The Snootiness of Gene Wolfe

Thomas Womack · 29 Feb 2004, 23:41 · from rec.arts.sf.written.2004.mbox

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From: Thomas Womack <twomack at chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Subject: Re: The Snootiness of Gene Wolfe
Date: 29 Feb 2004 23:41:26 +0000 (GMT)
Message-ID: <+tv*P4jeq at news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
References: <Xns949D9FE6F929Difyouwanttoemailvisi at 199.45.49.11> <c21d3ba0.0402290659.37671483 at posting.google.com>

>Maybe Wolfe does this too intentionally. But the thing is - he
>succeeded. I only read the Book of the New Sun so far, but I'm
>definately looking fot the others (I already have the Long Sun books,
>but I'm trying to find _Urth_ first).

I have read BOTNS and am half-way through Urth; I'm not sure that the
term to describe Wolfe's style isn't "infuriating".  Lots of it reads
rather like the perspicacity-demonstrating scenes from Sherlock Holmes,
but cheating in that the reader hasn't seen sufficient of the clues
(particularly when the clue is that an alien species sounds odd for its
kind, it being the only exemplar of its kind we've seen).

I think really I find that life is too short to read very much written
in first-person by that unreliable a narrator.  The incluing process
doesn't work because we only see Severian reaching conclusions, rather
than particularly acquiring the ability to reach the conclusions
ourselves; shortage of infodumps is as much of a problem as excess of
infodumps, at least for me.  For me, invoking a world by a
well-described character's reactions to it worked much better in
something like _The King's Peace_.

The book that's really impressed me recently is Dorothy Dunnett's
"Niccolo Rising"; absolutely superb pacing, and a really compelling
environment, quite substantially thanks to everything being told in
a well-calibrated omniscient third-person.

Tom

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