Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers

Lee Berman · 15 Aug 2010, 10:59 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 06:59:13 -0400
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers
Message-ID: <SNT123-W2925340C12BBB46AA8599CF9A0 at phx.gbl>

>Gerry Quinn: But that raises a question.  Suppose we convincingly solved such a 
>cryptogram.  Now, how do we explain the fact of that particular vault under 
>Viron having a number with this secret meaning?

I don't think we have to. In my opinion Gene Wolfe sometimes puts little "in-jokes"
into his text which by-pass the characters and go straight from author to reader.

James' Bee as a *"hymen*optera" reference might be an example. We cannot expect
that residents of the Whorl are using linnaean taxonomy...but we and Wolfe do. And
that shared understanding could work without any need for the characters to understand

One of my favorites is in Short Sun. Horn asks the woman on his boat her name and
she tells him something incomprehensible. So he decides to give her the plant
name which most resembles what she said, Seawrack.

She cannot be speaking English, but Wolfe does and we do. So, if it was an English word 
she had spoken, which would be closest in sound/spelling to Seawrack?

To me, it is "shipwreck".  Later we find that she is a siren and her very purpose for 
existence is to cause shipwrecks. Again, in my opinion, a wordplay that only author and 
reader can understand, not the characters.

>I think that we cannot, just because Wolfe is the author, assume that some 
>elements of a story are not merely 'colour'.  It would be very restrictive 
>for Wolfe.  Every time a character booked a hotel room, Wolfe would be 
>constrained from saying "he was given the key to room 167", for fear that 
>readers would waste time searching for some numerological clue.

For me, #167 could be color.

5553 8783 4223 9700 34
2221 0401 1101 7276 56
SEALED FOR THE MONARCH

is probably not. But such things are an individualized intuition. Some might feel
wolfe would never by-pass his characters with an in-joke to his readers.

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