Gene Wolfe appreciation thread

Cafe Society
1

I’m just coming to the end of Gene Wolfe’s The Knight, and have to say Wow! Old Gene can still work the magic! I’ve read all of his books with the exception of the very latest stuff, and he is probably the only writer who I have enjoyed equally as a kid and as an adult. That makes him a special writer for me, one of my favourites.

He is probably the most critically lauded author on the SF/fantasy bookshelves over the past twenty years. Do you agree? If not, who is better? More pertinently, GW must be getting on a bit, who is going to step into his shoes? I have issues with people going way over the top in their praise of GW (more of which later), but I would basically agree that there is no SF/fantasy writer who has maintained his consistently high standard of work over such a long time period.

Interested to see people on Amazon declaring The Knight to be a return to form for GW. I don’t see it like that, I think he has been writing at the same high level for years, people are probably just glad to see a change of direction after the long/short sun books. If there was a dip in form for him I would say it was with the book of the long sun. Great fun as always, but a bit light weight towards the end. I rated the Short sun books far higher due to Horn’s character, brilliantly drawn IMO.

Its a crafty move writing The Kinght as a tale for young adults. By paring the prose right down to such a basic level, he somehow manages to construct an even more opaque and confusing story than usual.

Lest this turn in to a Wolfe eulogy, I’ll mix in some negativity. His reviewers are starting to piss me off. Although he is one of my favourite authors, I wouldn’t argue that he is vastly over-rated in reviews.

Check out Michael Swanick’s review here

Every GW book I own lists quotes on the back that proclaim him to be one of the world’s best writers. This is moronic on a number of levels. What does “best writer in the world” mean anyhow? It sounds like a primary school child reviewing the latest Harry Potter: “JK Rowling is the best writer in the world ever because she wirtes about dragons and quidditch and trolls and I really liked it”. A review of Thomas Pynchon’s next novel proclaiming him to be the greatest writer in the world would sound foolish, let alone GW. It is also just plain wrong. He is very very good - unique style, beautiful imagination, deep structure to his books; but there is simply no way he can be compared to today’s literary heavyweights. Why do reviewers feel the need to do this in any case? Gene Wolfe is great, therefore I must compare him to Cormac McCarthey.

There is good reason why genre writers aren’t considered in the same breath as “serious” writers of fiction; most of them are rubbish. For the select few like GW who really can write this is very unfair, but it is presumably something he has no problem with. If it was, he would have levered himself out of the SF/fantasy ghetto long ago. Lets just celebrate his work on its own terms. :slight_smile:

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I don’t know if anyone is better. :slight_smile:

I’ve read The Book of the New Sun books, and about half of The Knight. I agree that he’s the “most critically lauded author” and that he’s brilliant.

But based on the little bit of him that I’ve read, he’s not who I reach for when I want to connect with characters and story. I admire him and am dazzled by his writing and his ideas, but sometimes I just want to connect.

For that, I reach for George R. R. Martin, Guy Gavriel Kay, and (just lately) Robin Hobb.

If I want to be challenged a bit more, I’ll read Wolfe, and Lucius Shepard.

3

I’ve never read George Martin, but he seems to be highly regarded - classic fantasy but with realistic character development right?. I’m looking at his Song of Fire and Ice series on Amazon and people are going crazy over it, I’d like to read it.

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I loved almost everything Wolfe wrote in the first half of his career, but I haven’t liked his style since the days of The Book of the New Sun. The writing is still brilliant on a sentence by sentence level but his worlds gray before my eyes over hundreds of pages.

Who is better? Ursula K. Le Guin is better and has maintained her level for a longer period.

Of the younger crowd. Neal Stephenson is a terrific writer. John Crowley is a terrific writer. There are lots of new writers still working in short stories who are as good or better than Wolfe. Few people outside the field know their names. Here’s a review of Conjunctions:39, a literary magazine that did an sf issue by collecting many of the top young literary writers in sf, along with some older names. (Note the comments on Wolfe, BTW.) Kelly Link, Andy Duncan, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Hand are all terrific writers. Not in that volume: Paul DiFilippo, Bruce Rogers Holland, Lucius Shepard. There have to be dozens more that I’m not thinking of.

Why don’t you know their names? Because they can’t sell their novels in a climate in which movie tie-ins, military sf, faux Tolkien, and vampire fiction dominate the market. Wolfe and Le Guin can sell because they got established decades ago. If they were breaking in today they would not be able to sell anything longer than a short story. There is no market for literary writing in American sf. The Brits may be making one, but their market is wholly different and seldom translate into American sales, Rowling and Pratchett notwithstanding.

But I can tell you the reason why reviewers say things like “greatest writer.” That’s the critical equivalent of the 2x4 to the head of the mule: without saying things as extreme as that nobody will pay any attention. It’s the same as grade inflation. A mere “A” doesn’t mean anything. Saying that a writer is good is damning with faint praise. It’s what you would use in a letter of recommendation to warn the reader that the guy is a stiff without getting yourself into legal trouble. One of the world’s best, though, has to be paid attention to.

5

I’m currently reading the Book of the New Sun for the second time and have read:

  • The Urth of the New Sun
  • The Book of the Long Sun
  • The Book of the Short Sun
  • The Knight / The Wizard
  • Latro in the Mist
  • The Fifth Head of Cerberus
  • the non-fiction parts of Castle of Days
  • There are Doors

So…I consider myself rather well-schooled in his books. In general, I’m not a fan of short stories, but I do own a few of his collections.

I’ve yet to read a fantasy or science fiction author that I’d put on par with Wolfe…most seem inclined toward hitting you over the head (repeatedly!) with information that should be inferrable from the context of the story. Perhaps that’s due to the adolescent audience most SF&F publishers are targeting. Wolfe will infer something once or drop a piece of pivotal information in passing and then rely on your attention and memory to piece his clues together. His best works are told in first person by a usually unrealiable narrator, and he is quite adept at timing his narrator’s revelations with your own. He’s also quite good at making the familiar feel alien.

My other favorite SF&F authors are Stephen R. Donaldson and Julian May.

George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire has been an entertaining read so far, but I worry that his story is starting to drift ala Robert Jordan’s meandering epic The Wheel of Time. Martin is a clever storyteller with a penchant for breaking the rules we’ve come to expect from our fantasy novels. That alone is quite refreshing…sort of a 21st century updating of the genre.

6

Yeah, people are crazy for it. Martin’s been around for a long time. He also writes SF and horror. I’m not sure how “good” his writing is, compared to literary types like Wolfe and Shepard, but he’s great at pace, plot, and dialogue.

His characters are interesting. They’ve gone from black and white to shades of gray, and he’s not afraid to kill off someone you like.

7

Strangely, I’ve never read Wolfe, and I don’t really know much about him.

I don’t like SF, but I do like fantasy. I like complex characters and worlds. I don’t like unremittingly dark stories. Some of my current favorites:

Greg Keyes’s Kingdom of Thorn and Bone
Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Trilogy
Chaz Brenchley’s Outremer books
Would I like Wolfe?

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I’m surprised by the numerous comparisons between Wolfe and Martin. I don’t see any simularities other than the obvious one that they are both popular SF authors. If I were to make a comparison to George R.R. Martin, I’d pick Joe Haldeman.

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I’ve read the Book of the New Sun series, and Peace. While I think both are well written (in a use of language sense), I don’t think he shows special genius with these offerings. My guess is, at least in these books, he is too focused on the game he is playing with the reader, his story telling and characters both tend to suffer in order to allow him to make some obscure reference.

As to the praise, think of how you would tell someone that a book is worth reading, and they should go out and buy it.

I’d also say that great, “literate” genre writers are proportional to the number of great , “literate” writes from the mainstream. To name one who hasn’t been mentioned in thread yet, Dan Simmons.

10

I admit it.
I have never read a Wolfe because I dislike the cover graphics. :stuck_out_tongue:

11

I haven’t read Keyes or Brenchley, but I finished Abhorsen a few weeks ago (loved it). I wouldn’t recommend Wolfe to a Nix fan, at least not in the sense that “If you like ----, then I think you’d like -----.”

I agree with Redwing, about Wolfe’s deliberate obscurity. It can be offputting.

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I’m interested to see that you’re identifying a change in style for GW over the years. I definitely percieve the Book of the New Sun to have been written in a far more expansive, richer prose stlye than he currently employs. Hard for me to say for sure, as I have never re-read the books, but his more recent stuff really seems to gallop along relative to the controlled pace I remember from his earlier work.
I know what you mean wrt his worlds greying before your eyes.
You mention some great writers, John Crowley in particular (last I heard he had published a straight fiction novel?). So I am more than surprised to hear you rate Le Guin so highly. When was the last time she wrote a good book, 1975? That is an honest question btw, I am far from a Le Guin completist but the post 1970s stuff I have picked up has been mediocre.

13

Your last point really hits the nail on the head for me with GW, the way everything always feels out of kilter, reinforced by the hyper-realistic dialogue his characters use. This is probably why I can never put his books down, there is a constant feeling that the text you are reading is vitally important to the story! A related topic is his pacing of the narrative, which is so wildly uneven as to be in a world of its own. Momentous events are often summed up in a few sentances, or in hindsight, which can be quite discombobulating. This is not a criticism, I think it is a vital component of his style.