THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT: More Essays on the Fiction of Gene Wolfe
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In all of this, one can rely on Gene Wolfe in one fundamental fashion: He is reliably an unreliable author. He toys with his readers, plays coyly with us. He makes us work at understanding his fiction, makes us study his texts and come back to them time and again. And each time we do, we find a different book, with a different interpretation, different meaning, and different significance.
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They are at least for me more fun than similarly challenging work by writers like Joyce, Faulkner, or Elliott. But the depth of enjoyment I have gotten from them has been well equal to the effort. Chris Gerwel is a writer and critic of science fiction and fantasy. Chris lives in New Jersey with his wife and dog, where he writes the King of Elfland's 2nd Cousin genre blog. Thanks for Sharing this, Chris. There are problems female characters, as you note, are problematic in his fiction.
His fiction has a level of sophistication and complexity that appeals to the most prestigious litfic award committees Man Booker, Nobel, etc. I later got over my literary snobbery, but Wolfe and Le Guin were very important in helping me bridge that gap. Very nice summation of thought on Wolfe. I still believe that part of the allure of Wolfe, beyond his style, stems from his philosophical straddling of so many different concepts: Henry Miller, after all, has female fans.
Wolfe has no such defense — one feels that his sin is simply to cherish a few traditional ideologies not quite in tune with the zeitgeist. Dorcas, Aubrey Veil, even Io as a victimized little girl who shows devotion and bravery, while not extremely prevalent in his fiction, are not as one dimensional and stereotyped as they at first seem. There seems to be a special, almost schizophrenic soft spot in the narrative voice for obese prostitutes in works such as Free Live Free and Long Sun, and it is perhaps the ubiquity of prostitution in his major works that also brings these criticisms to the fore.
I still think the discrediting of Wolfe concerning his treatment of women is a redirection from the reaction to his somewhat traditionalist mindset. In any case, I have always believed him to be an artist without equal, in any time period, though unfortunately the care and attention his books require seem to unjustly relegate him to a very niche audience — I hope that his name will resonate with Shakespeare and Joyce in the generations to come in the literary community.
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Actually, I take that back. Excellent article on all accounts.
I think you have hit on some especially relevant points besides the obvious ones regarding problematic female characters, unreliable narrators. Your point at the end that Wolfe is, in essence a Modernist writer, is very compelling. I had never thought about him in that company because, as you point out, his writing is so esoteric and hermeneutic: I just want to make one pitch here for Gene Wolfe: Thanks very much for the incisive article! All of the work […]. I see college courses on Wolfe in the future ,deep thoughts ,puzzles, hard to understand but wonderfully rich prose ,what a great time..
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Art by Richard Bober. Several Wolfe essays about the writing of The Book of the New Sun were published in The Castle of the Otter ; the title refers to a misprint of the fourth book's title in Locus magazine. In , Wolfe retired from his engineering position and was then able to devote more time to his writing.
These books follow the priest of a small parish as he becomes wrapped up in political intrigue and revolution in his city-state. Wolfe has also written many stand-alone books. His first novel, Operation Ares , was published by Berkley Books in and was unsuccessful. He subsequently wrote two novels held in particularly high esteem, Peace and The Fifth Head of Cerberus. The first is the seemingly-rambling narrative of Alden Dennis Weer, a man of many secrets who reviews his life under mysterious circumstances.
The Fifth Head of Cerberus is either a collection of three novellas, or a novel in three parts, dealing with colonialism, memory, and the nature of personal identity. The first story, which gives the book its name, was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novella. Wolfe's writing frequently relies on the first-person perspectives of unreliable narrators.
Wolfe wrote in a letter: My definition of a great story has nothing to do with "a varied and interesting background. One that can be read with pleasure by a cultivated reader and reread with increasing pleasure. In that spirit, Wolfe also leaves subtle hints and lacunae that may never be explicitly referred to in the text. For example, a backyard full of morning glories is an intentional foreshadowing of events in Free Live Free , but is only apparent to a reader with a horticultural background, and a story-within-the-story provides a clue to understanding Peace.
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Wolfe's language can also be a subject of confusion for the new reader. In the appendix to The Shadow of the Torturer, he says:. In rendering this book — originally composed in a tongue that has not achieved existence — into English, I might easily have saved myself a great deal of labor by having recourse to invented terms; in no case have I done so. Thus in many instances I have been forced to replace yet undiscovered concepts by their closest twentieth-century equivalents.
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Such words as peltast , androgyn , and exultant are substitutions of this kind, and are intended to be suggestive rather than definitive. This character of the fictional "translator" of his novel provides a certain insight into Wolfe's writing: Although not a best-selling author, Wolfe is highly regarded by critics [18] and fellow writers, and considered by many to be one of the best living science fiction authors. Indeed, he has sometimes been called the best living American writer regardless of genre.
Award-winning science fiction author Michael Swanwick has said: Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning. Gene Wolfe is the best writer alive.
My results have not been great. There seems to be a special, almost schizophrenic soft spot in the narrative voice for obese prostitutes in works such as Free Live Free and Long Sun, and it is perhaps the ubiquity of prostitution in his major works that also brings these criticisms to the fore. He engineers his work from the very start to operate on multiple levels, to manipulate the reader using different levers. Le Guin is frequently quoted on the jackets of Wolfe's books as having said "Wolfe is our Melville. Want to add to the discussion? Very nice summation of thought on Wolfe.
And as Wolfe once said, 'All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.