(And then the first half of my tape was gone, and I decided to save most of the rest for the audience questions.)
Jordan mentioned all the different cultures and myths he used in WoT. That he’d mined everything from Europe and Asia and Africa etc…
[first sentence paraphrased…only started taping again halfway through this] I don’t know how it is in other places, but the best known legend for the American audience, that I had in mind … when I wrote this for … that legend is King Arthur. I would imagine that more people know the complete story of King Arthur and Guenever and the round table and the whole nine yards than know any other myth or legend, or perhaps more than know all the other myths put together. Now there are Arthurian elements in these books, but I had to try to bury them, for that reason, make them not so readily apparent. And while I had a particular part of the Arthurian legend mentioned from the first book, it was not until the third book that people began to realize what it was. In fact my editor, who is my wife, and who is a very very sharp woman, uhm, had edited the book and was writing the first version of the flap copy for the book, when she suddenly shouted down the stairs to me (if you’re young, forgive me):
[loud] You son of a bitch, you’ve done it it to me again! [laughter]
Because she had suddenly spotted, not until reaching this… not until reaching the cover flap, she suddenly spotted by a… chance connection of words, this one particular Arthurian thing. [Jordan never mentioned what this was, but the logical option is of course Callandor .] And that you see, to me it’s very obvious that the Arthur legend and all of the others are in there. If you spend time on the net, you find sites where they discuss these legends. [People sitting around me knowingly chuckle] I have to tell you that if you visit any of these FAQs… I haven’t seen one in a couple of years, but the last time I was sent copies, I’ve read the printout of the FAQ, and when I was through it. And about a third of the answers in there were correct.
[Turned the memo off here, this is well known. I did like the way he phrased the other two points here though. Something about “the second part was going in the right direction, but somewhere along the way they spotted something pretty which they followed and never arrived at drawing the conclusions they should have. As to the third part, I think it was written by people who didn’t read my books at all.”]
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