# Gene Wolfe has put a spell on me. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 27, 2004, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gene-wolfe-has-put-a-spell-on-me/236695 "2004-03-27T05:22:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![NE\_Texan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e99b99/32.png) [@NE\_Texan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NE_Texan)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gene-wolfe-has-put-a-spell-on-me/236695/1 "2004-03-27T05:22:51Z")
Gene Wolfe has mesmerized me. I really should know better - I’ve been a Wolfe junkie before. But there I was in a bookstore, again, and there it was… Sitting innocently on a bottom shelf, ready to bite my ankle… A hardback with a glossy black cover bearing the rather trite name of “_The Knight_”. I already have two books sitting, waiting to be read, from my local used book store. So I really didn’t need another book. But I was in a bookstore, so I looked around. And it snuck up on me. Oh, what the heck, I thought. I’ll read a few pages, and I’ll know if I want to buy it when it comes out in paperback. I should have known then I was deluding myself. Wolfe is, after all, on my “buy unseen” list, and there was no doubt I would buy a paperback from him. This was merely a weak rationalization to give in to my addiction, open the cover, and begin. And he put a spell on me. It should be illegal. In a scant few pages, with only tantalizing hints of the setting, and an informal first-person conversational style from a clearly unreliable narrator, I was hooked. I read three chapters before putting it down. It was time to go. Then I walked back and picked it up again. Perhaps it was the charming parallels between his setting and our myths, twisted to not only make them new, but also reflect something back at us - something that isn’t pretty. No, I told myself, it was just that I should reshelve the book. I did so, and walked away again. And came back. They had two copies, after all. Enough that I needn’t feel guilty taking the last one, but few enough that they might run out. Now, understand this, I just don’t buy hardback books. I wait for the paperback. Perhaps it was the main character - likeable, innocent, and yet with a savage undertone that tells you he doesn’t have the experience to feel guilt over the violence he will inflict. I couldn’t set it down a third time. I bought it. Not because I wanted to, you understand. In fact, I felt guilty, as if I were somehow cheating on the two books I had at home by buying this third one before reading them. Jilting the old, used paperbacks for a younger model. Not a sleek thin one, either, but a hefty, cover filling, attractive one with some meat on it. That almost freed me of the book. But one of the books at home was by Steven Brust, and the Wolfe book had a recommendation from Brust on the cover: “I believe I’ll spend the rest of my life here.” I knew then, that they wouldn’t mind, they would welcome the new book like a younger sister. My last resistance was worn down. I took it to the checkout and paid, as I never do, for the hardback. Because Gene Wolfe put a spell on me. Again. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gene-wolfe-has-put-a-spell-on-me/236695/2 "2004-03-27T05:58:46Z")
_imagines Gene Wolfe in full Screamin’ Jay Hawkins outfit, screaming “I put a spell on you!”_ ---
**Author:** ![NE\_Texan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e99b99/32.png) [@NE\_Texan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NE_Texan)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gene-wolfe-has-put-a-spell-on-me/236695/3 "2004-03-27T06:09:49Z")
Well, I was thinking Fogerty/CCR, but I can’t fault you for picturing Hawkins. “I ain’t gonna take gonna take none of your putting me down”. Okay, okay already, I’ll pick the book up and continue. Geeze, let me get off the net first. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gene-wolfe-has-put-a-spell-on-me/236695/4 "2004-03-27T06:18:49Z")
> [@NE Texan](#): > > Well, I was thinking Fogerty/CCR, but I can’t fault you for picturing Hawkins. > > “I ain’t gonna take gonna take none of your putting me down”. > > Okay, okay already, I’ll pick the book up and continue. Geeze, let me get off the net first. Well, the only thing version I can think of that would be _more_ incongruously hilarious is Nina Simone’s. And I’d rather not think of a cross-dressing Gene Wolfe in blackface, thankyewverymuch… ---
**Author:** ![NE\_Texan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e99b99/32.png) [@NE\_Texan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NE_Texan)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gene-wolfe-has-put-a-spell-on-me/236695/5 "2004-03-27T12:27:05Z")
When you mentioned “blackface”, I immediately thought of Severian’s torturer mask before thinking about what you really meant. Now I have this image of Severian singing “I put a spell on you”… and it’s creeping me out. ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gene-wolfe-has-put-a-spell-on-me/236695/6 "2004-03-27T13:26:50Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] Well, the only thing version I can think of that would be _more_ incongruously hilarious is Nina Simone’s.QUOTE] Let’s not forget Jason Bateman in _Gene Wolfe Too_! ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gene-wolfe-has-put-a-spell-on-me/236695/7 "2004-03-27T15:00:17Z")
Are we talking about the _New Sun_ books here (because if we are, I understand you completely). What’s this _Knight_? ---
**Author:** ![NE\_Texan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e99b99/32.png) [@NE\_Texan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NE_Texan)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gene-wolfe-has-put-a-spell-on-me/236695/8 "2004-03-27T15:59:46Z")
Nope, not the _New Sun_ books. Although they are a perfect example of the way that Wolfe puts a spell on his readers… (My comments about Severian were made from thinking about the _New Sun_ series, after **jayjay** ’s comment.) _The Knight_ is a new book from Gene Wolfe. (Mind control says, “go look for it - NOW!” Hey, stop that, Gene.) It’s out in hardback from TOR. Publication date is January 2004, so apparently I’ve been missing it for **TWO WHOLE MONTHS!** According to the notes in the book, it’s book one of _The Wizard Knight_, which will end in book two, predictably titled _The Wizard_. Here’s how it starts: A young American boy is left alone at his cabin by his older brother, who has watched him since his parents died. It’s not explicitly stated in the book (you know how Wolfe is), but it seems to me that he’s in his early teens, and I think he starts off developmentally disabled. He wanders off on his own, into Aelfrice (land of the Aelf, basically elves), gets transformed into an adult physically (but not emotionally), and put into a fantasy world. This sounds so formulaic when I write it here, but his world has really come alive, and he has wierd twists on everything. I can hardly put it down.