A brief note on the Terry Goodkind heart letter

[androlf]

Several years ago, another fan mentioned to me on Reddit that Goodkind once mocked Jordan for his amyloidosis and I later saw Daniel Greene also make this claim. Like many who were told this, I pretty much accepted this (though IIRC I did do a little verification first) and began repeating it to others.

 

I aspire to be a male counterpart to Morvrin Thakanos when it comes to verification of facts. So last year, I hesitated to make a meme based on this distasteful factoid and decided to properly vet the claim first. I found various important posts relevant to the subject. Most notably this included Rob "mystar" Wilson's 2006-6-3 post on sffworld, and of course Robert Jordan's 2007-8-22 blog post right here on Dragonmount. But I couldn't track down the original letter and of course had to wade through a sea of fans repeating the conclusion without the sources (or with only indirect sources). So I gave up.

 

For completeness' sake, here is the content of Rob "mystar" Wilson's 2006-6-3 post, absent the now-unavailable picture he attached:

Quote

To bring you up to speed.

Locust Mag has broken the story of Terry recent surgery, So Terry faxed me this letter to share with his fans.
Terry wanted to make sure that no one got the wrong information, in a world where wild speculation runs rampant.


Some people here are already aware, but Yes Terry has had some surgery.

He is doing fine! We kept this under wraps to keep wild rumor and wild speculation out of the media.

I was with Terry & Jeri to support them while Terry was to undergo this procedure. It was easy, fast and Terry came through with flying colors. I can attest to the fact that Terry did great and is doing great!

Yes, he had open-heart surgery, but it was a very short surgery and they didn't have to stop his heart.

BUT!!! I did my BEST to pry out a few tidbits of the ending...
~sighs~
It didn't work!...lol.... He was onto me!

He mumbled something about killing everyone in a big fireball and only Betty survives...

Then cracked a grin....

Yesterday, on one of the ~40 WoT Discord servers I'm in, the subject of Goodkind and The Sword of Truth came up with someone who just finished their first read, which naturally led to someone else repeating this claim. This nerd-sniped me back into this particular rabbithole and I made a few discoveries. First, I found @Sirayn's 2009-11-29 post here on Dragonmount. It's an excellent post - my conclusions here don't differ massively from... hers? Between her small quotes from Goodkind's letter, some pointers in a discussion on the Dragonmount Discord from @ThomasShriver (Light, I hope that's the right Thomas) and @SinisterDeath, and the footnote on a 2011 Theoryland entry, I finally managed to track down the original content of Goodkind's letter (presuming that this letter posted to Goodkind's website on 2006-6-2 is the very same letter Wilson posted to sffworld on 2006-6-3, which seems a safe enough assumption even for Morvrin).

 

Now, to the purpose of this post.

 

First, to reproduce Goodkind's letter in a more public place than the Wayback Machine's 2006-7-10 archive, since posts like Sirayn's generally point to the sffworld post, which no longer contains the picture of the letter, and since web searches usually don't yield WM results:

 

Quote

Dear Readers,

 

I would like to let you all know that doctors recently discovered that I had a potentially fatal defect in the major artery that supplies blood to my heart. The performed surgery – called a “beating heart” procedure, because they don’t have to stop the heart – and corrected the problem. The surgeon said that I have no heart disease of any kind and that in fact my heart looks like “the heart of a twenty-year old.” He said that he held my heart in his hands and can tell me first hand that I have a great heart and will have no further problem. He said it was a pleasure to operate on a healthy patient for a change.

I’m recovering quickly from the operation and will be as good as new in a short time. None of this has any effect on PHANTOM coming out July 18th, or on any of my many future books. My heartfelt thanks for all the wishes I’ve received for a speedy recovery. Rest assured, everything has been fixed, I’m doing great, and I’m now perfectly healthy. Life is good.

All the best,
Terry Goodkind.

 

Second, to re-iterate Sirayn's conclusion that "It's difficult to positively confirm whether Goodkind was making a dig at Jordan, in that letter or via another medium."

 

Third, to state my personal opinion that Jordan was likely (though not certainly) mistaken in his interpretation of the letter as a dig at himself, perhaps due to preconceptions towards the letter by whomever brought it to his attention (his response came over a year later) (unless Jordan was operating on other knowledge I do not have awareness of, which seems mildly unlikely but very plausible). The full context of the letter includes Goodkind's [relatively minor] health scare and whatever Locus magazine announcement Rob Wilson was citing as the impetus for his post (presumably in Locus #544 from the previous month, which I've been unable to track down, or maybe #545, though I think that was published later that month). Given that context, Goodkind's letter does not seem to come out of nowhere, and seems instead to be an earnest attempt to reassure his own fans as to the state of his health at the time. (However, it is obviously very understandable why Jordan may have misinterpreted things.)

 

Fourth, to offer my humble advice that people refrain from repeating as fact the claim that Goodkind mocked Jordan for his amyloidosis. By all means, mock the man; he was certainly pretentious enough and by all accounts had many failings. I myself strongly agree with the zeitgeist that at least some elements in The Sword of Truth were lifted from The Wheel of Time. For example, the Stone of Tear[s], magic collars specifically for enslaving magic users, male magic users being "oppressed" by an order of female magic users, etc. (Even though various others may have been coincidences [such as the similarity between the red rod ter'angreal and the Mord-Sith Agiel, or Rand and Richard both having desert rulers for biological fathers, common tropes ["Creators"], etc.) But one should not assert as fact unprovable claims about people, no matter how objectionable those people may be.

 

Apologies for the long wind, which definitely did not arise in the Mountains of Mist,

Androlf aka Matdrolf aka ncsuandrew12

P.S. Please don't misread this as a defense of Goodkind (or The Sword of Truth) in general, nor as an attack on Robert Jordan. I know which of the two I'd prefer to have met, and it'd definitely have to be the one with the Dragon gates that I took my four-year-old son to see.

P.P.S. My IRL name is Andrew F; feel free to say hi at JordanCon next month. I'll be the tall white guy with bifocals and a (non-knife) scar on my upper lip.

P.P.P.S. Apologies that the title ended up being so very, very wrong, but fans of Robert Jordan are accustomed to actual product vastly exceeding the length that was initially promised.

P.P.P.P.S. Another claim I've run across is that Goodkind made some comment with respect to Jordan's amyloidosis at a convention, but that has obviously been much harder to source, and isn't nearly as widespread.

Edited 8 hours ago by androlf
postscripts, grammar, formatting