Since posting the report on Robert Jordan’s funeral, I’ve come across some more items I’d like to share with you. (With permission from RJ’s family of course).
First off, Tom Doherty and Wilson were kind enough to share the words they spoke at RJ’s funeral with us. Tom is the president of Tor Books (who published the Wheel of Time), and has been a friend of RJ’s for 30 years or more. Here’s what he said at the eulogy:
“He came like the wind. Like the wind touched everything and like the wind was gone.”
Jim Rigney, Robert Jordan, friend, doer, dreamer, maker of dreams, one of the great storytellers of the 20th and I believe time will prove 21st century as well. His Wheel of Time is a towering epic of power and scope. After praising it extensively, The New York Times said of it:
“—the evil laced into forces of good, the dangers latent in any promised salvation, the scenes of unavoidable onslaught of unpredictable event—bear the marks of American national experience during the last three decades”
Truly Jim wrote for us all.
And Harriet, the love of his life, what a team, Harriet is the finest editor I’ve ever worked with. Working together they produced wonderful things. His first two books, Fallon Blood and Fallon Pride were published by her company, Popham Press as a joint venture with Ace where I was publisher and she had been Editorial Director. And then at Tor, another Fallon, Conan and the Wheel of Time. The Wheel, which has touched the lives of so many millions and down the generations will touch so many millions more.
Jim was a man of courage and heart and vision. He was my friend of 30 years. He’s gone ahead of us now. Beyond that last horizon to a place we cannot yet see. But I think he can see us and he’s glad we’re together and he’s already thinking of stories he’s going to tell Harriet and then the rest of us when we get there.
We miss you Jim. Thanks for all you’ve left behind.
Thank you, Tom, for sharing that with all of us.
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