Gene Wolfe's style

Teri Pettit at Xerox · undated · from sf-lovers.1982.mbox

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From: Teri Pettit at Xerox <Pettit at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: Gene Wolfe's style
Date: 2-Feb-82 12:36:05 PST (Tuesday)
Message-ID: <sflovers-v5-20-4 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V5 #20
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-05

I think McClure at SRI's assessment of Gene Wolfe as "the sort of
writer who's desperately trying to produce SF worthy of literary
criticism" is unfair.  While he does produce a type of fiction which
has much in common with works noticed by literary critics, there is
absolutely no reason to suppose that he does it for the purpose of
gaining that notice, or that he is particularly desperate about
anything.

I imagine Wolfe, like most authors, writes, insofar as he can, in the
style he most enjoys reading.  For him, this is a highly recursive
style in which his creation and the process of creating it is as much
its own subject as is the apparent story it tells.  All his works are
essentially about layers of reality, and shifting between those
layers.  Those layers usually include that of the purported writer as
writer, and Wolfe as writer, as well as the purported writer as
protagonist in some events.

Literary critics write essays about writing.  Naturally they tend to
most enjoy fiction which is in some sense art about writing.  But an
SF writer is always inviting readers into an alternate reality, and
thus SF writers too often enjoy artistic recursion.  If Wolfe were
desperate for literary acclaim, he'd write stories like Fowles or
Preust or Nabakov in which the surface story, which weaves through the
story about stories, was set in "our world".  He has the talent for
it.  Instead he sticks to fantasy worlds which, however intrinsically
suited to themes of layered realities, are anathema to the world of
"serious literature".  This to me is sufficient evidence that he
writes 'em that way simply because he LIKES 'em that way.

        -- Teri

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