If you were able to squeeze into Book People on the night of June 9, you might have been lucky enough to see Patrick Rothfuss’s two-tone beard, as well as the man behind it, Patrick Rothfuss. Patrick Rothfuss’s beard was in the building to give a talk on whatever he and the audience felt was relevant, and it was wonderful.
Even more than an hour before the presentation started, every seat in the house had been taken and guests were crowding in among the back shelves of the store. The final count was somewhere around 400 audience members. One can only guess that those in the front rows had been camped out for over a fortnight.
The official purpose of the event was to promote Rothfuss’s upcoming novella, “The Lightning Tree,” set in the universe of the popular Kingkiller Chronicle series, but the author’s hour of stage time had a much broader scope. He opted for an open Q&A format, letting the audience ask him anything, literary or not. Through these questions, the audience learned that Rothfuss’s favorite cake is a homemade creation called “Butterfinger dessert,” that he suffers from “Midwestern guilt” over the success of his Kingkiller Chronicle series, and that he creates verbal choose-your-own-adventure stories for his young son. Adorable.
He also said that the weather in Austin makes him “want to die,” and that he doesn’t understand why anyone would live here, but I’ll let that slide.
Rothfuss’s talk was equal parts irreverence, craft discussion, and parenting advice. As someone who loves his books but doesn’t follow his blog, I knew pretty much nothing about Rothfuss’s personal life. It was interesting and endearing to see him alternate between critic (Rothfuss read a scathing review he recently wrote for a Roald Dahl story) and concerned parent (he believes kid’s books should be held to higher standanrds, and repeatedly mentioned the importance of raising genuinely kind human beings) .
Beneath that impressively sprawling facial hair is a father, an ex-college professor, an angry teen, and a “very, very good writer” (Rothfuss’s own words, but accurate).
At the end of the talk, Rothfuss finally read a paragraph or two from the “The Lightning Tree,” which features one of the supporting Kingkiller characters as the protagonist. The audience strained with every fiber of their collective being to resist prying the rest of the work from Rothfuss’s hands.
“The Lightning Tree” will appear as part of an anthology due out on June 17, while The Slow Regard of Silent Things, another Kingkiller novella, isn’t due out until November. And while there’s still no release date set for the third book of The Kingkiller Chronicle, Rothfuss’s talk was more than substantial proof that the story is in very weird, confident, capable hands.