Robert Jordan (Author Deep Dive)

James Oliver Rigney aka by his writing pseudonym Robert Jordan one of the most influential fantasy authors to ever live is going to be the focus of this author deep dive now I actually put off doing the Robert Jordan author deep dive for a little bit because I wanted to perfect these deep dives before I took on my personal favorite fantasy author and you know honestly just author of all time so I've done Brandon Sanderson I've done Tolkien both of those will be linked in the description down below as well as sources for pretty much all the information I'm going to talk about here there is a lot of misinformation about Robert Jordan online legitimately a shocking amount so I pulled from interviews where he himself confirms almost everything I'm going to be talking about in this video because I do not want to help pedal misconceptions about the man behind the wheel of time that being said let's go ahead and jump into the author deep dive of James Oliver Rigney jr. born in Charleston South Carolina James was noted to be incredibly telogen and curious child I could not find too much about his early life up until his service in Vietnam something he briefly touched on in several interviews and has written about in some blog posts he served during Vietnam as a helicopter gunner and after that service was complete he worked as a sergeant who trained new recruits during his service he earned a flying cross a Bronze Star and two Vietnamese crosses his Wikipedia page has a couple other metals as well but during an interview where he was asked about this he specifically only mentioned these awards so I'm only going to mention the ones that came out of directly from this interview after his military service was complete James Oliver Ramey decided to attend a military college in South Carolina homeboy liked his home state I can't blame him both the Carolinas are wonderful he majored in physics and after graduating served the Navy as a nuclear engineer I did not know that or see that coming Wow during this time though he also began writing now he wrote under several different pseudonyms we will go over most of them now though some of them I could not find what they actually were and he also had a couple noted ghost writings of works that are out there and popular that he actually ghost wrote for other authors so you could have read another Robert Jordan book and not even known it most notably he did write several of the best received and well-known Conan stories he wrote a historical fiction series under the pseudonym Regan O'Neal and he wrote a Western under the pseudonym Jack O'Reilly but all of this leads up to his greatest success The Wheel of Time now I'm not going to claim it as the definitive best but many reputable sources online have been quoted saying that The Wheel of Time is truly America's greatest fantasy series and it's hard to think of others that can come in contention The Wheel of Time is noted for its cultural diversity and depth the incredibly complex hard and soft magic systems that exist within it and having some of the greatest characters ever crafted in the fantasy genre and maybe just crafted ever and I actually found from Robert Jordans mouth himself how long the Wheel of Time was originally supposed to be because I myself up until recently did not know the right number and there's so many different numbers thrown around online people saying it was originally gonna be 10 to 3 to 20 it didn't even up being 20 but from Robert Jordan in an interview he himself has said he originally planned the series to be four or five books now there is often a rumor thrown around that he originally lied to his publisher and always planned for it to be ten books and only said three or four at the beginning to get published I myself actually believe that up until this research that is not true it was just four or five at the beginning and kind of expanded from there now I cannot talk about The Wheel of Time and Robert Jordans creation of it without mentioning the fact that he unfortunately was unable to finish the series on March 23rd 2006 Robert Jordan disclosed in the statement that he had been diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis and that with his treatment his life expectancy was only to be about four years though he said he wanted to beat these statistics and post it on his dragon mountain vlog that he intended to live a long happy and creative life he passed in September 2007 now since then there have been multiple donations add up in Robert Jordans name to help donate to fight the illness that killed him including the convention around the wheel of Tom Jordan Kahn which donates every year to help fight this illness and I will link down below to the same foundation that Jordan Kahn uses if you'd like to donate yourself the waves of his death were pretty much felt throughout the fantasy community many authors put posts on their blogs or released statements saying how much Robert Jordan influenced their life how impactful his writing was on their own this includes from names like george RR martin who said he did not think his books might have even found their audience without Robert Jordans review on his first book and of course the famous blog post Brandon Sanderson put out that was later read by Robert Jordans widow Harriet's and got him hired to finish the series Brandon Sanderson did go on to finish the Wheel of Time series too much critical praise but we will go back to focusing on Robert Jordan himself by shifting over to the criticisms he often faced as a writer some of these I believe are unfair and some fair we're gonna focus on the fair criticisms first though because there's a couple that even his most die-hard fans will admit the day a little bit Robert Jordan is accused of being overly descriptive at times yep as well as his series length being off-putting to many readers and while I personally love the length of the series because it just means more content I get how it could definitely put off a larger audience from picking up the books 14 books plus a one-off prequel is a lot and there's also quite a bit of talk and fantasy circles online where they seem to dismiss the Wheel of Time for being not a grim dark and well I believe that is accurate that's a modern current trend and I don't believe something that you can criticize the Wheel of Time for because it's not what he set out to write this is often used as a way to put down Wheel of Time okay and it's not like The Wheel of Time shiz away from having some more grim dark times whatever moving on and I guess that allows me to transition into what I believe the not fair criticisms are mainly focusing on around his portrayal of women and gender within the Wheel of Time series Robert Jordan gave his female characters a lot of agency and a lot of character and ability to solve their own problems we very rarely see the damsel in distress and they're off doing their own badassery I believe and many other fans agree with me this results in quite a bit of people having issue with that breaking away from the fantasy trope of having the woman in desperate need of saving from the strong male protagonists Robert Jordan was certainly ahead of his time for this and as time has gone on this criticism has died down more and more as the expectation of having strong female characters who solved their own problems are not reliant on men and becomes more common and accepted as you know normal but to the people who still say things like 9 Eve is a I recommend you look at character motivations and understanding of why people behave the way they do because 9 Eve in her mind and with the information she is given is completely justified and how concerned and worried she is at the first third of the series and there's one last criticism I feel is unfair where people say his world is too large and this is connected yet I think separate enough from series too long to actually be not warranted I get not liking the length of the series but the world being too large is entirely different and I feel kind of just wrong again this is something he set out to do and he did it extraordinarily well if you do not like big world's great but tying that into a criticism and saying it is bad I find to be a little wrong that's like saying the Sistine Chapel is bad because it is a big painting and hard to memorize the entire bit I think that is an incorrect way to view the artwork that is the Wheel of Time understand that what the author wanted to set out to do he accomplished with great success in fact his world is what I find to be the most admirable part of the Wheel of Time the cultural depth in my opinion has yet to be reached again within the fantasy genre which this allows me to transition into Robert Jordans influence as an author it is difficult to find a modern fantasy author who does not list Robert Jordan as being one of their influences there are literally countless quotes floating around online from various interviews where other fantasy authors mentioned how impactful his writings are on what they do and I believe as we get further away from the completion of the wheel of time its influence will become clearer and clearer and increasing the amount of time authors take for character arcs and evolution and cultural depth within the fantasy genre and the final note I want to end this video on is that while I was doing this author deep dive I have found almost no negative words said about Robert Jordan or his real name James Oliver Rigney jr. everyone who met him and worked with him just had pretty much positive things to say about his character and how he treated others he seemed like a genuinely incredibly nice man who just wanted to talk with his fans and engage and be a positive influence on the world his books changed my life forever they're why this community exists they're why this channel exists I mean up until recently my number one video was me doing an in-depth review of his entire series and I'm going through again and talking about all of his books very slowly but I am he also changed millions of other readers lives as people just became obsessed and in love with his world I am currently sharing the Wheel of Time with my dad as he has started a memory of light this month and I will be grateful forever for that I look forward to seeing a lot of you at Jordan Con this year and celebrating and talking about my favorite author of all time Robert Jordan thank you guys so much for watching the video like and subscribe if you enjoyed and hit the patreon gonna support what I do here every dollar means a lot and let me know in the comments down below if you will be a Jordan con because I'm so psyched and pumped to meet you have a good one [Music]

Channel: Daniel Greene

Views: 46,639

Keywords: robert jordan, james oliver rigney jr, the wheel of time, author deep dive, robert jordan life, robert jordan bio, the wheel of time robert jorda

Id: 8NsH7TGktko

Length: 10min 57sec (657 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2019