Subject: Gene Wolfe

From: Charlie Martin <crm at duke.uucp>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1986 20:14:55 +0000

As some of you may have noticed, I've been careful not to say anything 
about Gene Wolfe's writing in the couple of notes I've posted under 
this general heading.  This is for the reasonable reason that I simply 
haven't read anything much of GW's writing.  Specifically, I tried 
_Peace_ some time ago after having met Wolfe at a con and liked him 
personally.  

And I didn't like Peace at all.  I tried a couple other things.  
Didn't like them much either.  So I simply figured that I didn't like 
his style (as I don't like Herman Melville's) not because Wolfe can't 
write, but simply because for one reason or another it didn't strike 
the required chord in me.  

And I wasn't going to respond in particular to Davis's note to Rick 
Heli.  Not because I had trouble reading it -- contrary to what I may 
have suggested in the little "paragraphs" note I posted -- but because 
I agreed almost completely with it.  I tell you, my argumentative 
nature is really confused when I go agreeing with my best debating 
opponents.  

But it happens that someone lent my wife a copy of Shadow of the 
Torturer recently, and she has been reading it for the last week or 
so.  And sitting at the other end of the couch saying things like 
"Gee, can he write."  Spontaneously, while reading the book.  

Well, that piqued my interest.  So I took the book when she wasn't
looking, and read the first ten or so pages.  (If you must know, I
stopped there because she came back from the kitchen and grabbed it
from my hands, saying something to the effect of "*I'm* not finished
with it yet!")

I wanted to drop this in because I found it just as compelling as 
Davis apparently did.  After a few years of trying hard to learn to 
write, I find that I am more conscious than I used to be of the 
mechanics of writing: this makes it harder for me to become engrossed 
in a story in the first pages.  SotT did this in a matter of a couple 
of paragraphs -- grabbed me, dragged me into the other world through a 
6x9 inch page.  And at 6'2" and 220 lbs, this is no small trick in 
itself.

And I didn't find it all that inaccessible, honest.  It is a bit
different style, but then I didn't like Double Star when I first read
it -- it was too different from what I had learned to expect.  It
just  takes some adjustment.  But it's nothing compared to Stephen
Donaldson, who picks out words for nice sound and then uses them in
ways that show he didn't understand them at all.  That's hard to
accept -- this is simply hard to read.

                           *       *       *

But I did want to respond a little bit in terms of an "author's 
responsibility."  Those of you who seem to believe that net.sf-lovers 
is not a forum for writing about writing (science fiction and fantasy) 
should n-key here.  

I do think the author has a couple of responsibilities: the first one
is to turn in a text which can be interpreted as a series of words
with some kind of sense.  I'm making this as loose as possible to
include people like the Surrealist and Dadaist poets, James Joyce and
William S Burroughs.  Whether or not the text produces an imaginary
experience of another reality (oh, all right, a vivid dream) may
matter to it *as fiction* -- at least in my mind -- but whether or not
you accept that idea in terms of fiction, I think it is at least
necessary to communicate some intelligence in the technical sense,
some intimation that there is a non-randomness to the selection of
words.  But turning in something in a new language, with a new script,
and without something to lead one into the new language, is out of
bounds.  (And it won't sell very well, either.)

((One of the wonderful things about human language processing is that
we  can have that sensation from certain kinds of limited randomness,
like  that produced by poetry-writing programs -- we go out and make
up  meaning subconsciously if we don't track what's going on.))

The other responsibility of a fiction or fictive writer is to his/her
*characters*.  You are responsible to them to tell their story as they
tell it to you, and to understand them as they are.  Then you write it
down.  It's that easy.  (Hah!)

But Davis is right about a "responsibility" to one's readers: 
booshwah.  If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.  But I 
(and all writers) have a higher responsibility than to anyone who 
simply reads it.  

(Oh, by the way -- about "you don't have to read it."  I would make 
one exception: once something of mine gets published, *that* you have 
to read!  Even you, Davis.  Hell, I'll throw in an adjective, just for 
you.)

---

From: wfi <wfi at rti-sel.uucp>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1986 22:25:30 +0000

In article <6915 at duke.UUCP> crm at duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) writes:

>William S Burroughs.  

In a sense, the act of turning in a text which is constructed so it 
can't be interpreted as a series of words is itself making a kind of
sense. A year or two ago the New York Times Book Review had a review
of a book by a European called "The [something] Codex," which
consisted of a series of woodcuts with accompanying 'texts.' The 
'texts' were not in any known language or character set, and the
example shown was VERY disturbing as were the descriptions of the
other illustrations and texts in the book. The effect the author/artist
seemed to be striving for was the discovery of a mysterious Codex from
an unknown civilization whose illustrations tell something of the
civilization's history/arts/sciences/magics. But the texts were of
course undecipherable. I felt looking at the illustration and
accompanying text something akin to what I felt the first time I
examined Max Ernst's "La Semaine de Bonte," disorientation and
recognition at the same time. So I suppose something that doesn't make
sense on one level can make a sort of meta-sense on another ... if
THAT makes any sense. :-)

>...  But turning in something in a new language, with a new script,

This was something I felt when reading Russell Hoban's "Riddley
Walker." I thought he was making us work very hard to get at a rather
run-of-the-mill SF story without giving us something unusual in return
(I don't mind working if the reward matches the effort, I guess).
 
                           -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly