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Neurosis posted:Alright, having just finished a reread of Soldier of Arete... Well, I didn't understand all of it. If anyone can add anything of use please chime in. What I could follow: I've just finished Latro in the Mist, and there are a few points I think I can clear up (and a lot more I've got no clue about). Like you said, the Phoenicians had taken Pausanias's loot from the war. They had an agreement with Pausanias to transport it down to Sparta, and had been promised safe passage by Tower Hill. However, despite that agreement, they'd ended up captured by the Argives (the "Hundred-Eyed"), who were traditional enemies of Sparta, and their ship and cargo had been impounded. In principle, the Argives and the Spartans were all on the same side, so Pausanias could have asked for them to give him his money, but that would have been politically difficult. Firstly, the Phoenicians were part of the Persian empire, and were nominally Greeces' enemies, so Pausanias publicly admitting that he used them to carry his cargo (and maybe pressured Tower Hill to give them safe passage) would raise a lot of awkward questions. Secondly, caring about wealth and luxury is supposed to be deeply un-Spartan, and publicly asking Sparta's enemies for them to give him his money would utterly humiliate him at home. He's called a prince, so it's not always obvious, but his political position isn't that strong; he's only the temporary regent for one of Sparta's kings, and most of the power in Sparta is wielded by the judges, not the dual monarchy (the IRL Pausanias, by the way, was banished maybe a year or two after Latro in the Mist ends, for allegedly conspiring with Persia to help them conquer Greece, and offering helots their freedom in exchange for launching an uprising within Sparta). What happened with the Spartans at the chariot race wasn't that there were too few of them to capture Latro without help from the helots, but that Pausanias either had advance warning of what Latro was planning, or worked things out very quickly during the race. So when Latro escaped the track and headed off to the town to free the Phoenicians and their ship, the Spartans present made a big show of helping the Argives, leading the charge to capture him, but actually made a half-hearted effort that slowed down the Argives behind them, giving Latro plenty of time to free the Phoenicians and sail away. So at the end of the story, Pausanias has his money en route to Sparta, the Argives have been humiliated by their slaves overthrowing their captors and escaping, and he can plausibly blame it all on Latro (who he lost some money betting on) and deny any personal responsibility. He doesn't even need to care that he lost the chariot race, since Latro had already won prizes in the Pankration, and it hasn't necessarily damaged his reputation, since the Greeks generally think highly of cunning. As for your second point, you get it slightly wrong - Theseus was Athenian, not Theban. The reconciliation came from Themistocles, one of the leaders of Athens, offering his chariot and services as a nominal patron to allow the Amazons to compete in the Olympics. I'm not sure that this represents a reconciliation between Demeter and the Triple Goddess, but the relations between the gods were the part I understood the least, so you probably know better than I do. I'm also not so sure about your 6th point, since I don't remember any plan like that coming up. What I think brings Latro out of his depression is reconciling with Pasicrates, and returning his hand to him. I think it's made fairly explicit that something Pasicrates is doing is responsible for Latro's condition - Sisyphus mentions that Latro's supernatural allies are considering killing Pasicrates, but that they rejected it because it won't help Latro until he's dead, and Tisamenus outright says that Pasicrates is to blame in their shared dream - but that it's Pasicrates' hate that's doing it, not some charm that Tisamenus can undo. When Polos says that he's willing to try and love Pasicrates, Latro feels something within him 'like a spider, shifting in its web'. From Pasicrates' story about fighting a ghostly soldier, Io guesses that the hand Latro severed has persisted as something like a ghost, perhaps because of Falcata's contagious divinity. So I think part of what is happening is that Pasicrates' grudge led to his hand haunting/possessing Latro, and pushing him towards depression and suicide. The only solution was to reconcile the two by returning Pasicrates' hand, which ends up freeing both Latro and Pasicrates from their grudge. I think that's also why Latro and Pasicrates both think Pasicrates struck Aglaus, but Aglaus thinks it was Latro - what the two of them see is a representation of Pasicrates' influence on Latro, but Aglaus doesn't see the connection, and only sees Latro strike him. Jo Joestar fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Feb 27, 2019 |
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Feb 26, 2019 17:41
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Thanks for the reply, will pick through it later, but before doing that I must express embarrassment at misremembering Theseus as being connected to Thebes rather than Athens - Cadmus is Thebes
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Feb 27, 2019 05:03
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So after reading the Urth of the New Sun a few times I got started on the Long Sun series. Just got to the part where Silk walks past the painting of Pas with two heads and two giant erections and my mind just exploded. Man I'm glad I somehow never got this spoiled for me.
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Mar 1, 2019 00:05
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Long Sun is a tough read, but Short Sun is really worth it and absolutely depends on Long Sun to make sense.
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Mar 1, 2019 00:50
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Atlas Hugged posted:Long Sun is a tough read, but Short Sun is really worth it and absolutely depends on Long Sun to make sense.
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Mar 1, 2019 16:46
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I remember being very confused by The Land Across but thinking Maybe he's a clone of the leader of the country? Or brainwashed into being a double agent? It's been a while since I read it.
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Mar 1, 2019 18:23
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anilEhilated posted:Yeah. Don't give up. It might also help to know that each book of Long Sun is spoofing a different genre. Spill the goods, anilEhilated.
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Mar 1, 2019 19:58
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Nightside is a love letter to Chesterton in which detective Silk gets his Father Brown on but I forget what the other three are
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Mar 1, 2019 20:17
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Spy novel, war story and political drama. IIRC; it's been a while since I read them last, they're not among my favorite Wolfes.
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Mar 1, 2019 22:07
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Spite posted:I remember being very confused by The Land Across but thinking I stopped liking Wolfe after soldier of arete, felt like he stopped being weird and started being pedantic 
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Mar 2, 2019 00:11
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My friend described Short Sun as Wolfe's Moby Dick and was surprised how much he liked it.
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Mar 2, 2019 02:08
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sebmojo posted:I stopped liking Wolfe after soldier of arete, felt like he stopped being weird and started being pedantic An Evil Guest is probably the weirdest book Wolfe has written. That doesn't make it good necessarily though, I got no clue what to think about that book. Its hosed up. I give the man a lot of credit for never settling on a specific style. He certainly has a unique way of writing that comes across in everything he's written but has such a wide range compared to most SFF writers. In a parallel universe he just wrote a lot of books like Peace and hey that would have been cool too.
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Mar 2, 2019 02:12
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Atlas Hugged posted:Long Sun is a tough read, but Short Sun is really worth it and absolutely depends on Long Sun to make sense. Yeah I've tried to read it a few and just lost interest every time right around when Silk goes to break into Blood's house. Glad I stuck with it, I'm now about halfway into Lake and enjoying it quite a bit. It is a bit odd though to have a Wolfe book that seems to take place in the span of what seems like 3 or 4 days and not eons.
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Mar 3, 2019 22:13
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Your Gay Uncle posted:Yeah I've tried to read it a few and just lost interest every time right around when Silk goes to break into Blood's house. Glad I stuck with it, I'm now about halfway into Lake and enjoying it quite a bit. It is a bit odd though to have a Wolfe book that seems to take place in the span of what seems like 3 or 4 days and not eons. Not to be spoilery, but what's interesting is how much the book picks up the pace as each novel wraps up. The first novel is literally just one night. And it accelerates from there. Short Sun rules though. I can't stress this enough.
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Mar 4, 2019 04:35
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my bony fealty posted:An Evil Guest is probably the weirdest book Wolfe has written. That doesn't make it good necessarily though, I got no clue what to think about that book. Its hosed up. Structurally it is a profound masterpiece. On the surface level it sucks because every scene is a mise en abyme. So Gideon means "destroyer" and so does "perseus". The mountain he takes Cassiopeia too actually serves as a cognate for Atlas as well as the doctorow reference, in which he and Cassie sit (Atlas is turned into a mountain by Perseus, and atop it the "stars" rest. The last chapter features a reformed dragon, past ambassador of Woldercan (he lost a bunch of weight) in his white house who gives a picture of Reis as ambassador to woldercan to Cassie at the start of his tenure ... the first chapter is Gideon in the White House who gets a picture of Reis at the END of his stay as ambassador, a mirror image ... with Gideon, future ambassador of Woldercan, in the mirror position of Klausner ... because HES A DRAGON WHO LOST A LOT OF WEIGHT TOO, with the timeline set in reverse. When Cassie goes into Gideon's car, he lets her drive and she takes off with it. She turns on Com Pu Ter, who SWITCHES RS AND LS in her speech. When Patty Gomez infiltrates R'lyeh, up turns down and left turns right, black turns white. Gideon is associated with Black. The description of Gideon's eyes and face like a mask are the same as the dead Pat Gomez and the assassin Diana Diamond who comes in to kill Cassie at the end on Takanga ... Perseus was born in a shower of GOLD and Reis beats Cthulhu by showering his city with gold ... which destabilizes things enough to allow infiltrated Pat Gomez to reform him by love, mirrored in the car takeover scene where Cassie turns on Com Pu Ter. Then a portion of Cthulhu, fallen in love with Cassie, or the fragment which remains (Gideon loses a part of his leg from a "good" medicine") goes back in time to fight himself - Great Cthulhu, G.C., is the reformed hero of this story, Gideon Chase, born in a shower of gold to goodness like Perseus - and every scene is metaphorical like this, from the fat fat India being mean to suddenly hugging Cassie when the fallen flowers are collected in a vase featuring dragons to the sunrise imagery associated with fruit and the inversion of black and white in the text (Gideon's black car, Reis' white limo, etc etc etc). Ridiculous how symbolic it is but all of that is lost on every single reader who ever picked up the book.
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Mar 13, 2019 12:37
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Basically An Evil Guest is about Cthulhu in love. I'm willing to believe that.
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Mar 13, 2019 14:45
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That can't possibly be the plot. That's absurd.
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Mar 16, 2019 22:02
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CountFosco posted:That can't possibly be the plot. That's absurd. I tried to look it up and could only find reviews vaguely talking about it and... it seems... correct????
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Mar 19, 2019 01:49
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I just read the first two books of Severian and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The writing has a kind of dream-logic consistency about it and there's a lot of effects that seem tortuously distant from their causes. I was glad at the end of the first book to get some kind of explanation for what on earth had been happening for the last couple of hundred pages (the lead up to the duel etc.), but I feel like that's the only thing that's been explained to me so far and I feel like that's kind of a raw deal for being six hundred pages deep. Do I keep going? Does this begin to make sense? I enjoy the page-to-page writing well enough but I'm always aware there's other stuff to read, rather than committing to a long series that might not be going anywhere in particular.
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Mar 20, 2019 00:10
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Often Abbreviated posted:I just read the first two books of Severian and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The writing has a kind of dream-logic consistency about it and there's a lot of effects that seem tortuously distant from their causes. I was glad at the end of the first book to get some kind of explanation for what on earth had been happening for the last couple of hundred pages (the lead up to the duel etc.), but I feel like that's the only thing that's been explained to me so far and I feel like that's kind of a raw deal for being six hundred pages deep. Absolutely keep going. And them when you finish start over, because this book needs to be read twice to be understood.
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Mar 20, 2019 02:27
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there is a very interesting and completely coherent story underlying New Sun but it is pretty hard to find the first time around. probably the second as well. Wolfe is a lot different from pretty much every other SFF writer in that he often communicates vital plot information exactly once, possibly not where you'd expect it, and you may not recognize it as such. New Sun in particular tells you exactly wtf is going on and why things seem so random at least once, I forget where, but it's easy to miss.
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Mar 20, 2019 20:43
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Argh! Fine, I'll keep up with it, but not immediately. Would it be too much of a spoiler to tell me why I shouldn't trust Severian as a narrator? I've gathered that's something I should have worked out by now but haven't.
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Mar 21, 2019 00:07
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He's a supreme monarch reflecting on the decisions he made as a teenager that resulted in him becoming a supreme monarch. It's not so much that he manufactures a narrative as he justifies monstrous behavior and also tries to make himself look really cool.
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Mar 21, 2019 00:13
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There are five Severians
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Mar 21, 2019 00:14
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less laughter posted:There are five Severians But the narrative you're reading is potentially written by one only. He just has divine intervention where the Severians of the previous timelines died and they had to wait for the universe to reset itself enough times to know all the points where divine intervention was going to be necessary to keep him alive to bring the New Sun.
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Mar 21, 2019 01:10
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Yeah every time Severian is having a real hard time he probably actually dies. This is made explicit in Urth when he falls down the big shaft and on retrospect it's pretty obvious that the Avern kills him. I think he dies journeying down the mountain after Typhon, he drowns in the Gyoll before the narrative starts, he maaaaay have died in the Lazaret. The Stone Town explosion may have killed him, and near the end of Urth the natives kill him as Apu Punchau. Maybe other times I can't remember? "Spot the times Severian dies" is a fun way to read the book. He's very much a Frazier-esque dying-and-resurrecting-god; its not entirely clear who is doing the resurrecting though - is it Severian himself? Tzadkiel? The Increate? All of the above/the distinction doesn't matter?
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Mar 21, 2019 15:03
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my bony fealty posted:Yeah every time Severian is having a real hard time he probably actually dies. This is made explicit in Urth when he falls down the big shaft and on retrospect it's pretty obvious that the Avern kills him. I think he dies journeying down the mountain after Typhon, he drowns in the Gyoll before the narrative starts, he maaaaay have died in the Lazaret. The Stone Town explosion may have killed him, and near the end of Urth the natives kill him as Apu Punchau. Maybe other times I can't remember? "Spot the times Severian dies" is a fun way to read the book. I didn't read it as resurrection. The way I read it, when Severian dies, that's it for this iteration of the universe as far Earth is concerned. Time will continue on and Earth and the human species will die. But those who are unlocked in time observe how he died, make a note of it, and wait for the universe to repeat itself and then step in for the next iteration of Severian to avoid dying at that moment. They watch how far he gets and then do the whole thing again. Eventually they get a Severian who makes it through the whole dang obstacle course. Alternatively, it's all the same Severian and only one iteration of the universe, but the cacogens rewind time every time he dies and alter reality so whatever kills him doesn't. Either way, it immediately calls Severian's reliability as a narrator into question. If he's dying and resurrecting or his deaths are being undone as they happen, then his memories are at odds with he's story if his memory is perfect because he'd remember dying and yet he never mentions it. If it's divine intervention, he has no explanation for how he manages to keep escaping despite the fact that he does.
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Mar 21, 2019 15:52
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my bony fealty posted:there is a very interesting and completely coherent story underlying New Sun but it is pretty hard to find the first time around. probably the second as well. I'm almost done with Claw of the Conciliator and this is about how I feel. I've picked up on a few things on my own that made me go  but otherwise have accepted that everything won't be clear to me for a while. Wolfe's writing is really compelling so I'm happy to put in the grunt work of reading the series twice at least.
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Mar 22, 2019 05:22
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Often Abbreviated posted:Argh! Fine, I'll keep up with it, but not immediately. Would it be too much of a spoiler to tell me why I shouldn't trust Severian as a narrator? I've gathered that's something I should have worked out by now but haven't. People make a bit much of that imo, but he does spend a lot of time telling you how trustworthy he is so take that as you will E: but honestly I read the first four books and I didn't notice anything that deceptive so Idk sebmojo fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Mar 22, 2019 |
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Mar 22, 2019 06:12
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I've read the whole BotNS twice and I agree that "Severian is unreliable!!!" is very overblown. It's worth noting and keeping in mind as you read, and there are times you catch him more or less, but it's far from the most interesting or fun thing about the book. I think just saying "He's a ruler who is telling how he came into power, and you can expect him to want to make himself look good" just about covers it. There is not really any amazingly awesome puzzle to discover beyond that. I find the incredibly weird world more interesting, and I think Severian being raised as a torturer in such a weird world is coloring his POV much more than the fact that he's "unreliable." I think he's more "unrelatable" than anything else.
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Mar 25, 2019 01:13
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angel opportunity posted:I've read the whole BotNS twice and I agree that "Severian is unreliable!!!" is very overblown. It's worth noting and keeping in mind as you read, and there are times you catch him more or less, but it's far from the most interesting or fun thing about the book. I think just saying "He's a ruler who is telling how he came into power, and you can expect him to want to make himself look good" just about covers it. There is not really any amazingly awesome puzzle to discover beyond that. I made the mistake of reading a review of botns before I started, and I spent the next 4 books looking for lies instead of realizing he is lying as much as any person worried about their legacy, and not making up things wholesale like I thought.
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Mar 25, 2019 04:09
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Severian does outright lie a few times (for example he says Thecla and he were not lovers and then later that they were) but for the most part ya it's definitely overstated by people. He does misremember events and little details kinda frequently and is often not fully aware of what's going on. Re: timelines and Severian dying, he sees his own dead body in Urth, so he was definitely resurrected at least then. And when he leaves Apu Punchau behind. And the skull at the bottom of the Gyoll. So maybe there's two things going on, sometimes he dies and is resurrected as an eidolon and sometimes he dies and is gone for that universe forreal. I am partial to the idea that Severian was always an eidolon or sort of avatar of the white fountain, with the power to traverse universes via the corridors of time.
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Mar 25, 2019 04:26
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Unreliable narrator is way more important of a thing in Long and Short Sun and there it actually is a puzzle to unravel.
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Mar 25, 2019 04:37
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angel opportunity posted:I've read the whole BotNS twice and I agree that "Severian is unreliable!!!" is very overblown. It's worth noting and keeping in mind as you read, and there are times you catch him more or less, but it's far from the most interesting or fun thing about the book. I think just saying "He's a ruler who is telling how he came into power, and you can expect him to want to make himself look good" just about covers it. There is not really any amazingly awesome puzzle to discover beyond that. Yeah, Severian's unreliability seems to be based more in not being very educated beyond his guild functions and in making himself out to be a better person than he is. Sometimes he omits things but so far I don't think I've come across a lie he's made up out of whole cloth. Then again, I'm only halfway through the series.
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Mar 25, 2019 13:13
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He does lie outright a couple times, see: Thecla. But most of the unreliability comes from omission, be it accidental or intentional, and his own limited understanding.
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Mar 25, 2019 14:33
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This alzabo podcast is sucking all the fun out of BotNS
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Mar 28, 2019 01:18
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ElGroucho posted:This alzabo podcast is sucking all the fun out of BotNS Look, another case of severian lying!
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Mar 28, 2019 01:26
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Chichevache posted:Look, another case of severian lying! Basically Also, a 20 minute discussion about whether Severian is evil or good. How's about he is an extremely complex person, living on a dying planet, put in several crazy situations. It doesn't have to get more deep than that. It also makes no difference to the narrative whether he is good or not- it's a story first and foremost.
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Mar 28, 2019 13:59
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Severian doesn't speak to me as a hope-punk reader
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Mar 28, 2019 16:44
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A better way to think about Severian's unreliability is in terms of his stated opinions and the arguments he makes. Because he writes in an educated style about high-minded topics and is rarely challenged by other characters on philosophical points, I think it's easy to assume he's an authorial mouthpiece for Gene Wolfe like certain characters you find in, say, Heinlein. Most notably, he tries a bunch of different ways to wallpaper over the problem of his guild. "But in truth, everyone is a torturer, because..." or the big bad secret of the guild turning out to be they aren't responsible for this screwed up system they're just following orders sheesh. By itself, that's an interesting character take (if you trust that it's not Gene Wolfe fetishizing torture, as many people on the Internet have thought), but what makes it really great is from scattered references we do get a solid picture that author-Severian has turned totally against torture and his guild. He knows it was wrong but still feels some lingering guilt about breaking its rules and still feels defensive over his complicity in what they did. It's wonderfully complex. As for the Alzabo Soup podcast, I think they've done a good job pointing out how basically every philosophical argument Severian makes is hugely flawed, something I didn't notice the first time I read the book even though I feel certain Wolfe intended readers to notice. Their insistence on keeping tabs on a propaganda reading of the story that is both implausible (much of the narrative clearly makes Severian look bad) and doesn't add any real literary value is annoying, but they put a ton of time and effort into giving a super-niche podcast really high production values so if that's how they want to do it more power to 'em.
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Mar 30, 2019 01:27
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