Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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The next chapter, “The Mountains,” opens with a gloss of the legended early history of the Mountain Kingdom. It moves thence to Fitz’s account of how Kettricken supplied her intended expedition to find Verity–or his fate. Starling will accompany them; Chade will not, but must return to Buck. He leaves gifts for his sullen former pupil, about which Fitz complains somewhat when the Fool presents them; the Fool forces Fitz to consider Chade’s perspective on things, as well.

The Fool also offhandedly notes an intent to accompany Fitz, despite the cold and peril. Kettle is more pointed in her assertion that she will also go along. But they are rushed to depart by news of a messenger from Regal that has asked for a goodwill gesture to deescalate hostilities: the return of the fugitive Fitz. And they depart in that haste, taking the already-packed supplies, but themselves and no others; Starling catches up slightly after, somewhat angry, but quickly silenced by Kettricken’s terse manner. When Nighteyes rejoins them somewhat later, he notes that Kettle is following, slowly but in high dudgeon; when, at length, she arrives, she and Kettricken quickly arrive at what seems a prickly understanding.

They proceed thus for several days until Kettricken queries Fitz about Verity’s likely earlier actions. When she asks him to reach out to Verity through the Skill, he refuses, citing the danger posed by Regal’s Skilled servants and their abilities. He also notes their likely earlier interference in the defense of the Six Duchies, which rouses cold ire in Kettricken. And he feels the powerful pull of the Skill upon him, more than is normal for him.

I have argued before that the Realm of the Elderlings, despite clear parallels to the Tolkienian-tradition fantasy milieu of an analogue to the Western Europe of the High Middle Ages, reads better as derived from North America. Part of the argument has to do with the fauna described in the region. The present chapter amends that conclusion somewhat; the Realm of the Elderlings borrows from the Americas more generally, though the emphasis remains on the Pacific Northwest for reasons I elaborate on in Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms.

The amendment comes in the form of the jeppas, the beasts of burden Kettricken determines to employ despite Fitz’s objections. They are described as like “long-necked goats with paws instead of hooves,” a description that brings to mind the llama. Domesticated animals used primarily to haul some loads up the steep slopes of the Andes, yielding hair and, at need, meat, they seem to be a solid parallel to the jeppas–something that ties the milieu more to the Western Hemisphere than the Eastern, even if they are somewhat displaced even within that analogy. Still, it is a bit more a remove from the Tolkienian tradition, a bit more an association with not-as-commonly-depicted-in-fantasy places, and that is and remains good to see.

Imaginings should be broad.

Help me show nice things to my daughter on her first Spring Break trip?

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series soon.

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The next chapter, “Departure,” opens with a description of Chade that paints him as something of a folk-hero emerging from the Red-Ship Wars. It moves to a particularly embarrassing episode for Fitz, one in which he learns more about why he had been considered dead by those who had known him best. Fitz is also warned about Kettricken, whom he is set to face the next day.

In the night, Fitz dreams strange dreams, in which he joins Verity. Fitz is taken aback by the appearance of his king, and he watches in horror as Verity plunges his arms into a flow of magic power. Verity uses Fitz to pull himself back from the power, and he pleads once again for Fitz to come to him, to aid him against those who oppose him. The dream sends him into a seizure, for which he is treated by those around him with elfbark.

Fitz rises the next morning and bathes. In the wake of the dream, his anger is gone, and he struggles to comprehend what transpired. When he returns to the Fool’s hut to dress for his audience with Kettricken, the Fool informs him that his identity is not widely known in Jhaampe, and he voices curiosity about Kettle. The two proceed to call upon Kettricken, and the Fool finds a place quickly; FItz is made to wait, growing markedly uncomfortable.

When, at length, Fitz is asked to speak, it is sharply and without affection. He reports events from before his imprisonment, moving forward, describing his deeds and misdeeds along the way. Kettricken informs him of her purpose to summon Molly and his child to Jhaampe to preserve the Farseer lineage; Fitz objects, noting Verity’s life and the possibility of another child coming from them, but Kettricken is not satisfied with the report. Fitz notes, too, that he will seek Verity, regardless; he is compelled to that end.

In the description of the Skill-river Fitz sees through Verity, Hobb makes a compelling case for the utter incomprehensibility of magic. I know that one of the things Hobb takes pains to do in her fiction is to make the fantastical elements emerge organically from a solidly realized milieu, so it makes sense that the utter strangeness of a source of magical power, something that has no real analogue in the readers’ world, would need some attention and focus. There is a strong thread of such attention in fantastic fiction; Lovecraftian works, with their impossible geometries, are perhaps the most prominent examples, but they are not the only ones. Hobb does better than Lovecraft, however, acknowledging the incomprehensibility of it while not relying overmuch on less accessible vocabulary; “otherness” generally seems more at home in literary theory than in fantasy fiction, but it is at least not the repeated squamous eldritch. So there is that.

Help me take my daughter on her first Spring Break trip?

 

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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The next chapter, “Confrontations,” opens with a brief musing on diplomacy. It transitions to Fitz’s convalescence amid the Fool having to handle those who seek to approach him as a sort of religious figure–and Starling, whom he rebuffs adroitly.

Amid the disjointed conversations, Fitz learns that Kettricken knows of his daughter and is moving towards legitimizing her as a Farseer heir. Fitz lies to the Fool to disclaim the child in the interest of preserving her from the internecine politics of the family. He determines to see Chade and Kettricken, though with regrets.

Fitz dreams strangely and wakes at least once to see Kettle watching him. He wakes later at Starling’s intrusion, and he learns that Starling has seen Kettricken and told her of Fitz’s child. Fitz’s lie to the Fool comes unraveled, but following the implications of the unraveling is interrupted by the entrance of Kettricken in anger. Chade enters also, and is overjoyed to see Fitz alive. Fitz has to challenge him over the child, however, and Chade replies as he must. Nighteyes inserts himself and offers through the Wit to kill the lot of them, and Fitz, overwhelmed, confesses his compulsion to go to Verity. All save the Fool, whose house it is, leave.

After more odd dreaming, Fitz wakes under the Fool’s care again. They talk together, not entirely comfortably in the wake of Fitz’s lie. Fitz apologizes as best he can, and the Fool lays out what he knows and has reasoned out of the situation. The Fool also lays out some of his prophetic powers reasonably plainly.

The next day sees Fitz suffer having the arrowhead removed from his back. His convalescence continues, perforce, and slowly; he uses it as an excuse to delay doing what he knows he must. He also reconciles with the Fool, as well as handling visits from Starling and Kettle; during a visit form Starling, he learns a fair bit about Chade’s activities. Thoughts of what will come beset him, and it is clear he is not yet recovered.

As I reread the chapter, I find myself amused by the way in which the Fool lampshades existence within a world governed by fate–and a world in which prophecy is possible is one that is thus governed. The wry humor in the Fool turning to puppet-making seems in line with the Fool’s literary antecedents, certainly, and something that fan-artists such as Michelle Tolo, above, take advantage of in their depictions of the Fool. It is an easy enough image to access and understand, that of being puppets on strings, even if it begs the question of who pulls those strings. (Hobb’s treatment of religion in the Elderlings corpus is something about which I spoke at the 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies; I imagine I’ll be working on that paper a bit more as I move further through the reread–and, indeed, working on the conference paper helped spur the project.)

Another note, though: Chade’s cruelty. I have noted before the unsettling expectation of loyalty to an oath that passes beyond death. To have it reaffirmed and reinforced…it is not a comfortable thought.

Now, as ever, I can use your support.

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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The following chapter, “Jhaampe,” opens with a description of the titular city, one familiar from earlier. It passes after to Fitz proceeding deliriously under Nighteyes’s guidance to a dimly glimpsed figure who takes him.

Fitz wakes intermittently as the figure who took him and others tend to his injuries, which range to frostbite in addition to the arrow wound and overall fatigue and ill treatment. As Fitz assesses himself and returns to his senses, he asks about his situation. He recognizes the Fool as he slips back out of and into consciousness, and the two exchange tidings as best they are able at the time. Among those tidings is that the child Kettricken had carried when she fled Buckkeep was stillborn, and she has mourned Verity as dead, but the Fool notes that Fitz’s emergence has provided new hope to him. Chade has been at work, as has Patience, but matters remain grim, and there has been no sign of Starling or of Kettle that the Fool knows of.

Fitz asks the Fool not to report his survival to Kettricken or Chade. The Fool reluctantly agrees, and the two begin to fall back into their old amity and ease, despite the pain.

In the chapter, the Fool makes one of his wryer comments about Fitz in response to being addressed as a revered figure: “‘Holy one?’ There was bitter humor in [the Fool’s] voice. ‘If you would speak of holes, you should speak of him, not me. Here, look at his back.'” There is a part of me, one steeped in the humorous writings of the past, one that looks for sometimes-subtle bits of wordplay such as this, that wonders if the previous chapter’s action, hunting and shooting Fitz, was plotted out for no other purpose than to make the pun in the Fool’s comment. Hobb borrows from Asimov throughout the series, as noted here, and Asimov several times wrote pieces specifically to put puns across–such stories as “About Nothing,” “Death of a Foy,” and “Sure Thing” in The Winds of Change and Other Stories come to mind as examples–so it is not outside the realm of possibility that another such borrowing has taken place in the present chapter. Whether intended or not, it does seem a useful setup for such a joke.

More broadly, I’ve argued that Hobb borrows freely from fools in Shakespeare in informing her own Fool, and the kind of word-play evidenced by the Fool in the present example is decidedly present in Shakespeare, both from “fools” and from other jokesters. Mercutio’s comment that calling on him the day after he is stabbed will find him “a grave man” is but one easily accessed example, while no few of Benedick’s remarks in Much Ado about Nothing are of similar sort, and even Othello‘s Iago expounds similarly. It may seem a strange thing to have the kind of pun at work that is at work in the chapter, but if it is strange, it is a strangeness with no small precedent.

Don’t joke around; send a little my way!

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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The chapter treated for this post, “Pursuit,” opens with a passage glossing the military situation between the Six Duchies and the Mountain Kingdom as Fitz made his way towards Verity. It moves thence to Fitz conferring with Starling and Kettle as they flee from the burned ruins of Moonseye. Fitz sends the women ahead of himself, which Kettle recognizes as him drawing away pursuit from them to him. Starling is not so sanguine about the matter as they part.

Fitz and Nighteyes move away, and Fitz ensures that he will be Regal’s sole focus for some time by Skilling openly and brazenly in the night. As he does, he finds Burl in the Skill, being tortured therewith through the efforts of Will and Carrod–while Regal observes with glee. Fitz opines about the depravity of his uncle, then lashes out brutally through the Skill. When he is next aware, Nighteyes is near frantic with fear at what Fitz has done, and the two make a slow pace as they flee for Jhaampe.

As they go, Fitz considers his situation again and the likely welcome he will receive from Kettricken, whom he believes to be in Jhaampe. Implications of news of his survival are unpleasant, and he considers bypassing the Mountain Kingdom’s capital–but rejects the idea as untenable for several reasons. His ruminations are interrupted by an encounter with a party of Regal’s soldiers that spots and pursues him–aided by one of the Old Blood. Fitz and Nighteyes flee, with the wolf working to distract the hunters from the slower-moving Fitz. It is not successful; the Old Blood hunter is wise to the deception, cornering Fitz and shooting him in the back with an arrow as Fitz tries to climb to safety.

Nighteyes pulls Fitz up the last bit of his climb, and their flight continues–slower now that Fitz has been shot. He begins, almost reflexively, to transfer his consciousness back into the wolf, but Nighteyes rejects him, and Fitz starts at what he had tried to do. When they achieve some distance from pursuit, Fitz tries to treat his injury. It is difficult, painful work, ultimately unsuccessful; Nighteyes ultimately snaps off the shaft of the arrow, leaving the head in Fitz. And still they must move on.

The thing that stands out to me as I read the chapter again is the juxtaposition of the shock at one of the Old Blood turning on Fitz and the relatively little attention the Old Blood receives in the pursuit. Yes, he is the one to wound Fitz, but he remains largely faceless and utterly nameless in the chapter despite his key role in inflicting yet another wound on the protagonist. Are readers to take it as passe that a member of an oppressed group would turn that group’s talents to the oppressor’s ends? If so, it is a subtle bit of commentary that seems all the more biting for being presented as off-handedly as seems to be the case here.

Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!

Remember your writer?

 

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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The next chapter, “Moonseye,” opens with a brief note about Moonseye’s position and its history with Chivalry Farseer. It moves thence to Fitz and the others’ conveyance to the titular location. Fitz makes contact with Nighteyes through the Wit, and they reassure each other of their lives and relative safety. Nighteyes also shows Fitz an incoming attack; when it falls, it is family of the betrayed smugglers coming to rescue their kin.

After the attack, Fitz is guarded more closely, and he describes Moonseye as he reaches it in custody. His incarceration is also described, and Fitz assesses his situation. He also tries to work on his captors, meeting limited success with that or with finding an escape option. Nighteyes has more success, however, and he informs Fitz of fires beginning in the town.

As the fire spreads, Nighteyes takes the opportunity to make himself known to Fitz’s captors. They flee, and Nighteyes pursues, retrieving the key to Fitz’s cell as Starling arrives to aid Fitz. They make their escape from the burning town into the bitter cold, where they join Kettle. Starling relays the status of the earlier party to Fitz as they flee, and Fitz shivers from more than the cold.

Through Fitz, Hobb lampshades the cyclical nature of the heroic journeys that pervade Tolkienian-tradition fantasy fiction. Bilbo returns to the Shire, as do Frodo and Sam, and Fitz returns to Moonseye, site of his earliest memories. In some sense, he has returned home, though he feels no real connection to the place. But, as with the earlier examples, the place he has returned to has changed–and not necessarily for the better. The Shire to which Bilbo returns has assumed he is dead (not without cause, admittedly) and begun despoiling his possessions. The Shire to which Frodo and Sam return is treated far worse, laid largely to waste and the depredations of outside forces. At Fitz’s involuntary return, Moonseye is more like the latter than the former, with troops loyal to Regal imposing their will far outside what should be the confines of the law. It is not the most comforting touchstone connecting Hobb to her literary forebears, but it is one that lines up relatively well with them.

Too, each of Tolkien’s Ringbearers moves on from the Shire. Bilbo retires to Rivendell before going with Frodo into the West. Sam joins them later. Fitz is similarly bound for other places–coincidentally, perhaps, a mountainous west. It is such things that push readings of Hobb towards the Tolkienian model; there are correspondences to be found, certainly, and I’ve written to that effect before. A closer examination of the parallels specifically to Tolkien, rather than to the amorphously European / English settings of Tolkienian fantasy literatures generally might be warranted–but that is yet another project for another time.

Send me a Texas Independence Day gift?

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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The following chapter, “River Crossing,” opens with a brief note about the mounting resistance of the Six Duchies’ people to the Red Ship Raiders. It moves thence to preparations for the smuggling party to move on. Fitz indulges himself in elfbark, earning rebuke from Kettle.

Later that day, Nighteyes ranges ahead of the party, to the annoyance of the smugglers. The group comes to a hidden barge, and they begin to cross the river–with some struggles. Weather and debris in the river make the crossing more difficult. Fitz and Nighteyes are attacked as they try to cross, and Nighteyes is swept into the water; Fitz is not, but he is subdued, along with the smuggler and most of the party. They have, evidently, been double-crossed by local soldiers who purpose to deliver him to Regal’s forces. Fitz reasons through how he has been betrayed and offers such mental support as he can to Nighteyes as the wolf labors out of the flooded river and finds some small shelter.

When Fitz is delivered to the soldiers’ local quarters, he is recognized by one of the Skilled Ones from his earlier training: Burl. After expressing some small curiosity about Fitz’s survival, he takes an inept report from the soldiers, rebukes them, and dismisses them. He then turns his attention to Fitz, noting to him that his erstwhile companions will suffer if he gets unruly. To prove his point, he has Starling brought in and two of her fingers broken in front of Fitz before securing the now-compliant Fitz for a trip to Moonseye.

Reading the chapter this time, I find myself sticking on the name of the character Burl. The Six Duchies tends towards emblematic names, as long since noted, and the word “burl” does refer to a misshapen growth of wood, so there is some sense to it; Burl is made misshapen by what Galen does to him during training, his loyalty to Regal an artificially imposed thing that cannot help but warp him. Burl wood, though, is often valuable as a material, one prized for its beauty; indeed, one of the things I have that I value most is the pen I use to write in my journals, one whose shaft is turned from maple burl. The physical description of Burl–a large man, formerly muscled but grown slack–and the depiction of him as ruthless and cruel (blithely ordering a flogging and the breaking of a musician’s fingers are hardly kindly words) do not conduce to that end. Perhaps the hardness of burl wood caused by the contortions of the wood grain are the resonances to be found, but that seems a bit odd a direction to go.

I continue to rely upon your support.

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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The following chapter, “Bolthole,” opens with brief comments about the bleedover of mannerisms between Old Blood and their Wit-partners. It moves swiftly to the resumption of the smuggling party’s journey–early in the morning. Fitz is put in mind of Molly and their child, and Nighteyes queries about it before heading off to hunt. Fitz secures Kettle, and they head off.

Along the way, Kettle discusses her reason for the journey: visiting a prophet rumored to be in the Mountain Kingdom. She describes the veneration of such prophets–the White Prophets–and Fitz puzzles over the words. She also notes Nighteyes’s presence, which Fitz tries unsuccessfully to explain away.

The party camps in an established bolthole–described in the chapter as such–for the night, not necessarily to the joy of all concerned. Kettle quizzes Fitz somewhat sharply, though she shares provisions with him, and they discuss the other travelers before Fitz excuses himself.

Later, Starling wakes Fitz while the others sleep. She quizzes him about himself, and he confirms his possession of the Wit–and other bits of his past. She reveals, in turn, her apprehensions about her future, worrying that her skills are not themselves good enough to secure her later life–but the song she means to make about Fitz will do so. She also rebukes him for his failure to understand Molly and how her life must proceed under the assumption–justified–of his death. And she offers intimate comfort to him that he refuses.

The smuggling party presses on, and Kettle manages to unsettle Fitz with some of what she knows. In the night, he dreams of another Red-Ships raid, sleeping uneasily.

The present chapter is, if memory serves, the first mention of the White Prophets as such. It is something that becomes important again and again later in the Elderlings corpus, so its appearance herein is something to mark.

Something also worth noting is Starling’s rebuke of Fitz for his misunderstanding of Molly. She comments with aspersion on his having blithely assumed that Molly would wait for him despite thinking him dead. To be fair, Fitz has been dead and come back from it, but it seems strange to think that he would think it a blase occurrence–the more so since Burrich, who occasioned the resurrection, thinks him slain again, and as a man gone feral. It is a pointed bit of self-centeredness on Fitz’s part, one that bespeaks his continuing assumption that he is the most important person in the Six Duchies. (Although it is likely true, and it is certainly true that Fitz is the protagonist of the novel, it does not excuse the blithe arrogance.)

Reading affectively, as I seem unable to avoid despite “knowing better,” I think I need to see to my own family for a bit. I can hope they will be waiting for me, largely because I’m not writing this from beyond the grave…

Care to lend a little hand?

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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The following chapter, “Kettle,” opens with an account of Kettricken’s removal to Jhaampe and her searches for Verity in the Mountain Kingdom. It moves thence to Fitz joining the smuggling party’s preparations for departure. More have joined, and Fitz replaces one of the regular cart-drivers who has fallen ill. He finds himself charged with driving an old woman who complains of the changes.

The party sets out through the snowstorm, and Fitz attempts to chat with his passenger. She is generally quiet, however, though she does identify herself to him as Kettle; he recognizes her as being from Buck Duchy, which she does not deny. They do warm towards one another as the day goes on and the party makes camp for the night. The disposition of the smugglers in the camp eases Fitz somewhat, and Starling eases the rest with her music.

Fitz is disturbed from his following rest by the return of Nighteyes, who glosses his adventures with a far-away wolf-pack. They confer, and Nighteyes reveals that he is bound by Verity’s command no less than Fitz is; they depth of their connection startles Fitz. He finds, too, that he must account for Nighteyes to the party, which he does–though clever phrasing is needed to quiet Starling’s questions before they form.

Later in the night, Fitz feels the touch of Regal’s mind through the Skill. It unnerves him, though he realizes it is not directed towards him. He is more disturbed when he sees what Regal is able to do through the Skill, and he learns that Regal still searches for him along the paths to the Mountain Kingdom. Nighteyes offers some small reassurance.

Yet again, I find myself pressed not to read a novel written decades ago against current political events. In the chapter, Hobb, through Fitz, describes Regal as parasitic, “as a tick or leech [that] bites into its victim and clings and sucks life from” that victim–Will, in the present case. It is a particularly vivid image, apt enough for a despotic and illegitimate ruler. It is also one that seems to be something at odds with what such an awareness as the Wit provides would suggest. I comment in another webspace about the recognition of a (presumably non-Old Blood) falconer that such creatures as vultures and cockroaches serve useful purposes in the world despite their unsavory presentation; something similar would seem to be called for here. Fitz, however, uses parasites as similes for Regal, whom he hates

To borrow from Malory, the parasites “but did their kind” and do not deserve opprobrium for it–the more so because it is implied that such creatures do not really register to the Wit. That is, the milieu suggests that within it, although wolves and bears and eagles and weasels are sentient enough to conduct conversations through the Wit, smaller invertebrates are not. If they are not sentient, as other creatures–to include Regal–are, then they cannot be held to account for their actions, as such, and it seems…out of keeping with the milieu for one of the Old Blood to look down upon natural processes so.

Like what you see? Send a bit my way?

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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The following chapter, “Smugglers,” opens with a brief comment about minstrels’ social status in the Six Duchies before moving to Starling’s return to her lodgings, where Fitz has elected to spend the night. Fitz soon absents himself, bathing and taking stock of his situation. It is not to his liking, but he recognizes he has no choice in the matter.

Returning to Starling, Fitz allows her to reshape his hair and beard in the interest of making him less immediately recognizable by members of his former caravan in the town. He is pleased with the result, and he accompanies Starling as she makes for the smugglers. She tells Fitz that they will be accompanying a group of pilgrims who had been delayed in reaching the Mountain Kingdom by Regal’s embargoes.

At length, they reach the smugglers and begin to dicker over the terms of their passage. They eventually strike a deal, and Fitz and Starling overnight at the smuggler’s house. They share a bed but no intimacy, and Fitz soon finds himself dreaming of Molly. He sees her invite Burrich into her home more fully–and he sees a wolf running alone across the fields.

It is interesting to note in the present chapter ways in which Fitz’s upbringing continues to hamper him when he is removed from the social circles of that upbringing. Some of that hampering is to be expected, of course; few do well in situations for which they are unprepared, and moving through different social groups generally brings a person into situations for which they are unprepared. My own experience bears it out; I was raised as a working-class Central Texan (with some caveats, to be sure), so I had several culture shocks when I moved for graduate school and a couple of times afterward. Now that I’m back in the Hill Country, I find myself operating in different social circles than my parents, and I am not always at ease in them. I misstep repeatedly, just as Fitz does in dealing with the smugglers–for which Starling rebukes him, if quietly.

It is another instance of me reading affectively, another instance of me reading in ways my training in graduate school would scorn, I admit. I should be looking at the chapter through one theoretical lens or another, even if so simple a lens as that of reception studies, which I employ elsewhere. There are political commentaries to be found in the chapter, certainly, and any number of other analyses could be done, I’m certain. I might even still have the necessary equipment to conduct some of them. But as I am further and further removed from the search for tenure-track work, as I am further and further away from the classroom, I find such readings less and less compelling. This is not to say they are not of value; they are, illuminating texts in ways that do not appear to causal discourse and revealing things about writers and readers and the contexts in which they are enmeshed that can be used to effect. That they are, though, does not mean I am the person to perform them–and I may never have been, despite my earlier work to that end.

I can always use support as I carry this forward.