world. Certainly, I am biased (how could I not be?), and certainly, I approach all of this from several positions of privilege (I’m even aware of some of them, although I acknowledge there may well be others of which I am not immediately cognizant). But I think I have some reason to be so; I am and remain pleased with my daughter, and I look forward to seeing how she continues on through the summer and beyond it.

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For several years more than several years ago, my wife and I lived in Brooklyn, NY. (This is as opposed to Brooklyn, IA, where I have been; the two could be more different, but it would be hard to do.) When we started living there together–she had been in the area for school, and I moved up later, once I was clear of comprehensive exams; I couldn’t stand to be away from her any longer–she had two cats: Misty (a big ol’ kitty) and Dude (a lithe snowshoe). While we were there together, we took in a third cat: the street-kitten Franklin Bedford Gates. (You can guess where he was found.)

For the most part, the three got along. Misty and Dude had been together for years–since long before my wife and I met, in fact. Frank, younger and smaller by far, would occasionally try to assert himself with the older cats, but they would remind him that they, in fact, had seniority, and he largely accepted it. They would snuggle together and play, although which games each would engage in with the others differed. (There might be other things to sat about that in time, but not quite at the moment.) And they benefitted from my wife’s indulgence of them and my uxoriousness.

At the time, my wife and I were making a pretty good living. I had full-time, continuing, union work; she had an assembly of part-time jobs, too. Both of us, being relatively young and unencumbered, lived within our means but pushed them; as should not be a surprise, we ordered a lot of food delivery. Because we were where we were and had the tastes we did, we ordered sushi pretty often. And because we were more bougie than we knew what to do with, when we ordered sushi for ourselves, we’d order a little for the kitties, too.

Misty and Dude both took to the sushi, of course. Being cats, they would be expected to do as much. Frank, however, differed from his adoptive brothers. (Yes, brothers. Misty was a neutered male. He was named by a young child who had not yet grasped the notion that not all cats are girls.) He’d eat the fish, yes, but what he really liked was edamame–the steamed-and-salted soybeans often served as an appetizer at sushi joints in our part of the world. But that was not something we knew when we got him; the woman who took in his mother had found him in a warehouse or somesuch thing, after all, not gotten him from any highfalutin’ family or even an overcrowded shelter.

No, we realized Frank’s love of edamame when one of us had dropped a pod of it onto the apartment floor. Frank leapt upon it, seizing it in his tiny mouth with its needly teeth and retreating to the side of the couch, hunkering down over it and under the lower ledge of the cat-tree we still have. As he started to pick at the pod-shell, trying to get to the beans inside, Misty–at that time close to four times Frank’s weight–padded over to check out what was going on. Frank looked at the older cat, pinned his ears back, and growled; I thought for a moment that a dog had gotten into the apartment, so low and fierce was the noise coming out of a kitten not much larger than my splayed hand.

Misty…reconsidered his investigation at that point.

Years have passed since, of course. Misty and Dude have both crossed the rainbow bridge. My wife and I are long gone from Brooklyn (either New York or Iowa; take your pick). We don’t order out nearly so much, we took in a dog, the mutt Cherry, and we adopted another cat, a black tortoiseshell named Stormy. Frank still stalks around the house, though, clearly himself the pet with seniority, and he still loves his edamame.

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