Jlawrence’s Comments (group member since Mar 08, 2010)

Jlawrence’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

Lepton wrote: "However, I think Wolfe is a bit up his own butt to think that people will not understand sensible Latin to be Latin. I assume he might also claim that a sword in this world really isn't a "sword". It's solipistic, marketing-speak.

In using Latin and sensible Latin he brings forth all that the use of Latin would mean to the reader.. "

It's not that he doesn't expect people to understand it as Latin. I'd say he even wants to strike that fantasy-staple chord of 'Ah, a Latin inscription!' in the reader. But as with many of the standard-fantasy-staple things that appear in these books, 'things are not always what they seem.' They work on one level -- the familiar fantasy-tale level -- immediately, and gain other meanings as the wider context of the world is revealed. This tactic of his may become clearer as you read more.

Lepton wrote: "It's a book, not a translation of an actual text from a distant world that isn't in English. It's a book in English targeted at a fantasy/science fiction audience that will interpret the use of Latin in a very specific manner. The author intends that interpretation and intends the audience to identify it as Latin, therefore it is Latin."

This directly contradicts the actual quote from Wolfe about his intent as writer, that Paul gave above. You might want to read it again.

Wolfe clearly states:

"In rendering this book - originally composed in a tongue that has not yet 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."

and:

"Latin is once or twice employed to indicate that inscriptions and the like are in a language Severian appears to consider obsolete. What the actual language may have been, I cannot say."

Now, you might find that intent far-fetched or silly. But it *is* his intent, not something Sean and Paul are making up.

Shadow, Chapter 5
--------------------



The astronaut in the picture - "The picture he was cleaning showed an armored figure standing in a desolate landscape. It had no weapon, but held a staff bearing a strange, stiff banner. The visor of this figure's helmet was entirely of gold, without eye slits or ventilation; in its polished surface the deathly desert could be seen in reflection, and nothing more." (pg. 36)

A bit later, the picture-cleaner comments on the picture, "There's your blue Urth coming over his [the figure in the picture's] shoulder, fresh as the Autarch's fish".

The two have this exchange:

"I managed to say, 'Is that the moon? I have been told it's more fertile.'
'Now it is, yes. This was done before they got it irrigated.' "
(pg. 38)

So again Severian reveals he knows something about past scientific achievements (travel to and even terraforming of the moon). And is this the earliest hint that Urth could be future Earth?

Noel wrote: "Generally, I like good reflective prose. I quite like writers that indulge in abstract musings as long as it is done clearly and elegantly. There is always the danger that some people will mistake dense, dull and opaque writing for profundity."

I totally understand that reaction - can you add it to the Wolfe's Writing Style thread so that discussion could get rolling?

That particular passage we're discussing is not so much about profundity as it is about revealing Severian's non-scientific world view and making a double-layered comment on how the inhabitants of Urth are effected by technological artifacts they no longer understand.

The passage is convoluted on purpose, just as the mention of the tower's propulsion chamber is tucked away in parenthesis, as part of Wolfe's strategy at this early point to only subtly hint at the science fiction basis of the world. He does not have Severian clearly say, "Scientific thought and its products are a corrupt kind of magic." or "My tower, which used to be a rocket ship." Those meanings *are* there, but you have to be looking for them, or tease them out. That's partly what this thread is about.

Taueret wrote: "If you think you might try it again, try the unabridged audio of Cryptonomicon from Audible. It's not the best reading of Stephenson out there, but it's not half bad and Randy doesn't come across as annoying, more socially awkward (which he is)."

I think I will. Another problem was I didn't find the modern plotline as interesting as the WWII one, which I think added to Randy irritation, but I really should give it another go - there were too many other elements of it I really liked.

Book of the New Sun is known for its very dense prose.

For me it works because Wolfe balances abstract musings with strong (sometimes haunting) imagery and good dialogue, and I just find Severian's voice interesting. I don't feel you have to unravel difficult passages immediately, you can come back to them after you've absorbed more.

Do you like the writing style, or does it turn you off? Why?

Also curious to hear from those listening to the audio book version - do you like the reader? How does the writing style come across in audio book form?

Noel wrote: "Half way through the paragraph he says 'it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things.......' What things? Things generally? Things that go bump in the night? Things aren't what they used to be?

I think I know what he's getting at but the use of the phrase 'such things' Is not supported by the previous sentence."

Hmm, the reference of "such things" seems pretty clear to me. It does point directly to the previous sentence - "such things" = "facts, such as the fact that accepting the coin means swearing loyalty."

What I found difficult in that quote was untangling the rest of it - what exactly Severian is saying about debased sorcery, etc. Sean's interpretation has helped me untangle that now.

The prose is very dense in Book of the New Sun, but part of what makes it work for me is that Severian alternates between abstract ponderings, like that quote, and very evocative physical descriptions, and well-written dialogue where clearly distinct voices are heard - ie, it doesn't stay in the tangled abstract.

Wolfe's writing style in the loosely connected later series, Book of the Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun, is much more direct and less dense.

Edit: I started a separate thread about Wolfe's writing style, because it is a big component of people's reactions to the books.

John wrote: "Sorry, but I find no "fantasy" in this series. Every element is based in technology. That some aspects of this world appear feudal and other elements are so advanced as to appear to be magic does does not mean science and technology is not the basis of this world."

That's why I wrote "fantasy-seeming world" in my initial post.

There's plenty of fantasy tropes, images and symbols being employed by Wolfe, even if there's science-fictional explanations behind them all. That's why it's fun to zero in on the way Wolfe weaves the high technology ("science fiction elements") into what otherwise could seem a feudal or fantasy setting at first.

There's also some things Severian encounters later in the books that stretched my ability to come up with science fiction explanations for them, so they will be interesting to discuss when we get to them. It'd be too spoilery to get into them now, though...

Jared, that's excellent - I've read elsewhere that Severian contradicts himself in various places, which I never picked up on when I originally read the books, so I'm on the lookout for instances like that this time.

Jared wrote: "I'm listening to the audiobook - in which the pronunciation of Triskele is tricycle ;)

Haha, that never occured to me! I just looked up Triskele in the Lexicon Urthus which handily reminded me that he's a three-legged dog *slaps forehead!*. Apparently 'triskele' meaning 'three-legged' goes back to when it was "a three-legged icon used in the worship of Apollo."

I'll be on the lookout for the library scene.

Sean wrote: "The idea that semiotics have an objective reality independent of culture is essentially magic, while what Severian describes as the "debased and superstitious" magic of sorcerers is science. "

Sean, that's an excellent quote. You're right, it makes sense that this society could recognize some things as technological artifacts (Severian recognizing the tower as a rocket), but at the same time view the thought and craft that brought those things into being as a debased kind of sorcery. Although, he doesn't seem to describe the 'age of the urge of flight' in necessarily negative terms.

What's also interesting is the phrase "it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them" has some truth to it, in that the inhabitants of Urth are constantly effected by the high-tech relics they no longer understand.

Woot! Thanks, terpkristin, I'm glad the theraflu-ness didn't come through. :)

Shadow, Chapters 2-4
-------------------


The Citadel towers as defunct rocketships

The first hint - "In our Matachin Tower, a certain bar of iron thrusts from a bulkhead at the height of a man's groin. Male children small enough to stand upright beneath it are nurtured as our own..." (pg. 17)

Bulkheads are again mentioned in the vision Severian has when he almost drowns in Gyoll. (pg. 20)

The biggest indicator is tucked away in a parenthesis when Severian is describing the different compartments of the Matachin tower from top to bottom in the beginning of chapter 3. Near the end of that description:

"Just underground lies the examination room; beneath it, and thus outside the tower proper (for the examination room was the propulsion chamber of the original structure) stretches the labyrinth of the oubliette." (italics added) (pg. 22)

From that it's clear that Severian has some idea what the tower was originally used for -- that the concept of the towers being vehicles that would be propelled somewhere is not totally lost. But how does that fit into the general non-technological view of the world and Severian himself? We're given a hint of that when Severian describes the tunnels he gets lost in while looking for Triskele in chapter 4:

"I have no way of knowing how old those tunnels are. I suspect, though I can hardly say why, that they antedate the Citadel above them, ancient though it is. It comes to us from the very end of the age when the urge to flight, the outward urge that sought new suns not ours, remained, though the the means to achieve that flight were sinking like dying fires. Remote as that time is, from which hardly one name is recalled, we still remember it. Before it there must have been another time, a time of burrowing, of the creation of dark galleries, that is now utterly forgotten." (italics added) (pg. 32)

So Severian's society only dimly remembers an age of spaceflight, but no specific history of it, and either the knowledge of how to achieve it or the resources needed or it are lost.

Shadow, Chapters 1 & 3
--------------------


Vodalus' laser pistol -- "There was a shot, a thing I had never seen before, the bolt of violet energy splitting the darkness like a wedge, so that it closed with a thunderclap. Somewhere a monument fell with a crash." (pg. 11 of my ORB paperback edition)

Fliers -- Possible high or medium tech vehicles still in use?

"The fog swallowed him up long before he reached the rim, and a few moments later a silver flier sharp as a dart screamed overhead." (pg. 14)

"Weeks, if you walked. Naturally the Autarch could get here by flier in an instant if he wanted to. The Flag Tower - that's where the flier would land." (pg. 26)

In this thread we can start cataloging and discussing science-fiction elements as they begin to appear in the fantasy-seeming world of the New Sun.

I think one way we might keep this from getting too spoilery is to note which book and chapter(s) the element comes from as the first line in a post, followed by some blank space. So someone scanning can tell if a post is addressing stuff they haven't read yet.

Severian claims in the first chapter that he is cursed with what we would consider a photographic memory - he remembers everything that happened to him in precise detail, and is effortlessly calling these memories up to tell his tale to us.

However, as early as chapter 3 his reliability is called into doubt, directly, by himself. He's searching through the papers of recently arrived 'clients' to be handled by the Torturer's Guild, expecting to find among them rebels against the Autarch, rebels who follow Vodalus, whom Severian met, killed for, and swore loyalty to in chapter 1. Finding none -

"...suddenly I felt Vodalus had only been an eidolon created by my imagination from the fog, and only the man I had slain with his own ax real....It was in that instant of confusion that I realized for the first time that I am in some degree insane...I could no longer be sure my own mind was not lying to me...and I who remembered everything could not be certain those memories were more that my own dreams. I recalled the moonlit face of Vodalus; but then, I had wanted to see it. I recalled his voice as he spoke to me, but I had desired to hear it, and the woman's voice too.

One freezing night, I crept back to the masoleum and took out the chrisos [the coin Vodalus gave him] again. The worn, serene, androgynous face on its obverse was not the face of Vodalus."

I remember this confession of possible insanity impressing me strongly the first time I read these books, and, as far as I can remember, Severian never again directly calls into doubt the tale he's telling us. But this early confession of unreliability effects the entire tale.

What are your first impressions of Severian as a character and a narrator?

I haven't read The Blade Itself yet, but the trick of making a torturer a deep and even likable character is definitely one of the things that fascinates about Severian, so it would be interesting to see what Abercrombie has done with a similar set-up.

As far as I remember, Severian never takes pleasure in torture. However, I do remember him putting forth some abstract argument in its favor (or at least in favor of the violent punishment of criminals) at one point of the book, which was disturbing on a totally different level, and created that same kind of tension between sympathy and repulsion towards a character. I'll be on the lookout for that passage.

I'm pretty sure it's only available in audio book or print form, unfortunately.

Whether you're reading these books for the first time, or revisiting them, there's a number of resources that can assist your trip into Wolfe's world:

Neil Gaiman's How to Read Gene Wolfe -- A great place to start, as pointed out by Ed in the podcast thread.

Lexicon Urthus by Michael Andre-Driussi -- There are many odd words tumbling about in Severian's narration, and most of them you will find defined in this book. As mentioned on the podcast, Wolfe was determined not to make up any words for these novels, instead often using obscure or forgotten, but nonetheless real, words each time he needed an exotic name. If you look up names of characters or places in this book, you are likely to be spoiled, but it's pretty safe to look up anything that's not capitalized.

GURPS New Sun -- This is a sourcebook for playing a tabletop role-playing campaign in the New Sun world. But even if you have no interest in RPGs, it seems to be a very thorough guide to the world revealed in the books. However, it's *EXTREMELY* spoilery, so I would only recommend it to those doing a re-read. By the same author as Lexicon Urthus.

Edit: Boo! SJG is listing this as "Out of Print." Looks like there's some new and used copies from third-party vendors on Amazon marketplace, though.

WolfeWiki -- Online wiki on things Gene Wolfe-ish, with its own Book of the New Sun section. I haven't looked through it thoroughly yet, so I'm not sure how spoilery it is.

Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe on Writing / Writers on Wolfe - Many interviews with Wolfe, followed by a smattering of short essays by Wolfe. Lots of good stuff, and lots of spoilers, too.

For heavy-duty literary analysis of the New Sun, there's Robert Borski's Solar Labyrinth: Exploring Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun". From the small samples I've read, I'm pretty suspicious of Borski's approach being too contrived, and in any case I would NOT recommend it as a resource for first-time readers. But if you are heavy into literary theory, or this is a re-read for you, you might give it a look.

Please post any other New Sun resources here.

Thanks, Vance! I really enjoyed doing it. I was dosed with theraflu when we recorded, so I was worried I would blather, but Tom and Veronica kept me on track. :)

The Name of the Wind (I'm really starting to get sucked into it) and Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas.