NotW: Overview: I Never Meta-Story I didn't like....

"The Name of the Wind" and "A Wise Man's Fear" are stories about stories that are about stories themselves. It is a Meta-meta-meta-meta-story.

I guess that makes this Blog a Meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-story.

We have a frame. In the frame, there is a certain reality that appears to be in some parts at odds with the story Kote/Kvothe is relaying. Within both the frame and Kote's/Kvothe's story, we have more stories. and some of them contain stories within the story as well. Some of the stories we meet lend their bones to the fleshing out of other stories.
These books are really an exploration of how stories start, embellish and spread. It's about the inside edges of the stories we tell. Those parts that look substantial, but are filled with unknowns.
Above all, it's a story about how mundane the original story may actually be.

The other thing this is about touches on that inside edge of the map again: It's about Caesura.
It's about the space between and throughout; the silence that jarringly breaks the poem; the unknown empty spaces on the map; the break in a story that leaves us wondering the circumstances of a shipwreck or a court case won; the stunning absence from all records of big and important things like Chandrians and Amyrs; the jarring break in the career of a hero that momentarily leaves him not fully the man of legend.
Watch for these breaks and spaces and silences. And remember that they are just as substantial to the story being told as the invisible wind.

A final thought as we head into the books proper: this book is also about the sleeping mind. Remember as you grope and grapple with what it all means that understanding it is not the grand prize. That's just the door prize. To speak the name of the Wind (or anything) you must "get" what it is completely exactly the way it is all the way down to it's core, and have that awareness land all the way down to your core. It's a wonder such a thing can be put into words at all!
So if you don't think you are understanding any of this, stop trying so hard! Stop thinking, and just try being aware. Then maybe the sleeping mind can speak it's name to you too.