I’ve been meaning for days now to put up a pointer to John Holbo’s nice post on Gene Wolfe, which has an interesting comments-thread. A statistically improbable proportion of the politically-inclined blogosphere are Gene Wolfe junkies, and a fair few of them have commented on this thread. And if you haven’t read Wolfe, shame on you. The field of science fiction/fantasy has two standout candidates for great authors who’ll be read in 100 years, and Wolfe is one of them. His masterpiece is “The Book of the New Sun” series (collected in the US in two volumes, Shadow and Claw and Sword and Citadel (with a sort of coda, The Urth of the New Sun). It’s a wonderful book; shadows of Kafka, of Borges, of Chesterton. Wolfe’s prose style is ornate, without being baroque; BOTNS is thick with archaisms, loanwords and other exotica, but they’re employed with precision and economy, and even a sly sense of humour. It’s grave, and chilly, but it sings .
We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life - they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.
Go read.
I guess it’s obvious who I think the other candidate is.
I should point out that there’s an on-line journal of Wolfe studies, and a very active mailing list, both of which I’m far too lazy to link to.
I think that Henry thinks the other is John Crowley, and I think that Crowley ought to be for the fineness of his invention, but I think it’s more likely that Wm Gibson will be the other, for having shaped the world that will then be all around us.
Any ideas on the roots of the correlation between Wolfe appreciation and blogging?
While it’s probably futile to predict who’s going to be read in 100 years, if I were a betting man, I’d be putting money on Tolkien.
I’m betting on LeGuin for the 100 years thing. At least The Left Hand Of Darkness and The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.
Fritz Leiber and Mervyn Peake would surely be two other candidates for this honour.
It pains me to do so, but I’ve got to agree with Chun — if I had to choose one, it would be Vance. But to say that there are only two is pessimistic — Mervyn Peake certainly belongs there, and Tolkien despite his detractors, and maybe some of the excellent Soviet writers like Jablokov. Crowley is intriguing but often unreadable.
Actually, Lem is much more likely to last than either of them, now that I think about it.
I would think Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ the most likely. It is truly a remarkable achievement - both writing and plotting are light years ahead of C S Lewis for example. As for Tolkien I’m not sure. There have been so many copies that to some extent the currency is devalued.
Nomination: Samuel R. Delany.
And, yeah, the idea that there will be only two skiffy-type writers from the 20th/early 21st century read in the 22nd strikes me as quite unlikely. What’s more to the point is that most often this sort of thing doesn’t become clear for at least fifty years, or more. Shall we look back at when Captain S. P. Meek and A. Hyatt Verrill were all the rage in the field?
three letters: PKD
I was glad to see Chris Hall’s brief but extremely well-spoken three word posting on this topic. I would add that Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Word for World Is Forest” remains one of the best novels I have ever read on the subject of racism, and unlike much writing in this field, it becomes less, not more, dated as time goes by. Tolkein is another no-brainer in this discussion, even though some would find him too obvious a choice. But getting back to Gene Wolfe’s “The Book of the New Sun” (which from what I can tell should now be properly viewed as a five-part novel, rather than a tetralogy w/ a coda/sequel added on) — I ‘d have to describe it is possibly the most ambitious literary achievement of its entire genre. It reads like a cross between heavy-duty archaic literature masters like Chaucer/Milton/Spenser/etc. and the similarly heavy-duty modernist/postmodernist literary masters like Joyce/Pynchon/DeLillo/etc. … in fact, TBOTNS is about as hard to read as either “Beowulf” or “Ratner’s Star,” which is saying a lot. In other words, it reads almost exactly NOT like any kind of scifi/fantasy ever written. For that reason, I’d hesitate to even recommend it to fans of those genres. Difficult, hard-slogging reading because of the archaic diction, emotionally draining because of the constant and overpowering sense of melancholy and sorrow, it is almost entirely unrewarding on the Escapist Pulp Paperback level so many fans turn to scifi/fantasy for, but utterly and profoundly rewarding for those who put out the effort required to absorb the cumulative, profound impact that resonates long after the book has been fully absorbed (which will probably take even the devoted reader at least two full reads.) The fact that scifi/fantasy’s publishing origins were almost exclusively in the pulp, lowest common denominator realm make transcendant, literary works like those of Wolfe even more fascinating (in that he has chosen a field that will alienate many serious literary readers from the get go, then written on a level sure to alienate those loking for easy entertainment that make up the fan base of that genre; in effect, double-alienating himself from a potentially appreciative audience before he even begins) but to me all the more special for it: Gene Wolfe is clearly not an author who will EVER recieve the true recognition he deserves, but doesn’t seem to mind. (In fcat, he seems to acknowledge this fact allegorically in TBOTNS several times, eg. when Severian the Lame, having completed the normous tome he calls The Book Of The New Sun at the end of part four, proceeds at the beginning of part five to literally hurl the completed manuscript, sealed in lead, into the gulf between the stars, where the chances are astronomically against it ever being seen or read by any lifeform ever again. Rather than being depressed by these and other extremely melancholy themes that pervade TBOTNS, I found myself ultimately uplifted by them: though Wolfe’s primary theme is, clearly, death (and the equally inevitable human pain that precedes and follows it in life) his embrace of this theme is, in the end, paradoxically life-affirming. Thank you for posting this thread and encouraging people to appreciate the work of this all too little-known modern American master.
À Gauche
Jeremy Alder
Amaravati
Anggarrgoon
Audhumlan Conspiracy
H.E. Baber
Philip Blosser
Paul Broderick
Matt Brown
Diana Buccafurni
Brandon Butler
Keith Burgess-Jackson
Certain Doubts
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
The Conservative Philosopher
Desert Landscapes
Denis Dutton
David Efird
Karl Elliott
David Estlund
Experimental Philosophy
Fake Barn County
Kai von Fintel
Russell Arben Fox
Garden of Forking Paths
Roger Gathman
Michael Green
Scott Hagaman
Helen Habermann
David Hildebrand
John Holbo
Christopher Grau
Jonathan Ichikawa
Tom Irish
Michelle Jenkins
Adam Kotsko
Barry Lam
Language Hat
Language Log
Christian Lee
Brian Leiter
Stephen Lenhart
Clayton Littlejohn
Roderick T. Long
Joshua Macy
Mad Grad
Jonathan Martin
Matthew McGrattan
Marc Moffett
Geoffrey Nunberg
Orange Philosophy
Philosophy Carnival
Philosophy, et cetera
Philosophy of Art
Douglas Portmore
Philosophy from the 617 (moribund)
Jeremy Pierce
Punishment Theory
Geoff Pynn
Timothy Quigley (moribund?)
Conor Roddy
Sappho's Breathing
Anders Schoubye
Wolfgang Schwartz
Scribo
Michael Sevel
Tom Stoneham (moribund)
Adam Swenson
Peter Suber
Eddie Thomas
Joe Ulatowski
Bruce Umbaugh
What is the name ...
Matt Weiner
Will Wilkinson
Jessica Wilson
Young Hegelian
Richard Zach
Psychology
Donyell Coleman
Deborah Frisch
Milt Rosenberg
Tom Stafford
Law
Ann Althouse
Stephen Bainbridge
Jack Balkin
Douglass A. Berman
Francesca Bignami
BlunkettWatch
Jack Bogdanski
Paul L. Caron
Conglomerate
Jeff Cooper
Disability Law
Displacement of Concepts
Wayne Eastman
Eric Fink
Victor Fleischer (on hiatus)
Peter Friedman
Michael Froomkin
Bernard Hibbitts
Walter Hutchens
InstaPundit
Andis Kaulins
Lawmeme
Edward Lee
Karl-Friedrich Lenz
Larry Lessig
Mirror of Justice
Eric Muller
Nathan Oman
Opinio Juris
John Palfrey
Ken Parish
Punishment Theory
Larry Ribstein
The Right Coast
D. Gordon Smith
Lawrence Solum
Peter Tillers
Transatlantic Assembly
Lawrence Velvel
David Wagner
Kim Weatherall
Yale Constitution Society
Tun Yin
History
Blogenspiel
Timothy Burke
Rebunk
Naomi Chana
Chapati Mystery
Cliopatria
Juan Cole
Cranky Professor
Greg Daly
James Davila
Sherman Dorn
Michael Drout
Frog in a Well
Frogs and Ravens
Early Modern Notes
Evan Garcia
George Mason History bloggers
Ghost in the Machine
Rebecca Goetz
Invisible Adjunct (inactive)
Jason Kuznicki
Konrad Mitchell Lawson
Danny Loss
Liberty and Power
Danny Loss
Ether MacAllum Stewart
Pam Mack
Heather Mathews
James Meadway
Medieval Studies
H.D. Miller
Caleb McDaniel
Marc Mulholland
Received Ideas
Renaissance Weblog
Nathaniel Robinson
Jacob Remes (moribund?)
Christopher Sheil
Red Ted
Time Travelling Is Easy
Brian Ulrich
Shana Worthen
Computers/media/communication
Lauren Andreacchi (moribund)
Eric Behrens
Joseph Bosco
Danah Boyd
David Brake
Collin Brooke
Maximilian Dornseif (moribund)
Jeff Erickson
Ed Felten
Lance Fortnow
Louise Ferguson
Anne Galloway
Jason Gallo
Josh Greenberg
Alex Halavais
Sariel Har-Peled
Tracy Kennedy
Tim Lambert
Liz Lawley
Michael O'Foghlu
Jose Luis Orihuela (moribund)
Alex Pang
Sebastian Paquet
Fernando Pereira
Pink Bunny of Battle
Ranting Professors
Jay Rosen
Ken Rufo
Douglas Rushkoff
Vika Safrin
Rob Schaap (Blogorrhoea)
Frank Schaap
Robert A. Stewart
Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Ray Trygstad
Jill Walker
Phil Windley
Siva Vaidahyanathan
Anthropology
Kerim Friedman
Alex Golub
Martijn de Koning
Nicholas Packwood
Geography
Stentor Danielson
Benjamin Heumann
Scott Whitlock
Education
Edward Bilodeau
Jenny D.
Richard Kahn
Progressive Teachers
Kelvin Thompson (defunct?)
Mark Byron
Business administration
Michael Watkins (moribund)
Literature, language, culture
Mike Arnzen
Brandon Barr
Michael Berube
The Blogora
Colin Brayton
John Bruce
Miriam Burstein
Chris Cagle
Jean Chu
Hans Coppens
Tyler Curtain
Cultural Revolution
Terry Dean
Joseph Duemer
Flaschenpost
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Jonathan Goodwin
Rachael Groner
Alison Hale
Household Opera
Dennis Jerz
Jason Jones
Miriam Jones
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Steven Krause
Lilliputian Lilith
Catherine Liu
John Lovas
Gerald Lucas
Making Contact
Barry Mauer
Erin O'Connor
Print Culture
Clancy Ratcliff
Matthias Rip
A.G. Rud
Amardeep Singh
Steve Shaviro
Thanks ... Zombie
Vera Tobin
Chuck Tryon
University Diaries
Classics
Michael Hendry
David Meadows
Religion
AKM Adam
Ryan Overbey
Telford Work (moribund)
Library Science
Norma Bruce
Music
Kyle Gann
ionarts
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Greg Sandow
Scott Spiegelberg
Biology/Medicine
Pradeep Atluri
Bloviator
Anthony Cox
Susan Ferrari (moribund)
Amy Greenwood
La Di Da
John M. Lynch
Charles Murtaugh (moribund)
Paul Z. Myers
Respectful of Otters
Josh Rosenau
Universal Acid
Amity Wilczek (moribund)
Theodore Wong (moribund)
Physics/Applied Physics
Trish Amuntrud
Sean Carroll
Jacques Distler
Stephen Hsu
Irascible Professor
Andrew Jaffe
Michael Nielsen
Chad Orzel
String Coffee Table
Math/Statistics
Dead Parrots
Andrew Gelman
Christopher Genovese
Moment, Linger on
Jason Rosenhouse
Vlorbik
Peter Woit
Complex Systems
Petter Holme
Luis Rocha
Cosma Shalizi
Bill Tozier
Chemistry
"Keneth Miles"
Engineering
Zack Amjal
Chris Hall
University Administration
Frank Admissions (moribund?)
Architecture/Urban development
City Comforts (urban planning)
Unfolio
Panchromatica
Earth Sciences
Our Take
Who Knows?
Bitch Ph.D.
Just Tenured
Playing School
Professor Goose
This Academic Life
Other sources of information
Arts and Letters Daily
Boston Review
Imprints
Political Theory Daily Review
Science and Technology Daily Review