Subject: The Book of the New Sun

From: Jim Aspnes <asp%mit-oz at mit-mc.arpa>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 1984 09:28:00 +0000

I, too, found it difficult to find a true plot to The Book.  It's
curious, because Wolfe has done more substantial works (_Fevre
Dream_ comes to mind), where he has managed to keep his plot tight
and his characters human.  Perhaps it's the strange setting or the
self-indulgent first-person narrative, but The Book of the New Sun
reads like literary doodling.  It has points of greatness (the story
told by the Ascian is a work of art in itself), and they manage to
carry the story limpingly along, but the work as a whole seems more
of an anthology than a series of novels.

My praise will flow freely for anyone who can pick out some
semblance of continuity of plot and can justify it well.  But at the
moment it seems very much that the Autarch's clothes are impossible
for any but the truly wise to see.

Jim

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From: FEBER <feber at usc-isib.arpa>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 1984 10:17:00 +0000

Jim Aspnes recently added a new book to the Wolfe canon,
Fevre Dream, which, considering it is by George R R Martin, is
fairly suprising.  Since arguing ad hominem is generally frowned
upon, I will restrict this flame to the following: There seems to be
a widely held belief that a narrative can take only one (or maybe
two or three, for the more liberal minded) forms, and that
everything else is either "literary doodling" or "too long" or "full
of big words" etc. etc. I would suggest that before you start
attacking a book on literary grounds, you understand something about
the subject - Northrup Frye's Anatomy of Criticism is a good place
to start.  Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun (which is really one
book, as its name implies) has an episodic narrative which places it
squarely in the oldest literary tradition there is (except for maybe
the grunt).  What makes it a fascinating work, outside of the
clarity of its prose, is the interweaving of themes and motifs.  But
if you don't get it by reading it, no amount of explication will
help.
                (mark)