On Terrible Neologisms, Gene Wolfe & Stylistic Consistency

Someday I'll write an impassioned defense ("necessitated" by some "recent" comments) of The Atlantic Monthly via an analysis of William Langewiesche's work.  But not today. 

Today's fancy has been struck dumb by something that needs a better name (or an agglutinative one) than brilliant-one-trick-pony syndrome.  What I mean is a stylist who employs the same breathtaking style in every single thing he or she writes.  Some would accuse David Foster Wallace of being one such stylist.  But his novels, shorts and essays are focalized through a variety of characters.  Because each of his characters speak with a unique voice, his overall style remains heterogeneous despite his penchant for footnotes and sentences of Faulknerian length and complexity.  (Brief Interviews With Hideous Men works as a perfect litmus test: no one "interviewee" sounds like any of the others or,  for that matter, Hal from Infinite Jest.) 

Gene Wolfe, however, suffers mightily from brilliant-one-trick-pony syndrome.  It doesn't influence my impression of any one, two or three of his novels, but once some critical point has been passed the cumulative effect of his prose stylings begins to falter before the law of diminishing returns.  As keen readers of my sidebar already know, I recently finished The Fifth Head of Cerebus Cerberus.  [Thanks John.  Screw you Mr. Sim!]  Quite the collection of novellae.  (Novellae?  It scans better than "novellas.")  It begins when Severian...

...kidding, kidding.  Severian isn't in this collection.  But he could be if you judged by narrative voice alone.  I could explore this in sufficient detail to prove my case, but because the three novellae intertwine in such surprising ways that I don't want to ruin them for you (should this post inspire you to read them).  Suffice it to say that the collection thematizes the very issue I've raised here as it dances around the consequences of one man populating a planet with clones and the possibility that an aboriginal race of physiological mimicks have replaced the settlers of a colony so long ago that they now believe themselves to be (and have always been) humans.  That's all I can say without ruining the collection, but that's enough to make my point: Wolfe seems to want to perfect (and in large measure has) a single narrative voice through which he can write all his novels, novellae and short stories.  (I haven't read many of the latter but, despite my aversion for the form, I intend to.)

He refines it further with everything he writes.  (I realize I should date this discussion, or at very least ground it chronologically, but my point's sufficiently "meta-" to avoid what could reasonably be considered "work.")  I can think of other writers (some of them former speechwriters for Republican Presidential candidates) who also fall into this category but am solliciting the expert advice of my erudite readership instead.  (Not because I'm lazy, however, but because I've been so friggin' responsible a dissertator the past two days I want to pretend I am.)

Comments

[David]

Hey now, /I/ employ the same breathtaking style in everything I write...

[Rich Puchalsky]

Jack Vance. Widely regarded as a prominent fantasy "stylist", by which is meant that not only do all of his books have the same narrative tone, but that all of his characters are the same character. Not just all of his protagonists -- all of his characters.

.

As for Gene Wolfe, I've always suspected that he's just good enough to be bad. In the Book of the New Sun, for instance, the Claw of the Concilliator gem is a classic MacGuffin, an object whose only importance (as you find by the end of the series) is that people have found it important. Throughout the course of the series it figures as the plot-moving-along-object. Wolfe writes some of the background of Severian's world interestingly enough so that this kind of lame plotting becomes intensely annoying, rather than merely an accepted part of the fantasy genre. The same goes for the torture fetishism in the series.

[Jonathan]

There are more charitable--and sophisticated--interpretations.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Do tell, Jonathan. Please don't withhold your wisdom from us. Why, one might think that you habitually wrote one-liners merely so that you would never have to dare your own opinion about anything.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I'll be less snarky than Rich, Jonathan, but I'll say the same thing: I'm interested to hear your take on this. Sure, more sophisticated interpretations no doubt exist, but no amount of sophistication merely alluded to will refute the points I've raised here. (I take it you don't contest the substance of my post, only my interpretation of the facts as stated? That'd be odd, since I don't interpret so much as point in this post.)

[jholbo]

I, too, have the Dave Sim-induced problem that I cannot type 'Cerberus' without producing 'Cerebus'. It happens a lot.

Here is my take on the characterization issue, more or less.

[Jonathan]

You write that you could explore it sufficient depth. But you don't. And that'd be fine, but I don't see how the plot summary substantiates the claim about a "single narrative voice." I'd like to know what you mean by that, but I can't say that it makes any sense. I think the books are very different in style and voice, not least because of the fact that Severian and the lupine narrator of (one part of) 5HC are very different folks. His short fiction from the 70s is more polyphonic still. Read "Seven American Nights" and then "The Death of Dr. Island." And Peace is yet another voice altogether.

I also disagree with you about DFW. The law student at the end of BIHM is very similar to characters in Oblivion, Girl with Curious Hair, and has quite a bit in common with Orin and Hal.

And Rich, Severian lies about many things. He tells us about the Claw and what he thought about it, but I think you can infer that he perceived events differently at the time. He's making of it a symbol, and Wolfe invites us to consider it as another type of symbol in spite of Severian's disingenuousness. It's an artful work. And if you can read Cugel the Clever and come away unimpressed--well, I hope I never get that jaded.

[Shrike]

I've always liked Wolfe, personally. I too wish not to ever get jaded enough not to appreciate his skill as a stylist, nor the substantive meat of his books. I also tend to agree that Wolfe's voice can be fairly characterized as quite static.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Jonathan, that's an odd use of the word "jaded", very much in the fanboy mode. I've read many of Wolfe's books, as well as Vance's, and enjoyed them for what they are; that does not mean that I need to force myself to overlook their problems. With regard to Vance, if you really see nothing wrong with a picaresque in which every character has the same mode of speech, personality, and willingness to act as the protagonist, then sure, you may think there's nothing wrong with it. People don't blame Dickens for having flat characters, after all. The problem is that you seem to give every fantasy author the same pass as Dickens: Vance, Wolfe, and (as I remember from a previous one-liner in the Mieville symposium) Moorcock, whose early Elric books you insisted were better than his later New Wave ones. It sounds condescending, as in the fact that these people write within a popular genre makes any artistic judgement not relevant, and what you really like is the genre excitement. As if you're slumming.

With regard to the Claw of the Concilliator, you haven't explained what kind of alternate symbol you say that Wolfe as asking us to consider. I was considering the gem as authorial prop; from the moment it is planted on Severian, it mysteriously glows, heals, motivates chases, and otherwise permits events to move Severian (who is unusually un-self-willed, as JH writes) around the authorial chessboard. Yes, it is an artful work -- like a chess game, in which you can always see the hand of the author coming down to move around the pieces. In the final book, you find out that this is true even within the context of the story; Severian succeeds because once he succeeded in the future, he must be deus ex machina'd through every failure in the past. Once again, it's still a good book, compared to most of the fantasy genre. But there are far better ones.

[Jonathan]

Such as?

The characters speak in a recognizable and skillfully executed manner in the Dying Earth books, but they do so in subtly different registers. It's an effective estrangement device. Who would you suggest is the equal of Vance as a prose stylist in the genre? Doesn't everyone think the early Elric books are better?

We are told it does those things. Later it's revealed that there were only epiphenomenal. By Severian, remember, it's so revealed. Severian uses the Claw to delude the reader into thinking that he's the Truth and the Way. He didn't know that it was him then, just as we didn't know that it was him until the end. But it never was. Severian is an imposter, a tyrant who inherits the mantle of Typhon (though if this was entirely voluntary or not is an interesting question). Wolfe has said, and I think it's well supported, that Severian is an Antichrist. So you have to separate Severian's narrative expediency from the author's. I don't think that making this distinction excuses Wolfe for poor plotting, if that's what you're suggesting.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Oh, please provide a cite for Wolfe saying that Severian is the Antichrist. Since you choose to call on authorial intention, I will too:

http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html -- "I don't think of Severian as being a Christ figure; I think of Severian as being a Christian figure. He is a man who has been born into a very perverse background, who is gradually trying to become better."

http://home.austin.rr.com/lperson/wolfe.html -- "No. He is a Christian figure, which is different. He is trying to become Christ-like. He is basically what practically all of us who are men are, he is a bad man trying to be good."

So when exactly did Wolfe say what you claim that he said? I think that your interpretation fails just from a reading of the series, which shows that Severian brings the New Sun even though he realizes that this will destroy his political power as Autarch. This kind of thing is exactly why I dislike your one-liners; it is impossible to refute a one-liner, but I always suspect that there is something like this standing behind them.

Such as "doesn't everything think that the early Elric books are better". No, and I doubt that you'd call on bandwagonism as an argument for any "serious", "literary" work. The Jerry Cornelius cycle is better precisely because it builds on the early pulp values of the Elric books while going beyond them.

As for "who is the equal of Vance as a prose stylist", that depends on what you mean by prose stylist. Certainly James Branch Cabell writes a better picaresque; I recommend _The Silver Stallion_. In terms of the use of the skillfull use of language for effect, Mervyn Peake. If what you mean by "prose stylist" is "someone writing in an affected language, in a world in which everyone shares the same values, and in which the authorial tone overlies eveything in a rather obtrusive manner" then hell, I'd go back to E.R. Eddisson.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

You write that you could explore it sufficient depth. But you don't. And that'd be fine, but I don't see how the plot summary substantiates the claim about a "single narrative voice."

I didn't say the plot summaries justify the claim, I merely pointed to the fact that problem of Wolfe's singular narrative voice could be said to be thematized in the The Fifth Head of Cerberus. I may choose to explore this in more detail later, but I didn't want to ruin the book for those who haven't read it but plan to. (And since one person's already thanked me for the recommendation, I'm inclined to wait at least a little while before doing so.) I don't want you to think that I'm discounting either the brilliance of that voice or the manner in which he structures or plots his work (which I find incredibly compelling); but from what I've read of Wolfe (excluding the short stories, which I'll read more of soon), the narrative voice has remained remarkably consistent. I'll pull out some actual quotes (i.e. "evidence") later this afternoon.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Needless to say, I disagree with Scott wrt "the manner in which he structures or plots his work (which I find incredibly compelling)". Wolfe is a master of setting, and likes to move his character-golems around this setting with intricate divine interventions. (What major Wolfe books have a self-moving protagonist? Severian has various cognitive and memory problems, the hero of Soldiers in the Mist/Soldier of Arete has long-term memory disfunction, I haven't read the Long Sun/Short Sun books, and the hero of The Knight/The Wizard is a twelve year old boy punted around by forces beyond his understanding.)

Try the following classic essay:

http://news.ansible.co.uk/plotdev.html#clench

And see specifically the following, which leads directly into a scene from Wolfe:
"I do recommend the use of plot vouchers to your attention if you're at all interested in writing multi-volume epics of quest and adventure, because they're terrifically easy to use and the readers never complain. You can issue your hero with a handy talisman of unspecified powers at the beginning of volume one, and have him conveniently remember it at various points over the succeeding volumes when he finds himself surrounded by slavering troglodytes or whatever, with no obligation to explain it until the series proves unsuccessful enough to require winding up and the loose ends tying."

In Wolfe's case, the tying-up is -- predestination, i.e. the "you succeeded in the future, therefore you succeeded in the past" bit that I referred to before. In other words, the author made you do it.

[Rich Puchalsky]

In a attempt to once again get you to put Norman Spinrad's _The Iron Dream_ at the top of your list (that list of reading material you have is awfully long, and I suspect the top is dissertation sources), I'm going to return to a previous comment I made in this thread about Wolfe, about torture fetishism.

How significant do people think that this is? Wolfe clearly authorially disapproves of torture, and writing a protagonist who is presented as a morally decent torturer seems forgiveable in itself, given the context and the way in which Wolfe seemingly wants to show a Christian progress from sin to goodness (see the quotes I cited above). But he also wrote a character who wears a cool torturing outfit. A character who rather improbably uses special torturer nerve-crushing techniques to take down a heavily armed soldier in unarmed combat. I grew ever so tired of reading about "fuligin, the color that is blacker than black" and about Severian's cloak made of it (worn over nothing, if I remember rightly), black mask, huge beheading sword, and other costume accessories. Does anyone else see a problem with making Severian not only decent, but fetishistically dressy?

I recommend once again the intro to _The Iron Dream_, which I quoted here previously -- the bit about how in the alternate universe in which Hitler is an SF writer, his SS costumes are favorites at conventions. Godwin's law violation seems unavoidable given the context. Is this really so different?

[Jonathan]

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to respond here, but first, Severian's costume is the result of Wolfe being asked (or wanting) to come up with a character that would be easy to dress up as.

"Antichrist" is a theologically difficult term. I think it's commensurable with even the quotes you point to--Severian's ambition is key--what he achieves, what he thinks he's doing, what he's actually doing, what he tells us he thought he was doing--and one of those interviews was conducted by an evangelical. Wolfe's work is strongly Catholic--he's much in the tradition of Chesterton, except an American engineer and more intelligent.

[Rich Puchalsky]

A torturer costume that is easy for people to dress up as? I can only characterize this as agreement with Spinrad.

Your second paragraph is incoherent. You say that Wolfe is an intelligent Catholic (OK, I'm fine with that) but then that he can't say "Antichrist" and has to substitute "Christian" instead, and that somehow one of his interviewers being an evangelical motivated this substitution. What, did the evangelical not transcribe him correctly? Or is "Antichrist" one of those words you just can't say when an evangelical asks you if a character is a Christ figure?

Jonathan, you still aren't really providing even one detail about how the unreliability of Severian's narration backs up your claims. You've written that "Severian uses the Claw to delude the reader into thinking that he's the Truth and the Way. He didn't know that it was him then, just as we didn't know that it was him until the end. But it never was. Severian is an imposter, a tyrant who inherits the mantle of Typhon " etc. I don't see how this is supported by the text. Are you following Peter Wright or John Clute or somebody but don't want to mention their names?

First of all, your statement that he's a tyrant. Of course he's a tyrant; the Autarch is a tyrant. And since no one knows how the Autarch is chosen, he hardly can be an imposter; as long as he knows the command words which operate the machinery of Autarchy, he is the Autarch. The idea that he'd write his narration as purposeful propaganda on the order on Caesar's invasion of Gaul doesn't fit the text.

Second, deluding the reader into thinking that he's the truth and the way. The narration presents him as passive, bopping around and being rescued/manipulated by Heirodules, not to mention con men. That's the Truth and the Way?

Third, your statement that "his ambition is key." We're told that he knows that the New Sun may benefit the country that his tyranny is at war with more than his own, and he must suspect that it will threaten his political power. Yet he pursues it anyway, and brings the New Sun, an increase in the sun's output that we're told, in a typical passage, is going to do such things as help fisherman who are slowly dying out as the ecosystem does. This is the act of the Antichrist?

That sophisticated interpretation that you mentioned seems unfounded.

[Jonathan]

You've read The Urth of the New Sun, I take it? Severian completely transforms reality at the end. It's referred to via cabalistic metaphors, a progression to a higher state of being. Also, the narrative frame of the final book is distinct from the first four. Hartwell did ask for another book, but I don't think the difference can be explained as well as easily as that.

Do you remember how Severian reacts to Hethor? How he mentions in an aside that he won't be telling the reader any more details about his executions and excruciations in his function as a wandering lictor? It's crude to suggest that Wolfe is fetishizing torture and torturers, though he is exploring the perennial human fascination with these topics--a subject, again, with considerable theological ramifications.

There are two points: 1) Wolfe gives answers to interviewers that are often contradictory and tailored to what they seem to want to hear. 2) What he does say is not incompatible with Severian being an Antichrist. Reconciling the notion of an Antichrist with predestination is a complex problem.

I do agree with you that some of Severian's martial exploits are implausible. When he dispatches Typhon's other head by breaking his nose, I think we might ask ourselves if we are to believe his account of what happened there. What is Typhon, exactly? How is he able to extend his thoughts throughout the entire Urth when he's, note, accidentally, rehyrdated by Severian.

Clute has many theories about the book, and he has made an argument similar to mine. If you read the urth-l archives, you'll see that it's been debated there in quite a lot of detail. Writing up a general argument about the book along these lines has been a project of mine for a while now, and perhaps I'll post a draft of it before too long.

Penultimate paragraph: protesting too much.

Final paragraph--refer to my first here.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Jonathan, I disagree with just about everything you write in your last, but it seems to take things too far to write a counter-paragraph for each of yours. Maybe I'll just wait for the draft version.

But the main points: you refer to it as "crude" to say that Wolfe is fetishizing torture. This is another instance of your crude/sophisticated dichotomy with which you entered this thread. The problem is that Wolfe *is* fetishizing torture; there is no other way to describe Severian's "easy to dress up as" costume. Hethor is part of it; if Severian were depicted as liking torture groupies, he'd lose our sympathy. So if you think that fetishizing torture is crude, then you are admiring a crude author. You are trying to make him sophisticated, but your theories fail, since they don't actually reflect the text.

Yes, I've read _The Urth of the New Sun_, and your bit about "cabalistic metaphors" is off. Severian is a techo-primitive who doesn't even know about action-reaction, as shown in the scene in which he throws his narrative away and is miraculously pushed back to the spaceship. Of course he gets mystical about what happens, but the reader need not; it's a straightforward instance of advanced technology looking like magic.

[Jonathan]

There are plenty of other ways to describe it: realistic within the world he describes (fabric conceals bloodstains), metatextual joke along the "costume lines," slightly more abstract metatextual argument about the audience's inevitable fascination/disgust with torture, just to suggest a few. Giving the author as little credit as you can is not a good critical procedure.

There are instances of forgotten technology/science in the books being confused with magic, certainly, but the line blurs in the final book. What science explains Severian's relationship to the white hole? The final transfiguration?

[Rich Puchalsky]

Ah yes, the immortal words written by Adam Warren in "Gen 13 Bootleg": Grunge has just told his girldfriend about a scene from the movie he wants to make, a scene in which the two female martial arts leads are easily beaten and tied up. His girlfriend complains about the exploitation getting sicker and sicker. Take it away, Grunge:

"This scene may look like exploitation, but it isn't, 'cause it's ironic, y'see? I'm actually making fun of guys going "Ooh! Ah!" at babes in bondage, 'cause it's so sexist and bad and crap! Yeah! All this so-called exploitation is really satire, y'know? Or parody, maybe...I can never keep them straight. Well, whichever one's cool, that's what my movie is!"

You've up-marketed it with "metatextual", yes. Go Grunge!

As for the science at the end -- the Hierodules are described to have the power to move a white hole into the Sun, send Severian back and forth through time, link him to the energy of the white hole, and recreate him as an "eidolon" (a simulation, based on his memories) after his actual physical body is killed. If you can't explain everything literally with all of that, the problem is with your imagination.