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Your Gay Uncle posted:A friend that I turned on to the Shadow of the Torturer series is just starting the Long Sun series of books and had a question that I really had no answer for. He asked me if Gene Wolfe wrote the Short Sun series knowing in advance that it was actually being written by Horn after the the Whorl got to Blue and Green. I have no idea. I think I might just email Marc Aramini, seems like something he'd know.
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Feb 19, 2022 23:10
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Did Wolfe ever discuss The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester?
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Feb 21, 2022 01:39
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In the off-chance you'd rather not read Book of the New Sun but also have trouble listening to audio performances that aren't chill-funk hip-hop adaptations, this guy's got you covered: https://whyp.it/t/ressurection-and-death-complete-avmB8/ Given that it looks like it took a year between Chapter 1's initial posting and its completion it may be a while before the next track comes out, but I'm here for it.
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Feb 22, 2022 05:48
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Hammer Bro. posted:In the off-chance you'd rather not read Book of the New Sun but also have trouble listening to audio performances that aren't chill-funk hip-hop adaptations, this guy's got you covered: there's doom metal and dungeon synth and ambient music (and filk lol) about New Sun and heck if I'm not glad to see more genres taking up the banner
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Feb 23, 2022 01:30
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Its amazing how much classic literature I read and think of how Wolfe must have read and been inspired by it. Like I just finished "The Idiot" which had a bit about the guillotine and how the prisoner feels leading up to the execution that really seemed like it could have been something Severian would have talked about. Maybe its just that the performer (Jonathan Davis) is the same for both novels.
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Feb 24, 2022 18:16
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Womyn Capote posted:Its amazing how much classic literature I read and think of how Wolfe must have read and been inspired by it. Like I just finished "The Idiot" which had a bit about the guillotine and how the prisoner feels leading up to the execution that really seemed like it could have been something Severian would have talked about. Maybe its just that the performer (Jonathan Davis) is the same for both novels. Wolfe read notes from the underground but not The Idiot. The long novels he was most familiar with were in English- shorter stuff in other languages, usually.
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Feb 24, 2022 20:06
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Everyday I wish that Wolfe had just made a list of every work he's read and his thoughts on it.
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Feb 24, 2022 21:13
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Totally Huge posted:I've read through BOTNS twice and Urth once (after the re-read). My first time was around 2010 or so and while I went in blind and missed a ton I loved every sentence. My second read through was probably 5 years ago. In between I read a lot about the books here and other places. I've never read any other Gene Wolfe. My problem is that when I start thinking about him it just makes me want to re-read BOTNS again because it's so good. personally i have a hard line where I love everything before it and everything after it leaves me cold, and it's roughly soldier of arete (1990). He just seems to spend of lot of his later books with characters explaining the plot to each other.
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Mar 1, 2022 00:46
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Are there any Wolfe stories that relate to Korea or Korean culture, other than the mention of "Kim Lee-Soong" in Claw?
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Mar 12, 2022 18:37
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FPyat posted:Are there any Wolfe stories that relate to Korea or Korean culture, other than the mention of "Kim Lee-Soong" in Claw? Letters Home technically counts?
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Mar 17, 2022 02:24
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my bony fealty posted:Letters Home technically counts? I’d love to get a copy of that - I’ve had an AbeBooks alert set up but no luck thus far.
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May 11, 2022 17:39
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So I'm almost at the end of book 2 of BOTS. I'm not really sure how to feel about it. I enjoy piecing together parts of the world, it's history, it's culture, how it's structured socially, how things came to be the way they are over the vast magnitude of time. I enjoy Wolfe's writing. I enjoy the mash up of grand sci-fi and fantasy. Overall, it's a good time. But I just have no idea if I am "doing this right", I guess? Every tangential misadventure, every chance encounter Severian has, seems like it holds some kind of vague significance to the entire plot, and I just have no clue what actually matters. Significant characters come and go, events go entirely unexplained, there seem to be at least like 3 or 4 prophecies and fore-tellings it's impossible to tell which are important, the main character frequently has major hallucinatory experiences... It has all become a bit muddled. Like Jonas reveals he's a Robot and disappears into space-time or something and I don't even remember Severian having a reaction. Was that important? Was it not important? Severian seems entirely indifferent. This is just one of several plot beats that seems like it is "major" to the reader, but Severian seems to pass over them with complete silence and indifference. Which has a disorienting effect on the reader, imo. I'm enjoying the ride, and looking forward to books 3/4, which I have sitting on the shelf. I guess I just hope to start having some "ah-hahs" somewhere along this journey here. At this point there have been many more questions then answers. Which I guess I knew I was signing up for. Edit: I will also say I feel like I am terrible at this juncture at identifying when Severian is being "unreliable" or outright lying. I have pledged to myself to be much more vigilant about criticizing his narrative, but at this moment I don't even know why he'd be lying or whose narrative he would be attempting to counter. I suppose this lens on the novel is going to develop after completion and upon a theoretical second reading. hobbez fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Jun 22, 2022 |
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Jun 22, 2022 00:50
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i wish people didn't make so much hay of the "unreliable narrator" thing, it's less that and more that severian remembers everything but isn't very smart so he doesn't connect events that would provide more clarity
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Jun 22, 2022 01:30
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It's by far the least interesting thing to consider in the works.
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Jun 22, 2022 01:31
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moonmazed posted:i wish people didn't make so much hay of the "unreliable narrator" thing, it's less that and more that severian remembers everything but isn't very smart so he doesn't connect events that would provide more clarity Well this is good to know! You can’t really encounter conversation about the book without hearing about the unreliable narrator component, so I definitely think it gets kind of played up to be some huge reveal or something
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Jun 22, 2022 02:22
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the dude was raised in a torture spaceship with a bunch of old men and he thinks "animal husbandry" means marrying animals, he is very poorly socialized
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Jun 22, 2022 02:31
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His being an unreliable narrator is mostly him just trying to justify his monstrous behavior to himself.
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Jun 22, 2022 02:35
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Justify, not so much as paper over. His lies by omission are telling, but he's also got such a poor social understanding and understanding of the wider world that when author severian writes it down it seems he smooths out a bit of the frictious moments that he didn't realize were so when he was younger
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Jun 22, 2022 02:38
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There are also plenty of times where he straight up tells the truth and doesn't realize how bad it makes him look because again no social skills.
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Jun 22, 2022 02:51
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moonmazed posted:the dude was raised in a torture spaceship with a bunch of old men and he thinks "animal husbandry" means marrying animals, he is very poorly socialized Woah spoiler tags please. I didn’t think his behavior was that horrendous until the scene in the boat where he basically seems to rape Jolenta Like cringe and misogynistic as gently caress but not fully despicable or evil It’s likely I’m forgetting a thing or two however
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Jun 22, 2022 03:03
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Severian is a land of contrast. As for the disconnected feeling of the book, that's intentional. Keep thinking, but don't stress over it. Most importantly: keep reading.
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Jun 22, 2022 03:18
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Bear Sleuth posted:Keep thinking, but don't stress over it. Most importantly: keep reading. This. Gene Wolfe really is the Dark Souls of reading in that his reputation for difficulty is over-hyped. Neil Gaiman is full of poo poo when he says Wolfe is "throwing knives" at his readers. Just roll with it.
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Jun 22, 2022 03:27
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sorry, that stuff is early on nso i thought it was ok 
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Jun 22, 2022 03:35
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It's not really clear that the tower is a repurposed rocket on the first read.
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Jun 22, 2022 03:50
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Sev straight up calls the doors a bulkhead at one point
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Jun 22, 2022 03:52
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moonmazed posted:sorry, that stuff is early on nso i thought it was ok Just playin with ya bud I don’t mind at all. It’s about the journey, not the destination! But yeah the idea of interstellar travel really is only just being introduced into the book by the end of book 2 at least in my reading
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Jun 22, 2022 03:53
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Gaius Marius posted:Sev straight up calls the doors a bulkhead at one point When you’re getting hit over the head with obtuse language every page this is easy to overlook! I wouldn’t say it’s exactly hitting you in the face. I appreciate this subtle hint by Wolfe though, very cool
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Jun 22, 2022 03:55
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Atlas Hugged posted:It's not really clear that the tower is a repurposed rocket on the first read. bonus points for deciphering the description of the old painting in the library as Buzz Aldrin on the moon
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Jun 22, 2022 04:02
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Ben Nerevarine posted:bonus points for deciphering the description of the old painting in the library as Buzz Aldrin on the moon drat ok you guys are getting me hype gonna finish claw tonight let’s gooooo
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Jun 22, 2022 04:23
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there's also significant narrative parallel between the matachin tower and baldanders' castle
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Jun 22, 2022 04:50
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Gaius Marius posted:Sev straight up calls the doors a bulkhead at one point I think when I read it years ago I interpreted it as a salvaged boat (or chunks of one) because the start takes place so close to a big river and I think it read as if it was placed against the walls, like it just was just smashed up against a wall and left there. On reread the verticality became more apparent in a way that goes beyond floors of a cargo ship, but if you think "boat" it's possible to keep thinking that, particularly with the density of the text.
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Jun 22, 2022 07:03
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Zachack posted:I think when I read it years ago I interpreted it as a salvaged boat (or chunks of one) because the start takes place so close to a big river and I think it read as if it was placed against the walls, like it just was just smashed up against a wall and left there. On reread the verticality became more apparent in a way that goes beyond floors of a cargo ship, but if you think "boat" it's possible to keep thinking that, particularly with the density of the text.
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Jun 22, 2022 07:28
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MeatwadIsGod posted:This. Gene Wolfe really is the Dark Souls of reading in that his reputation for difficulty is over-hyped. Neil Gaiman is full of poo poo when he says Wolfe is "throwing knives" at his readers. Just roll with it. this. it's very easy to interpret the obtuseness as hostility but it's clear to me her desperately wants people to understand--the obfuscation is a result of wolfe being a deeply complicated, weird man trying to tell a deeply complicated, weird story about faith. i read his "translator's note" before starting shadow for the first time, and i think that should be the standard. it serves as a primer and mea culpa for the language used. rather than harping on its difficulty i've found a better way to turn people onto BOTNS is to describe it as "if borges wrote a conan the barbarian novel". still inaccurate, but much more inviting
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Jun 22, 2022 09:09
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I forget which book it's in but there's a page or two where Severian writes an aside on his historiographic and literary method that was like a giant neon sign from Wolfe telling the reader that he's fully aware of how varied his readership is. He knew full well that he needed to meet several different expectations simultaneously. In that sense, for all the layers of obscurantism in BOTNS I think Wolfe has a workmanlike quality where at the end of the day he's trying to please his audience.
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Jun 22, 2022 14:06
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MeatwadIsGod posted:This. Gene Wolfe really is the Dark Souls of reading in that his reputation for difficulty is over-hyped. Neil Gaiman is full of poo poo when he says Wolfe is "throwing knives" at his readers. Just roll with it. Someone hasn't read An Evil Guest or Home Fires or The Land Across  I agree though, it's best to just read his stories as stories and not care about the "difficulty" because really they're just good stories. There are for sure some "puzzles" or certain interpretations you can take that can greatly enhance the work as a whole hello Book of the Short Sun but it's not necessary by any means to enjoy them. Gaiman's take is more annoying than anything else.
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Jul 20, 2022 14:14
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Other than Seven American Nights, what are his most memorable short stories that aren't halfway to novella length?
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Jul 21, 2022 21:09
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Forlesen.
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Jul 21, 2022 22:29
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sebmojo posted:Forlesen. That one Hero as Werewolf Doctor of Death Island
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Jul 21, 2022 22:35
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I was tremendously pleased by "How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion." It helps that it's cheerful. His novels that I've read left me with the feeling of a brick in my chest.
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Jul 21, 2022 23:15
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Always been a fan of The Arimaspian Legacy/Slow Children at Play. Just like the imagery of solar griffins.
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Jul 21, 2022 23:35
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