Gene Wolfe (Was: Re: Mercedes Lackey)

Doug Merritt · 27 Mar 1992, 17:20 · from sf-lovers.1992.mbox

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From: doug at netcom.com (Doug Merritt)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe (Was: Re: Mercedes Lackey)
Date: 27 Mar 92 17:20:18 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v17-148-2 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V17 #148
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-17a

>>science fiction and fantasy.  Oh, for a few score more Gene Wolfes!]
>
>Someone actually wants _more_ Gene Wolfes?!?  What a painful thought!
>Reading his Torturer stuff was one of the most painful things I've ever
>done. There was no point, very little plot, and way too much
>foreshadowing.

It's true that there wasn't a lot of plot by usual standards, and at first
I found this disappointing, too. But as I went on I discovered that the
"miscellaneous random background elements" (I'm quoting what I might have
called them after 30 pages of the first book) were actually the whole
point.

It's a mood piece, it's about the psychology of a very odd man, by way of
contrast it's about the psychology of the common man, it's a thoughtful
work about ethics and mores (a torturer as hero??? Even Donaldson used an
anti-hero for what little point he had to make in book 1), and there are a
lot of parts that are brilliantly written in terms of style and visual
evocativeness. It's also interesting in an exotic-world tour guide sense,
but that's more minor, although again very well done in spots. And last but
not least, vast pieces of it add up to a dark but moderately ineffable
comment about the last days of the world.

There were also some spots where I found it a bit slow paced even so, but
given the rest, I decided that he was probably doing that on purpose in
order to maintain the rhythm and pace (they were noticeably regular) in
precisely the intended way.

Now, if you're in the mood for bang-'em-up adventure (which I sometimes am,
I don't mean that as a flame), then this is going to be a dreary and dull
set of books.

If you take them on their own merits, you can discover that Wolfe has
created something so different that it's pretty much in a class by itself.
It's not quite like anything ever done before.

And whether you happen to like it or not, that deserves high praise.

(Some people liked Urth of the New Sun best, but I thought he fell apart on
that one, sort of throwing in all the exciting adventure and answers to
unanswerable questions that he'd left out of the early ones. I don't mind
such things if they're done well, or sometimes if they're the whole point,
but they seemed weak by comparison with his previous approach.)

This is not to say I want to see people imitate this series. I probably
wouldn't like the results. I'm sure I wouldn't have liked the original
series if anyone but Wolfe had done it. It wasn't what he did, but *how* he
did it that was great.

It *is* possible to say, "He did a great job at doing it, but that sort of
thing just isn't to my tastes," you know. Saying that it's "dreck" just
exposes that you don't pay attention to those aspects of books that you
don't personally care for no matter how well done they may be, surely the
very definition of provincialism.

Or to be more charitable, I could assume you're simply taking a
Humpty-Dumpty stance in meaning "dreck" to say "I *really* didn't like it."

>It was a collection of images which went from unusual to completely
>whacked-out.  Why anyone would seek out more of this dreck is completely
>beyond me.

As usual it's important to separate personal taste from questions of
craftsmanship. I can see why a lot of people wouldn't care for it, but that
doesn't mean that it's "dreck". (Yiddish for "shit", btw... it's a rather
harsh put-down).

Doug Merritt

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