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Lex Talionis posted:I'd like to do another reread first (I've read so much wildly wrong stuff about New Sun I can't help but fear I'm similarly deluded) but it will be a few weeks minimum before I get to it. I think he explicitly states this, from memory. And it's very much in line with how the Claw which is just channelling his own power is working. 02-6611-0142-1 posted:Oh, awesome, thanks! I've been wondering about that for a long time. Maybe I will even try the third book. I have a strange disconnect with later Gene Wolfe, which includes the third Soldier book. I absolutely love BotNS, the Fifth Head of Cerberus and the first two Soldier books but find everything after unbearably ploddy and drawn out. I read about half of the Long Sun and it felt like the characters spent the whole time explaining the plot to each other. Does anyone else feel this way? sebmojo fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Mar 12, 2013 |
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Mar 12, 2013 01:51
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PateraOctopus posted:No. The Gene Wolfe "fan community" is one of the most loving batshit circle-jerks you're liable to encounter on the internet and Borski is one of its most prolific crazies. You won't get anything approaching an open, adult conversation about a work of literature; discussions alternate between fetishization, one-upsmanship and treatment of obscure, nearly-groundless theories as fact. Gene Wolfe is one of my favorite authors--dig the username--but I wouldn't go near the fan community for more than release date info if you paid me. This thread is as much Wolfe discussion as I like to get into on the Internet because it's adult human beings talking about books that they read and on which they have opinions; it's not some weird mystical order engaging in a set of approved rituals over their icons. HAha, yes well. Having tracked down my pdf I can see there's a Gygaxian neckbeardy fervor to his pronouncements: Solar Labyrinth posted:Citadel of the Autarch concludes Gene Wolfe’s New Sun quartet and it is to this
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Mar 17, 2013 22:50
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John McCain posted:Yeah, it's sweet as hell. Make sure you pick up Soldier of Arete and Soldier of Sidon too. A lot of people think Latro might be a particular god, but I don't buy it. Soldier of Sidon is late Wolfe, which I dislike. But Arete is great.
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Jun 13, 2013 10:43
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Neurosis posted:I don't think late Wolfe is that bad. The books of the last decade aren't as good as anything in the Solar Cycle, but they stack up favourably to things like There Are Doors and Free Live Free. I really liked the Wizard Knight, even though a lot of people don't. Yeah, I know it's probably a minority opinion. But I find that past a certain date Wolfe books became largely devoted to people telling each other the plot and I find that super dull. I only find the splendid baroque ambiguity that I like in the earlier ones.
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Jun 16, 2013 22:39
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Play posted:Soldier of the Mist is the first one, I'm looking around for Soldier of Arete right now. Soldier of the Mist, while definitely Wolfe, is more palatable to me than his other stuff because at least its grounded a bit in its ancient world setting. When Wolfe gets extremely fanciful and random I begin to lose interest quickly. When its grounded in stuff that feels like it could be real, it makes it a lot better. Here's hoping Soldier of Arete is just as good. Yeah, they read like two volumes of the same book. Soldier of Sidon, the third, was written much later.
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Jun 17, 2013 07:24
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quote:Before and after that moment, indeed throughout his career, Wolfe’s fiction was rife with robots and androids, as well as doubled or split characters of various sorts: people whose brains are divided, people who are turning into other people, people who are not the people they think they are, people who are identical biologically but not mentally to someone else, people who remember exceptionally well, people who remember very poorly; people who mistake other people for robots, or robots for other people, and fall in love across the divide; and so on. The emphasis in these stories on variations of “almost human” or “human but different” is marked. That's a splendid essay, thanks.
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Sep 8, 2013 23:01
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Fwiw I find later Wolfe, such as the Knight, almost unreadable. I know a lot of people like the short/long earth books but it feels like everyone just stands around explaining the plot to each other. As to Baldanders... I feel like it's explained somewhere what he was doing but can't remember it for the life of me.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:01
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anilEhilated posted:I think it pretty much becomes that in the last book, Soldier of Sidon. Read the thing twice and still cannot find any rhyme or reason to it. I couldn't finish Sidon. Late Wolfe is p unreadable for me, unfortunately.
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May 2, 2015 23:30
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Mister Nobody posted:Seven american nights alone is worth the price of admision , as well as that one werewolf story. Book of Days is great, though mainly for Forlesen: "No. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Maybe."
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Jun 29, 2015 05:36
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Rime posted:Caucasus & Turkey. Preach it. Late Wolfe bad Wolfe. It's chalk and cheese to me, and BotNS is one of my favourite pieces of writing.
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Sep 12, 2015 20:05
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:You can read literally any other science fiction in existence, I want to read about those things. My issues are more around the lengthy periods where it just seems like everyone is explaining the plot to each other.
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Sep 13, 2015 23:22
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pugnax posted:So new book soon? I'm probably in the minority but I've really enjoyed his recent work. Naw, the opposite if anything - my sense is a lot of people like his newer stuff.
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Oct 11, 2015 10:49
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ManlyGrunting posted:I finally tracked down the first half of Book of the New Sun and I'm about a 150 pages into the first part, and holy poo poo; this book is unreal. I don't think I've been in awe of a book like this since Blood Meridian, it's just such a subtle and beautiful work. I fell in love right at the beginning with the chapter where Severain finds a dog and rescues it, it;s such a subtle and nuanced take on adolescence and the affecting power of things mostly out of your hands, it did more in six pages than some books have done in 150. So yeah, thank you thread for having good taste and recommending this book to me It's his pinnacle, IMO.
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May 14, 2016 23:27
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He is a torturer. You are reading the memoirs of a torturer. E:it's right there in the title of the first book
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Sep 29, 2016 01:13
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Noam Chomsky posted:What do you mean by scary in this context? He is a torturer who dresses in black, wears a skull mask and carries a gigantic executioners sword.
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Oct 1, 2016 05:33
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Soldier of Arete is great, Soldier of Sidon sucks (but my dislike of late Wolfe is not universal).
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Dec 13, 2016 04:28
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Lex Talionis posted:Don't feel too bad, I first read it over ten years ago (and re-read it twice in the intervening years) and didn't notice until...one minute ago when I read your post. Wow. I originally read it in the two book omnibuses but still... I completely agree, though i draw the line after soldier of arete: it becomes like eating dry weetbix after that.
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Jul 12, 2017 11:05
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Gaius Marius posted:I haven't heard the lastest episode so I'll be cynical and suspend judgment for know. But the Virgin whore thing is usually one of those things that people bring up and then you end up filling a million edges off every female character in order to fit them in one of the two categories to prove...something? Honestly it usually is one of those things where people miss the point by a mile and ironically end up deny female characters there own agency in the story cause they're too busy trying to talk about how make characters see them, they never bother to bring up what purpose they serve outside that. I feel like a lot of my judgement against alzabo guys is gonna rest in their analysis of Dorcas, who I feel is a strong character with development and her own motives but a more surface level viewing of her would miss them. Dorcas v Jolenta are an extremely virgin/whore pairing. Thecla is more complicated, I guess.
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Jan 8, 2018 13:18
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NecroMonster posted:Wait. Are you telling me Severian is kind of a poo poo head who doesn't have healthy or respectful relationships with or to women? The Torturer?!
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Jan 9, 2018 03:35
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Severian is literally a professional abuser.
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Mar 2, 2018 21:56
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Neurosis posted:Sure! Even if no one is super knowledgeable there are sure to be observations I hadn't thought of that will make me think about my interpretations. I think its the Bible (New Son)
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May 4, 2018 19:48
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:He's also very clearly heard of bad prose, because I'm reading Shadow and Claw and he keeps bringing it up. c o o l
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Sep 4, 2018 06:34
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:So this is how dedicated people are to talking about Gene Wolfe in the Gene Wolfe thread. Lol that's so botl Post your analysis, if you're going to. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Sep 8, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 22:57
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anilEhilated posted:Would it? Soldier of Sidon always felt pretty weak to me. I haven't liked anything he's written after soldier of mist 
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Dec 22, 2018 04:30
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Neurosis posted:Do you mean in the Soldier series? Because the Short Sun post-dates Soldier of Mist and I thought that would be liked by anyone who likes Wolfe at all. i've read the one in the space station (long sun?) soldier of sidon and wizard knight and they all seemed endless tedious processions of people trying to explain the plot to each other, which is a huge pity because i loved his earlier stuff. e: oh, no I'm dumb - i mean soldier of arete, that was my cut off.
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Dec 22, 2018 04:50
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:How's the prose? i read your review and it made some fascinating points (posted this in the other thread but i didn't realise how long ago your review was so it can go here instead): BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Bad Faith of the Illuminator Shadow of the Torturer is a dense book with slow pacing quote:Severian, as narrator, prefers not to inquire or speculate after the bizarre and the unusual, but instead accepts these developments passively even as greater forces seem to make themselves known. This engenders nervous stupefaction and expectation in the reader, who is torn between curiosity and placid acceptance. Thus no excerpt suffices to properly display the extremely dense prose of The Shadow of the Torturer, for it would have to be impossibly long to capture its pace. Thus quotations appear unrepresentative of the extremely dense novel even when they are all too revealing of Wolfe’s skills as a prose stylist. Wolfe uses complicated words quote:Wolfe always writes incompletely. The scene above is defined by fire-light, but does almost nothing to describe effects or qualities of light. We understand that the bridge is well-lit, but the light of fires and torches is vibrant and inconsistent. Consider how Wolfe is describing what should be a chiaroscuro scene of urban night-life, yet nowhere do we read of the play of light and shadow on the grotesque extremes of ostentation and poverty. The tableau is static. And where Wolfe ventures to describe the qualities of light, he is erroneous: his windows glare like fireworks, but fireworks do not glare. They burst, sparkle, and dissipate. Such abuses of English are common in extremely dense Shadow of the Torturer. Wolfe writes long sentences with complicated words quote:These outpourings remain as mechanically wearisome, because they merely give an impression of agitation rather than the real thing. Wolfe’s extremely dense prose is as cold and inert as his dying sun. I don't like his long sentences with complicated words quote:If one points to such flaws, Wolfe’s fans are wont to argue that its very badness is proof of his genius, for only he could have conceived such a convincing impression of a writer as bad as Severian. This can be dismissed firstly because these are the same fans who will argue that Wolfe’s prose is masterful, and thus they are loving liars. And secondly, while Severian undeniably writes badly, he fails as such a character, for Severian is not a character at all. Truly, fascinatingly bad writers have depth to their awfulness, but Severian has no distinguishable voice or personality, let alone that of a bad writer. He does not represent any discernible human type or experience. He consists simply four tones of narration: modestly assertive, obsequiously self-denying, sharply observant, and philosophically musing. No doubt fans will next argue that bad characterization is proof of Wolfe’s genius, for it shows how the vague powers that guide Severian have molded him into a literary nonentity. One wonders if the fanboy theorists have solved the mystery of why so many women throw themselves at him. And thirdly, according to the novel's metafictional device, the text is a translation: the blame may be squarely be laid on the incompetence of the translator-author. people say he writes badly on purpose, they're wrong, he writes badly because he's bad and i don't like severian because he's boring and women like him quote:Severian represents a fantasy that is familiar from later genre hacks: of being mocked and maltreated by the universe while remaining the centre of said universe. It is one of the wonders of genre literature that Cugel the Clever, the monstrously selfish anti-hero from Jack Vance’s dying Earth, comes off as less fundamentally egoistic than someone as vacuous as Severian. Cugel at least seems interested in the world and the people around him, even if it is merely for his own advantage. Severian has nothing to him, and from the first chapter we know that he shall be the ruler of his nation. Subsequent novels further underline his importance. The torturer’s apprentice is the precursor of FitzChivarly Farseer and Kvothe the Kingkiller, self-pitying narrator-heroes without personality, whose misfortunes appear as validation of their central role in the grand scheme of things. Wolfe is a child playing with toys compared to Samuel Beckett, who in his trilogy of Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable charted new continents of existential incomprehension and suffering. i really don't like severian because he's boring quote:There only remains Wolfe’s puzzle-plot remains for disposal. Fans have through the years taken up the task of deciphering the extremely dense narrative of The Book of the New Sun in a poor imitation of scholarship. These fans no doubt object to claims that Wolfe bamboozles the reader, as his puzzle-plot is a device to develop and educate readers in the understanding of texts. But this is a misunderstanding of the act of reading and the value of literacy. The Book of the New Sun leads the reader to try to discover the truth beyond Severian’s words, for he does not understand his story, but this is an anti-literary exercise. To try to discover what lies “beneath” the surface of the text is to declare the text itself secondary and irrelevant, what Barthes warned against in “The Death of the Author”. The pleasure of literature is not in what lies beneath its surface, but in the surface itself. people think this book is clever because it's complicated but it's actually not clever it's dumb because complicated books are dumb quote:If the true story of The Book of the New Sun are the intrigues peered between Severian’s words, then Severian’s words – the prose - are ultimately an obstacle to be overcome. If the goal for the reader is to reject the text as flawed, one will do just as well by not reading it in the first place. Wolfe does not teach readers to understand texts, but to understand a text. The skills necessary to disentangle the extremely dense plot of The Book of the New Sun do not translate into understanding of other literary works. These skills are applicable merely to deciphering the plot content of one series, which might superficially resemble an intellectual activity, but is really only a laborious one. This is the ultimate failure of the puzzle-plot: it is an exercise in complexity rather than in nuance. The artistic, educational, and intellectual value of Wolfe’s work can be perfectly replicated by watching Dark Souls “lore” videos on YouTube. They’re about as dense. people who like these books probably like video games
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Dec 22, 2018 04:51
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Yes: that's what I said. It was a summary, or 'précis' of your words.
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Dec 23, 2018 00:39
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:It wasn't. You're simply blaspheming against truth. ok little buddy
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Dec 23, 2018 05:41
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:It explains a lot that someone thinks "long sentences with complicated words" constitutes a literary style. ok, little buddy
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Dec 23, 2018 14:10
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The vocabulary is really great. lol
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Feb 3, 2019 23:36
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CountFosco posted:But how is the world building? The world building is really great.
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Feb 9, 2019 06:36
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Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divineaphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labours left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labours of men that as a result of the labours unfinished of Testew and Cunard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labours of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation is seen to waste and pine waste and pine and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicilline and succedanea in a word I resume and concurrently simultaneously for reasons unknown to shrink and dwindle in spite of the tennis I resume flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham namely concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown but time will tell to shrink and dwindle I resume Fulham Clapham in a word the dead loss per caput since the death of Bishop Berkeleybeing to the tune of one inch four ounce per caput approximately by and large more or less to the nearest decimal good measure round figures stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara in a word for reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there and considering what is more much more grave that in the light of the labours lost of Steinweg and Peterman it appears what is more much more grave that in the light the light the light of the labours lost of Steinweg and Peterman that in the plains in the mountains by the seas by the rivers running water running fire the air is the same and then the earth namely the air and then the earth in the great cold the great dark the air and the earth abode of stones in the great cold alas alas in the year of their Lord six hundred and something the air the earth the sea the earth abode of stones in the great deeps the great cold an sea on land and in the air I resume for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis the facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short in fine on on abode of stones who can doubt it I resume but not so fast I resume the skull to shrink and waste and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis on on the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labours abandoned left unfinished graver still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard tennis... the stones... so calm... Cunard... unfinished...
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Feb 15, 2019 01:38
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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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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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Isn't that line 'all men are torturers'?
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Mar 31, 2019 02:04
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ElGroucho posted:They're 4 episodes in and they are arguing about whether healing the dog is good or evil, because he doesn't use any numbing drugs, which makes him a.... torturer? how about when he performs the excruciation of the two apricots
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Mar 31, 2019 10:50
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Amethyst posted:How on earth can they run a book discussion podcast with a "no spoiler" policy? That's absurd. spoiler culture is a loving plague
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Apr 1, 2019 02:32
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I should give them another go, but I found the first two long sun books dull enough that I gave up and haven't read the short sun ones.
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Apr 2, 2019 00:54
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Long sun is v dull
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Apr 4, 2019 09:10
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If you think you can write a few hundred words of Wolfe inspired prose, entries for the current week of thunderdome are open for the next 24 hours or so. Just go there and type 'in' and you'll have until Sunday midnight to write and post your story!
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Apr 19, 2019 09:45
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