Comments on: Green knights

By: Douglas

Douglas — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 23:01:52 +0000

I attempted the four books of the Long Sun, and was mightily disappointed. Tricksy ‘unreliable author’ narrative, plus a resolution in the last book that appeared hasty and botched, to say nothing of the many stories that were not resolved at all. But so many people whose opinion I respect like Wolfe, that I have to suspect I’m missing something.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 16:54:16 +0000

Yes, and I think you’re mistaken to put all the weight of your argument on that single statement, made in the early books. Jonas, in a joke you might or might not think of as canon, refers to a Czech-settled world, which definitely implies that Wolfe had the idea of contemporary ethnic groups settling other planets in the context of the series. The Book of the Short Sun shows, very clearly, ethnic groups not dissimilar to ones we know, settling other planets. Not merely in terms of language, but other pieces of ethnic cultural apparatus as well. But I suspect you’re about this close >< to going off into Howard Alan Treesong mode again, which is counterproductive for everyone involved. So I’m ghost. Write the paper already, and I will see how well it holds up. C.

By: chun the unavoidable

chun the unavoidable — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 05:25:30 +0000

Wolfe states, for whatever it’s worth, that expressions such as “terminus est” are not Latin, but a chosen analogue. The Whorl was launched about a thousand years before Severian was born. Do you see where I’m going with this?

By: Carlos

Carlos — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 05:20:36 +0000

That, in itself, only means that “French” is the chosen analogue.

At some point most of us prefer to shave with Occam’s razor. The multilingual wordplay in the Book of the Long Sun (including some from Arabic and Irish to English), and the character named Roger in the most recent trilogy, among many other details, IMO make your interpretation the more tendentious. C.

By: chun the unavoidable

chun the unavoidable — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 04:34:41 +0000

That, in itself, only means that “French” is the chosen analogue.

Wolfe, unless you subscribe to a particularly esoteric interpretation, uses a loose cabalistic metaphor (and terminology) to describe different levels of reality in Urth of the New Sun. Are you saying that the business about white and black holes in that book can be explained by something other than “universe-jumping?” I tend to think so, myself, but I have an exceptionally esoteric interpretation of the series.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 02:48:26 +0000

If memory serves, the French language is referenced by name (by Patera Remora, again, if memory serves) as one of the languages the Chrasmological Writings are written in. I would be very careful in inferring anything grandly cosmological from the terminology Wolfe uses. Pace Andre-Driussi, it’s not a very kabbalistic cosmology. C.

By: chun the unavoidable

chun the unavoidable — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 22:44:43 +0000

Actually it could be the same situation with languages in the later books, with those being used as analogues. The cabalistic terminology in Urth, especially, suggests that it is set in an imaginary history somehow prior to yet not the same as ours.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 22:11:54 +0000

Y’all might want to check out Yves Meynard’s The Book of Knights, in an odd coincidence also published by Tor. Wolfe dedicates The Knight to him. It’s fairly obvious that much of the background in the later Sun books is an afterthought or a retcon to Wolfe’s original vision. The most obvious is the conceit that Wolfe was translating Severian’s autobiography from a baroque descendant language far removed in time from our own… but in later Sun books, English, French, Spanish, Arabic and ecclesiastical Latin are shown to be nearly contemporary with the earlier setting. The vast expanses of time implied by Wolfe’s setting are shortened in other ways as well. But I digress.

By: Henry Farrell

Henry Farrell — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:43:22 +0000

Yeah – FLF is the only longer work by Wolfe in third person that I really like. It’s wonderfully funny – the scene where the lights go out in the lunatic asylum is just extraordinary. There are bits of it though that I’ve never fully understood (but that’s true of everything else that he’s written).

By: --kip

--kip — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:32:40 +0000

But Matt--there is only one plot. And Henry: how dare you! You're shaking the very foundations of how the left is perceived--we aren't supposed to enjoy works that don't fit our narrow, doctrinaire outlook! (Though I still can't shake the queasiness I feel at the fact that Ken Hite really wants Bush to be president some more...) The Knight is--interesting, so far; spell-bindingly good in the sense of conjuring up another, Other world, and putting you inescapably there. But I don't agree that Able's story is, or could be, as Dirdan suggests, "a kind of rewriting of Severian's story"; for one thing, Severian was in some crucial way more self-conscious than Able (perhaps the figure that a torturer cuts in an epic is more loaded with a necessary ironic undertow than a boy grown suddenly into a Conanical knight?)--and that makes some difference, at least to me, here and now, 2/3 of the way through the first half of a diptych, and years away from the last time I read New Sun, and I should maybe do something about that. Then, the "likes" aren't bothering me at all, and though I'm trusting there's a reason for why they're doing what they're doing, Uri and Baki are bothering me, quite a bit, so what do I know? --Not so much. And my favorite Wolfe, which is far from his best, to be sure, is Free Live Free. Which is weird, since I usually like him much better in first person than third.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:00:04 +0000

I’m an avid Wolfe reader… but I have to wonder how many repetitions we’re going to see of the One Plot. Young guy goes on long journey; discovers world, self.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 19:59:57 +0000

I’m an avid Wolfe reader… but I have to wonder how many repetitions we’re going to see of the One Plot. Young guy goes on long journey; discovers world, self.

By: chun the unavoidable

chun the unavoidable — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 19:53:36 +0000

Not to be short, but being “impressed” is irrelevant. What’s relevant is that necessary information about what’s going on is only revealed in the last eight books (including the Long and Short). My paper may address this, but I think it’s reasonably clear that the entire series has to be reevaluated in light of what you learn later.

By: Henry Farrell

Henry Farrell — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 19:49:32 +0000

Chun – disagree slightly on TFHOC - wonderful book (at least parts I and III), but I think that New Sun is better. My personal favorite is Peace, but that takes some getting into. On the New Sun, I’ll grant the necessity of reading Urth of the New Sun, but I really wasn’t impressed with the Short Sun books at all, and the Long Sun series, while much better, didn’t add much to my understanding of the New Sun books. Perhaps I need to read the essay on Wolfe that you’ve been talking about writing for the last few months to understand what you’re getting at ;)

By: chun the unavoidable

chun the unavoidable — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 19:34:45 +0000

As the world's leading anonymous and unpublished authority on Wolfe, I must say that The Fifth Head of Cerebus is the book to read first and that the four New Sun books are part of a series of twelve, without which the first four do not make any sense at all. This is an important--and neglected--point. Watch my blog for my own review of Knight.