The Paths of the Dead

by Steven Brust

  3. It appears that Dragaeran, like some languages in our own world, grammatically distinguishes statements of observed fact from guesses, inferences, and unsupported allegations. To illustrate this, compare English, which allows the same verb to be used for all those senses—both I see it is red and I see it is new—with the Hopi language, which requires the speaker to distinguish them: I see it is red, but I infer that it is new.

  In Brust's translation, this distinction is conveyed by the verb "to pretend." It takes the place of such words as, feign, guess, allege, assert, imagine, claim, believe, say (without further substantiation), theorize, think, be under the impression that, represent as being, sad pretend (in its usual sense), as well as the interrogative, do (you) wish to make me believe; that is, in statements unsupported by material observation.

  It is clear, from Brust's translations of Paarfi's pre-Interregnum works, that at that time the Dragaeran language also distinguished states of imperfect knowledge on the part of the speaker, a distinction that Brust most commonly translates as "to almost think." For whatever reason—the linguistic evolution of Dragaeran is beyond the scope of this essay—it appears that by the time of the events described in the present volume, everyday speech had dispensed with this distinction concerning one's own state of knowledge.

  4. When "nearly" is not used to express a quantity, it is used as a somewhat ironic intensifier or as confirmation. Saying I nearly think so in answer to a question roughly translates as "I do indeed think so." Using it as your sole response—"Is it cold outside?" "Nearly."—is more like replying "You'd better believe it is."

  5. Many English speakers have one or several habitual phrases with which they fill hesitant pauses in their conversation. A few of these phrases retain some slight meaning; others come close to being neutral noise. To approximate the effect of Paarfi as translated by Brust, these should be replaced by "well." Among the phrases thus replaced: you know; let's just say that; could be; I guess; yeah; I suppose; I can see that; if you say so; whatever; maybe so; I've heard that said; you could say that; in that case; if that's how you feel about it; and that may be so, but.

  Judging from the different circumstances in which we see it used, "well" is one of those words, like "right" or "nu," that are capable of conveying a broad and subtle range of meaning, depending on the inflection the speaker gives them.

  "Well" is always followed by a comma. The only exception is when it's used as a one-word sentence, which usage is approximately the equivalent of saying "If you say so" in a dubious tone of voice.

  6. Some useful and characteristic phrases you may wish to cultivate include: It is to be hoped; we wish to express the earnest wish; I do myself the honor to suggest; who have done us the kindness; about which (or whom) we have the honor to write; to lay before the reader; as we will endeavor to show; as we will take it upon ourselves to demonstrate; as the reader is now aware; with our readers' kind indulgence; and consequently; with regard to; concerning the matter of; and we are at a loss to understand.

  A sentence such as "We will omit the list entirely, confident that the reader is missing nothing of any importance by the omission" can't really be cultivated, being entirely too particular and memorable to be used more than once in the same lifetime; but if you reach the point where you can construct equivalent sentences of your own, you may with some justice consider yourself to have achieved a certain degree of mastery.

  7. A turn of phrase that must be used judiciously:

  The reader will undoubtedly have noticed

  The astute reader will have observed, no doubt,

  As the reader will, no doubt, have deduced,

  As the reader has no doubt surmised,

  As the reader no doubt realized some time ago,

  Although the reader can, no doubt, form whatever conclusions he wishes.

  There are of course other variants. Generally speaking, when Paarfi says the reader will undoubtedly have noticed something, it's either because he's about to repeat some piece of information which was mentioned earlier, or because he wishes to draw attention to some implication or consequence that the reader would doubtless have noticed on his own if he'd thought about it, but then again might have missed, which would be a pity.

  Some of the more captious and demanding critics might deplore these small reminders as superfluous or excessively obvious; but in truth they are a great help to readers who are trying to follow such a lively and complicated story, and who would rather concentrate on the interesting events going on, than soberly store up each small fact against possible future need, and dutifully examine each sentence for all its possible implications.

  8. Only Khaavren, and later his son Piro, use "Cha!" as an exclamation. Any characters may say "Bah!" on occasion, but Tazendra says it oftener. "Blood of the horse!" is an oath properly used only by those present for the stirring events at the non-battle of Pepperfields.

  9. Another phrase that requires special handling is, The reader will permit us to say two words about—. The convention to be observed here is that neither Paarfi nor anyone else ever stops at two, though most speakers come closer to that modest number than Paarfi does.

  Say two words about is a Dragaeran idiom, equivalent to our "say a few words about." Note that this is slightly different from the equally idiomatic two words and say two words to, which are better understood to mean what we would express as "(I would like to) have a word with (you/him/them)," sometimes shading over into what we would refer to as "my two cents' worth."

  10. It is not enough to use run-on sentences; they must also parse. Consider this 138-word three-sentence specimen from Paarfi's preface to The Phoenix Guards:

  But should he who holds the present sketchpad of words in his hands wonder how it came to occupy such a place, we should explain that it was one of our notebooks while we were preparing for the longer work mentioned above. Yet Master Vrei, who happened to see the notebook one day while we discussed the volumes in question, and read it on the spot, announced that, by itself, it would, if not provide an accurate look at certain aspects of court life before the Interregnum, at least be a possible source of, in his words, "enlightened entertainment." It was with this in mind that, for the past twenty-one years, we have had the honor of refining, or, if we are permitted, "honing" the notebook, and preparing it for the publication we humbly hope it merits.

  You have to be orderly when you pile up that many clauses at once; otherwise they'll fall over.

  11. If you are in doubt as to the appropriate tone, politeness and gratitude for past favors are always a good fallback position. This should not be mistaken for natural humility of character. Neither should Paarfi's absence of levity be mistaken for the lack of a sense of humor. Consider his description of a swordmaker's cellar shop as "… a small, stuffy basement, which would have been damp, smelly, close, and dark, were it not, in fact, well-lit, which prevented it from being dark."

  12. Bear in mind, at all times and in all circumstances, whatever the subject under discussion—be it never so dear to your heart, and worthy of thoughtful consideration at far greater length than that to which you are regretfully obliged to constrain it—that conciseness is a virtue of such paramount importance that neither Paarfi nor the present writer would ever dream of relinquishing it, even for a moment; bearing in mind as well, that the related and yet not wholly identical temptation to entangle both the narrative and the reader in a thousand branching paths of digression, from which initially attractive yet ultimately fruitless byways (like those deceptively promising mountain trails which, when followed, gradually diminish to faint and narrow tracks and thence to mere nothingness, leaving the traveler stranded at some spot deserted by humanity not through whim or chance, but justly, on account of its intrinsic lack of any interest whatsoever) one may only with great difficulty find one's way back to the main thread, must also be sternly avoided.

  Every time you explain this point to the reader, follow it with a firmly worded assurance that t
hat is exactly what you intend to do. Believe yourself when you say it.

  13. We have by now passed out of the territory of simple linguistics, and into the art of thinking like a Paarfi. The single most significant fact about him is that he set out to be a historian, not a novelist, but his milieu has little use for historians as such. It is therefore not an unmixed blessing for him that his patroness, publisher, translator, and enthusiastic readers are all fans of historical romance; but writers as a class get few enough blessings of any sort, and are inclined to take what they can get.

  What we take to be his books—The Phoenix Guards, Five Hundred Years After, and The Viscount of Adrilankha, in the first volume of which, The Paths of the Dead, this essay has the honor to be included—should be understood to be mere notebooks, sketches for the much longer and much more serious work of real history he has in contemplation. Thus, to Paarfi's way of thinking, he has left out 90% of the details: a veritable saint of brevity.

  14. Paarfi's background as a historian, as opposed to a writer of entertaining romances, may also explain why he periodically, and laboriously, feels obliged to explain matters any novelist would take for granted. See, for example, the opening section of Chapter the Sixth of the very volume which you now hold in your hands, and which we therefore need not quote.

  15. An underappreciated point, which was ably discussed in the Dean of Pamlar University's preface to Five Hundred Years After, is that Paarfi's rendering and Steven Brust's translation of Dragaeran speech is actually shorter, faster-moving, and less archaic than the language spoken by the characters. As the estimable Dean put it:

  In the interest of accuracy it must be admitted that one aspect of our author's depiction of these events is not, in fact, strictly in accordance with the actual practice of the times. The mode of speech employed by those at court, and by Khaavren and his friends as well, in casual discussions or when leading up to speeches actually recorded in history, does not represent, so far as can be determined, any actual mode of speech, past or present. It is taken from a popular anonymous play of the period, Redwreath and Goldstar Have Traveled to Deathsgate, where it is found in a game played by the principals to ward off unwanted inquiries. The proof of this is the exclamation of one of their executioners at the end of the play, "The Dog! I think I have been asking for nothing else for an hour!" This, or similar exclamations, are used several times in The Phoenix Guards, and more often in the book you now hold, to indicate that the time for empty courtesy is over.

  But in the subtleties of its employment, the gradations of consciousness with which it is used, the precise timing of its terminations, this mode of speech does in fact give very much the flavor of the old court talk without that speech's tediousness or outmoded expressions: it is a successful translation that does not distort anything of significance to anybody except a linguist.

  Once again, we must understand that when Paarfi proclaims his undying commitment to brevity in prose, he is telling the truth. Those inclined to doubt this are invited to examine references in the text which mention the amount of time consumed by a given conversation. Note that in some instances the allotted time is far longer than can be accounted for by the words on the page.

  16. Be aware that what may appear to be errors are almost certainly intentional, the result of Paarfi and Brust trying to cope with nearly untranslatable circumstance. For instance, the mixing of feet, inches, yards, miles, meters, centimeters, kilometers, leagues, and furlongs is an attempt to convey the complexity of an Empire in which six different systems of measurement were used simultaneously.

  17. Finally, in order to write like Paarfi, or for that matter like any other Dragaeran, you have to thoroughly internalize the Cycle, the Houses, and the number 17.

  * * * *

  How to Write Like Steven Brust

  Basics: Steven Brust's ethnic background is Hungarian Trotskyist labor organizer. He's from Minnesota, but right now is living in Las Vegas, where he plays a lot of poker. He's also a guitarist, banjo player, and drummer. He owns a parrot named Doc, and answers the phone by saying "I'm your huckleberry"—unless you manage to wake him before noon, in which case he says "This had better be good." The Paths of the Dead is either his nineteenth book, or The Viscount of Adrilankha is his nineteenth book and The Paths of the Dead is the first third of it.

  Steve has two theories about literature, and one set of instructions on how to write it.

  First theory: "The Cool Stuff Theory of Literature is as follows: All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. And that works all the way from the external trappings to the level of metaphor, subtext, and the way one uses words. In other words, I happen not to think that full-plate armor and great big honking greatswords are cool. I don't like 'em. I like cloaks and rapiers. So I write stories with a lot of cloaks and rapiers in 'em, 'cause that's cool."

  Second theory: "The novel should be understood as a structure built to accommodate the greatest possible amount of cool stuff."

  How to write like Steven Brust: "It's really simple. What you do is put up a sign on whatever wall you face when you're writing. The sign says: And now, I'm going to tell you something really cool."*

  Steve says it works for him.

  * * * *

  *Steve adds that he got that last one from Gene Wolfe. As a perusal of Wolfe's many fine works will demonstrate, this method works for him, too. You may therefore be confident that you now know how to write like all three of these excellent authors, Paarfi and Brust and Wolfe as well; so if it happens that your ambitions lie in that direction, you must concede that purchasing and reading this book was a sound investment of your time and money.