More on Gene Wolfe
Jason Kuznicki on Aug 16th 2006
Some follow-ups about The Book of the New Sun below the fold.
There’s a lively discussion still happening in the comments from my original post — as well as a second discussion at Prettier than Napoleon.
A reader and Wolfe fan also e-mails the following:
Via a series of links, I came across your post re: The Book of the New Sun. Although I am in partial agreement with you that Wolfe’s style can detract from his work, I would offer a brief defense of it in BotNS.
First, I think it’s worth pointing out that while occasionally it does look like Wolfe just wended his way through a thesaurus (going two or three connections deep), in most cases my sense is that he operated with a strong grasp of language, particularly Greek roots. (Mind you, it’s years since I’ve read the books, so I may be off in my assessment.)
Second, relatedly (as these points all should be), this is not a case of merely inventing gibberish words, but of giving neologisms anchored in, well, paleologisms. That moves it a step away from slithy toves. It’s also not a case of mere alteration of familiar words, as in shlock fantasy where elves become aelves or aelfkind or whatnot.
Third, I assume the intended effect of using real or at least genuinely “rooted” words is exactly what the effect seems to have been on you (and on me, when I read the books), which is to make you think you should know the words. They feel familiar but just out of reach. Because that feeling is so closely tied to the overall style of the novels, I don’t think it’s mere coincidence. Urth is Earth, of course, but it’s off, sometimes in ways that even the careful reader can never quite pierce (or, at least that was so for me). It’s our world but it’s also very alien. The language is also familiar but alien. The fact that some of the words we can deconstruct and thus get a handle on (monomachy or avern or alcalde or peltast) is consistent with the fact that some of the scenery can be understood through sufficient care. (Such as the moment when he’s looking at a picture of a man on the moon or other further stretches.) But just as some scenes defied (for me) conventional understanding (like the scene with the mirrors and the light and teleportation), no matter how detailed Severian’s explanations, so too are some of the words ultimately blind alleys.
Fourth, and finally, I think that given this parallel of language and mood — and given the frank impossibility of a reader knowing or being willing to track down even a fraction of the words — I assume that the reader is simply meant to let the words wash over him. (I should interject that I find Faulkner oftentimes unreadable and when people tell me to let his language wash over me, I get exasperated.) Read that way, you can track the action, but the scenes remain a bit of a swirling mess.
As for your question whether to finish the books, it’s impossible confidently to advise on that score. I read them first when I was in high school (freshman or sophomore year) and then again in college (junior year, I think), and really enjoyed them both times (the second time more than the first). I’m certain that at neither point was I as well-educated or thoughtful a reader as you are now. So as a mechanical matter, I’m sure you can get out of the books everything I did. But it’s possible that precisely your skill as a reader is now an impediment to enjoying the books. And why read something you’re not enjoying, especially if it’s not part of the major Western Canon or the subject of popular conversation? Even within the scifi / fantasy literati crowd, the books are probably not must-reads on the order of LeGuin, Asimov, Heinlein, Dick, etc., etc. If you do want to plow ahead, and want to know the words, I think I still have a text file that I downloaded a few years that defines almost all of the obscure words. If you want, I can send it along when I’m at my home PC.
Thanks for the interesting post.
Thanks for the feedback. I probably will read the rest of the series quite soon. It’s been a joy for me, in my time away from academics, that I now have the energy to read purely for fun on occasion. Mostly I’ve been doing this by getting deeper into the science fiction canon and taking on authors that are 1) not always so familiar to everyone and 2) solid, non-schlock literature.
So how does Wolfe really stack up, to my mind?
On the one hand, and apart from the thesaurusitis, I can’t help but suggest that writing “Urth” for “Earth” is indeed rather like substituting “Aelves” for “Elves.” And it seems clear to me that Wolfe indeed does have a bit of old-school schlockishness about the edges. In support of this, I might also note the titles of the individual volumes, which are cheesy; the stern warnings the narrator gives about continuing any further, which are just about as cheesy; and Jonas, an entire character whose preferred mode of speech seems to be the piteously strained proverb. Jonas, it’s worth noting, almost singlehandedly made me quit BotNS when he mentioned the butcher’s wife. Yuck.
But then again… when you compare Gene Wolfe to virtually any other sci-fi/fantasy writer out there, the guy really is in a class by himself. All of his other characters are indeed fascinating. And then there are the bits about the mirrors, the polychrome sand, the pilgrims, the Second House — The man has so many clever and thought-provoking ideas that I can easily forgive him when he stumbles. I do think he has more ambition than any other science fiction writer out there, and I admire that a lot.
I also think of all the second-rate authors I’ve encountered, of whom I’ve read, say, only the first volume of a series, or even just one short story, and then decided that I never wanted to read another word. There are a lot of them out there, more than I care to recall, and it often amazes me the ability of pure garbage to find its way into print. (It also embarrasses me, a little, when people recommend the stuff.) And when I think of these writers, well, cheesiness takes on a whole new dimension, and Wolfe just isn’t in it.
Filed in The Bookshelf
For what it’s worth, I’ll recommend you put Dan Simmon’s Ilium and Olympos in your sci-fi queue, unless you’ve read them.
I’m glad to hear you’ll continue with the books, and look forward to your thoughts on them. They gave me only more questions.
Your correspondent is correct that Wolfe knows his etymology. This is perhaps clearest in his Latro series, wherein almost all proper names are literal - or referential - translations from the Greek.
I am of the generation that feels if you are going to go world-building, or world-evolving, one needs to evolve one’s world. If Urth is another Earth, then let it be so, and develop this new realm as if it depended from the other. Thus, connections will exist, but as with all things, time and space shift them in kind. Language shift is a well-known phenomenon and can be tracked in only 200 years of the American dialect[s] alone. Wolfe copies his words direct, and this seems at odds with language shift and historical “re-writing” (which Dennis L. McKiernan also does — but in case one misses it, also J. R. R. Tolkein), which should attempt to retell a phrase or a word in a current context.
Now, my favorite fantasy writer is, and will always be, Tolkein, who’s style was to spend 40 years world building, and THEN novel building. He evolved through millennia culture after culture, eradicated them, made tomes and language and nomenclature rife with it, and then wrote in a style that reads as a history, rather than an account, such as Wolfe’s, that doesn’t trade off first-person narrative. Tolkein’s work, amazingly, captures the first person without ever touching it, as has been well-imagined.
In part due to this, I meet my fantasy writers with a high bar, and very few fit it. Fellow Portlander, Ursula K. LeGuin (also a Tolkein lover) also understands this concept in her work. Contemporary fantasy has of late tried to “meet” the historical pseudo-Earth and failed, though some simply depart and take off to new worlds (McCaffrey’s Pern) descended from space-farers into a medieval setting. Other’s step into other worlds entirely, other “planes”, or just other potentialities. Many manage to be erudite without being obfuscating. If I desire my braininess with a shadow before it, I will read Wolfe; however, in contrast, S. J. Gould’s writing, while VERY erudite, is off-putting because of the topical confusion, not the terminology, and yet … if you look into the various subjects (which no Thesaurus will help you with but a library card and a websurfer will), one finds themselves stepping into other realms.
Jamie -
The Book of the New Sun is set so far into the future that the language the people are speaking is just so different from our own languages that one probably couldn’t recognize a single word. Wolfe has “translated” Severians manuscript into English and by chosing the words directly, as you say, instead of trying to capture some native style of Severian’s language he puts focus on the distance to Urth. I other words, the diction serves to say that Urth is such a weird place that it can only be described by approximation and that any attempt to more directly relate to the world will be futile. It’s important to note that the words are just approximations because that is one of the key methods Wolfe use for estrangement; a “destrier” on Urth is not the same thing as a horse, because a horse doesn’t have claws and sharp teeth, and an “uhlan” is not exactly the same type of light cavalry as they had in 18:th century Preussia, because they couldn’t shoot laser beams with their lances.
Now, Wolfe could invent new words for these things and concepts, but if he did then Urth would just seem like a strange place and that would be the end of that. If he instead uses these strange and antiquated, but still culturally relatable, words from many different eras and cultures he gives the impression that this is a very old and complex culture and when you realize that these things actually aren’t what you think they are but something much stranger (but still best approximated into the word actually used) it adds a whole new level of complexity. Wolfe works with the artificial level of a story much more than I think Tolkien did; Tolkien tried to make his world as convincing, realistic and vivid as he could and Wolfe does this to a large extent too, but he also makes it clear that the text as presented to us the readers is just a simplification and that the real story is literally too cool for words. Whether this technique actually works for you the way I think Wolfe intended will obviously vary from person to person, but at least I find that compared to Tolkien it makes for a much more intense experience.
The key value of Wolfe’s writing to me though, is not just that he can tell a many-layered story, but that he can make the novel work no matter how deep you wish to go. You can read and enjoy it as a straight adventure story and intepret everything literally, because Wolfe has an amazing imagination and writes with a beautiful and lyrical prose; you can also try to figure out the exact nature of everything in his intricate world building or read it as a psychological study or even a religous allegory and this works splendidly too. I first came across The Book of the New Sun when I was eleven and fell in love with Wolfe’s strange and colourful world immediately and didn’t really consider what all the words meant or how everything was tied together. When I’ve read it later in life I’ve realized that there was just so much more going on, but I still find it just as good, if not even better. I don’t think I can ask for much more of a book.
Jesper Svedberg writes:
“I other words, the diction serves to say that Urth is such a weird place that it can only be described by approximation and that any attempt to more directly relate to the world will be futile.”
Except that as you write, “Now, Wolfe could invent new words for these things and concepts, but if he did then Urth would just seem like a strange place and that would be the end of that. If he instead uses these strange and antiquated, but still culturally relatable, words from many different eras and cultures he gives the impression that this is a very old and complex culture and when you realize that these things actually aren’t what you think they are but something much stranger (but still best approximated into the word actually used) it adds a whole new level of complexity.”
One is given the feeling that this is a later Earth, and to do this one is driven into modern language. But old woprds are retained or refashioned to suit. A clawed and fanged horse-like creature is nothing like our own destriers, but more akin to the fantasy’s use of hellhorses and the like, a popular D&D invention that seems to have caught on in many novels as a fantasy staple. Hellhorse and destrier? Nothing similar. Instead of corrupting the word and evolving it, Wolfe keeps it, keeps the erudition, yet essentially seems to merge a pretension of a future evolved Earth with the need to retain familiar conceptions. Would the future really relate to a destrier? Instead of telling the story, it becomes complicated by the need to use words that do not need to be in there, so you get excess that detracts from the story, for the sense of need to be an over-elaborate “narrative” from someone, the narrator, who seems unable to understand the story ENOUGH to translate it correctly.
I know that this might be a bit arbitrary, and that the boundary I’m trying to draw might very well shift depending on the knowledge aesthetic sense of individual readers, but I thought that some of Wolfe’s coined words were really inventive and profound — avern, as I already mentioned, is a good example. Yet I found myself wondering, on the other end of the spectrum, why he had to resort to off spellings of obscure words (”paterissa” for example), when his wordsmithing skills were so obviously superior elsewhere.
In any event, the real emotional response that the word choices evoked in me was not, in fact, centered on Urth. Instead, Wolfe’s word choices produced some very strong feelings about the text: I was reminded of when I first began reading French prose pieces that were not merely exercises in textbooks; I understood nearly everything, but there were many difficult words and some that were totally obscure. Among the difficult words, I could often figure out the meanings; among the obscure, some just remained obscure. I felt a mild to moderate disoreintation, a pleasant stretching of the cerebral cortex, and a sense of fatigue if I keept it up for too long. These feelings disappeared as I gained in fluency, but Wolfe brought them right back — in my native language, no less. An impressive feat.
This is posted for veteran poster Jesper Svedberg, who somehow can’t get it through the automoderation. Words following are his.
It is true that words are retained and refashioned, but there comes a
point where two languages have drifted so far apart that there just
isn’t a point in trying to catch the similiarities, and Wolfe has set
his book way beyond this point. English and Chinese probably split up
about 50-100 000 years ago and in most cases it isn’t sensible to try
and find the etymological connections between the two languages; The
Book of the New Sun is probably set about a million years into the
future, if not more and Earth/Urth civilization have probably been
destroyed and rebuilt several times, and by using the words he does,
Wolfe implicitly tells us that this world is so far removed from our
civilization that it just isn’t possible to trace any direct connections
with the present.
A destrier isn’t a hellhorse, it probably is an extra-terrestrial
creature that is similar to a horse and has replaced the role of the
horse on Urth, especially in the army. By using the word destrier Wolfe
puts focus on that the creature is used in war and by the higher classes
of society, but he also makes it clear that the creature has become such
a natural part of his world that all linguistical traces of its
alien-ness has been lost. And when you realize that the creature is such
a well established and natural part of the World, but still is something
completely alien to our own experience, you also realize what a strange
place Urth is.
Wolfe has said: “My definition of good literature is that which can be
read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.” This
means that he wants his readers to find something new and interesting in
his books upon rereading them and that’s why there are plenty of things
that are not immediately accessible. The Book of the New Sun is
the memoirs of Severian, a torturer’s apprentice on Urth. Severian is
very familiar with his world and he expects his readers to be as well,
so he doesn’t explain most strange things he see. He also doesn’t
understand everything in his world and he will often misinterpret what
he sees (the most famous example is when he sees an ancient picture of
Neil Armstrong on the moon, he thinks he sees a knight in shining
armour), and on top of this Wolfe has “translated” Severians text for
the benefit of the reader. All of this makes for a very complex text and
people will react to this style differently, but it’s not because Wolfe
is an unskilled writer, it’s because his high ambitions makes his works
something that requires more work than many readers are willing to invest.
I personally haven’t found the vocabulary distracting; to me it enriches
the reading experience. If you find that all these words make the book
inaccessible to you then fair enough, but just don’t assume that there
isn’t a thoroughly considered reason for them being there.
I have read the books, and in fact, Gene Wolfe lives about 2 blocks from my house, so I’m going to tell on all of you for hating. Haha, just kidding. But honestly, the two points I had are: 1) the language you can take as pretentious, or enriching. If you are of the latter opinion, then you are able to use context to good effect, and concede that there are things about this world he has created that even YOU (yes you) have to read into and puzzle out.
Calling a staff a paterissa didn’t bother me, nor did the other words for that matter, because 90% of them I could figure out without searching my pocketbook for the definition, and the other 10% kept me in that world, believing that Gene has thought about his place. In fact, that is what I believe sets him apart. He, unlike Tolkien, keeps the scope of his world up his sleeve, but presents it from a first-person crazy person in a fashion that CONVINCES you there is always something to discover, and never a thread left unconsidered.
Second, as to the intelligence of Severian. If it bothers you so early on that he speaks in a way which betrays an inconsistency with the character we are following, then you are not reading close enough. It is obvious he is writing to us as the Autarch, he says so early on. If that is the case, then you will know that there is plenty to happen between the first chapter of book 1 and the final chapter of book 4. Right?
I wouldn’t get hung up on overanalyzing Gene’s motivations is what I am saying. I would feel confident that he has thought about your questions many more times than you have, and you will finish the tetralogy understanding that there are things you should know plainly, things you will have to work to understand, and yet other things that may always elude you. This is the style of this author. And what makes him one-of-a-kind, in my humble opinion.
…ryan