Gene Wolfe

wfi · 14 Feb 1986, 22:25 · from net.sf-lovers.1986.mbox

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From: wfi at rti-sel.UUCP
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe
Date: Fri, 14-Feb-86 17:25:30 EST
Message-ID: <668 at rti-sel.UUCP>
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
References: <6915 at duke.UUCP>

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

>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.  

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,
>and without something to lead one into the new language, is out of
>bounds.  (And it won't sell very well, either.)

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

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