gene wolfe's book of the NEWSUN!!!!! reading club

any events in particular?

these books would be a lot better with more dragons

that's like saying dune would be better with ornithopter dogfights

anyway the undines are the dragons, and this is low fantasy, so no, you can't battle dragons no matter how big your tool is

gene wolfey knows to reserve his big sword for the ladeez

the pace can be very plodding when some of the events recounted by severian seem relatively... inconsequential?

it's been a while but iirc some of the seemingly inconsequential events turn out to not be?

every event relates to the plot though not every event advances the plot, if that makes sense

I've finished book three as well. I was digging the Big Bad of the Mountain Autarch, and his Window-Eyes of Doom and Jodorowskyan Psycho-Fuckwithery, but he was dispensed quickly and nothing really came of it? Same as * spoiler * little Sevarian? I liked the direction in which the plot was moving but then *zap* and kapow and the Giant fell and ... uhh... here I am, in a sick ward in the first third of the fourth book.

I guess I had trouble w/ li'l Sev's death and the ensuing one page of 'ooh, that's sad' before 'back to my quest I go.' I've got to admit, I dislike this book as much as I like it, but I have no desire to stop reading it. It is good? And bad?

what did you expect to happen when he fought baldanders?

It just seems that Baldanders was a weird callback? He wasn't anticipated (to me) as a villain; he didn't figure in my comprehension of the narrative structure of the book. He was a colorful Guildenstern to Talos's Rosencrantz, a B-lister who got called up unexpectedly. I didn't have any investment in him – nor in the continuation of his character. I don't know how much i buy the progression from 'big Queequeg guy who sleeps in S.'s bed and has weird dreams --> guy that acts crazy onstage --> guy who actually goes crazy and attacks an audience at the autarch's palace --> enormous superstrength monster who keeps a foggy castle full of genetic experiments that turn on him, with the aid of extraterrestrial creeps --> guy that appears to die but probably doesn't.

I'll admit how much I'm glad to have read this far, and that the story is a decidedly new type for me. I'm still flummoxed, tho.

kinda gotta agree w Remy in that the baldanders thing at the end of book three was a surprise & seemed to come out of the blue. also the revelation that dr. talos was a homonculus.

the drawn out fight with the alzabo that kills little severian's family seemed a bit unnecessary to me. likewise the incident with the salamander.

i'm sure something is going to happen with dorcas but going through most of Sword of the Lictor without any advancement of her plot (except the explicit statement that she used to be dead) was a bit of a drag. i understand there is only one character given the privilege of narrating the story and so we see things only through his eyes, and of course that is just the consequence of the way Wolfe chose to write the book, but its challenge because if you get bored there is no knowledge that something else is gonna happen? idk. it actually reads a bit like a D&D campaign to me where monsters randomly attack and magical experiences are had in a seemingly endless stream without much rhyme or reason?

i do like that in this book you saw much more of severian as a scheming, cold and self-serving guy instead of just a man beset by trials and tribulations with which he must contend.

tbh i thought the idea of the moving islands of roots was one of the best images i've had in my head in a while. A+

both baldanders and typhon represent the folly of scientific materialism. they are both mountains of men yet both are dependent on leaser beings: baldanders on a physical midget and typhon on a mental midget (contrast to the relationship between severian and little sev). actually they mirror each other: a silent giant with a smaller, more talkative companion. both see things others do not (typhon's eyes, the cloud chambers), both live unnaturally extended lives, both are betrayed by a tool, both seek to bargain with the hierodules and both are betrayed

are they both worth the same # of xps tho?

feel like you guys maybe read books for different reasons than i do

maybe that's why i can't watch tv, it's like this never ending stream of *things happening* w/o much reflection

also when you say you "expected something to happen w dorcas" does realizing she's been resurrected and then not only is she not grateful to severian but she literally dumps him and goes back to the city of the dead?

i'd say "something happened"!

the late great why do you read books?

to suspend the flow of time, to meditate, to be places i haven't been, to commune with other minds, to engage w ideas

i like digressive and atmospheric stuff, things like stanislaw lem and borges

~hero~

honestly i mostly read nonfiction history and cultural books though so maybe that's why wolfe appeals to me?

I dont read nonfiction history but read things like stanislaw lem and borges

late great have you read the rings of saturn

read that even lamp wont talk shit about that

is that sebald? no but i like stuff like that a lot.

i am going to reread these i think, i want to talk about books but i read these like three maybe four summers ago and found them kinda obscurantist and gross, like there were a lot of words but not very many ideas. and the ideas he does have are the same ugly ones lots of these books have about the solitary male but i dont really remember much except the part where they fight the monsters army that lives in the ocean, ever growing, and how its troops can only communicate in stock phrases, i liked that a lot

yeah read rings of saturn as soon as you can xp

there are lots of ideas, a lot of them are about christianity though

the army doesn't live in the ocean, but they are allies w/ the creatures in the ocean

i've only read austerlitz and vertigo

rings of saturn is best imho but that is mho so who knows

i like sebald but i like thomas bernhard more, that's a different conversation though and probably not related much to wolfe

read that even lamp wont talk shit about that

sebald is dope it think we talked about this once on ilx? i feel like i tired to get you to read 'memories of the future' and/or 'letter killers club' but maybe that was someone else/another conversation...

the army doesn't live in the ocean, but they are allies w/ the creatures in the ocean

no i know that i thought the creatures controlled them or something? its also p vague but i thought only one of the creatures lived in the ocean and it was always growing or something?

i like sebald but i like thomas bernhard more, that's a different conversation though and probably not related much to wolfe

― the late great, Tuesday, July 10, 2012 9:21 PM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is 100% reasonable, I agree w/ this, but rings of saturn is a completely different beast I think, also read war and war by krasznahorkai if you haven't, sorry about hijacking the wolfe thread, I'll back off now

read that even lamp wont talk shit about that

sebald is dope it think we talked about this once on ilx? i feel like i tired to get you to read 'memories of the future' and/or 'letter killers club' but maybe that was someone else/another conversation...

― Lamp, Tuesday, July 10, 2012 9:21 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah someone else but I'll check that shit out

it's very vague and it's never clear if abaia is one creature, many creatures, a culture, a race or what.

the creatures in the ocean make a deal with the army from the north, but the hierodules - and the undines - both make clear that they're not manipulating human events even though they're somewhat involved in them

in the end it turns out that undines and the hierodules want the same thing anyway but i'm not going to spoil that one

sorry but you guys sound like roman in that one ep of party down

y'all should read p. mckillip's riddlemaster series imo

it is briefer and less convoluted and similarly awesome

who's roman?? what's party down? what did he sound like?

i don't actually think this wolfe book is meant to be a mystery, if you read all four carefully i think almost all of the plot threads are pretty clear, it's just the subtle ways in which they're tied together which is obscure

i think one of my favorite parts of book three is when he's wandering in the mountains after escaping thrax but before finding the cottage in the mountains, and he's delirious and just experiencing looking at the stars in the mountains on a clear night and seeing clouds from above and the sunrise and what not, it's just beautiful and evocative and captures something that i've also felt when looking at mountains and stars and clouds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnYoyCgFKSI&feature=related

oh he looks like a pretty chiil dude

he bones that chick, right?

no he forgot to carry around his badass sword

maybe next episode

both baldanders and typhon represent the folly of scientific materialism

y'know i think i hate books where something REPRESENTS something else. or maybe i just hate this book and there's a dozen counterexamples i can't think of.

late great -- don't get me wrong -- i do not dislike these books, and i will continue to read them and may even read the book of the long sun or w/e.

I do find the structure & flow of these books a bit difficult tho -- I understand that it's written as Sev's memoir and so of course there is a lot Wolfe can do with that and does do quite well w/r/t omission of detail etc but i still find it a bit tough to wade thru some of the less compelling adventures. Whether you want to blame that on Sev's lack of narrative skills or something else is up to the individual i guess.

I read books primarily for entertainment, though I do read a lot of biography as well. I also read books to stimulate my own thoughts and to become engaged in another world or a scenario that otherwise I would be unable to experience. I do not find Wolfe to be all that engaging--there are plenty of episodes in the books that are neat-o (stuff with Jonas I liked a lot, the botanical garden of crazy dimensions, the floating islands, the consumption of Thecla) but I also find long stretches where I am just waiting for something to happen. Idk.

re: Dorcas -- it just seems strange when you build someone up as one of the only other major characters in the book only for her to disappear for almost the entirety of one of the books. I think she was a good foil for Severian and their conversations were good reading, for me.

^ well, wolfe writes in such a way that there are a lot of stubs in sevarian's story. dorcas: she's a savior! she's a lover! she's sickly! she's resentful! she's just ... gone! she was the dead boatman's wife! is a nice little progression of events, but they don't feel like they add up to anything. it seems to me that there's an episodic quality to the novels' structure that undermines the carefulness of the presentation and the cogency of the world-building. what i mean to say is: there's no objective correlative for sevarian's internal issue, whatever it is. there isn't really an internal issue at all, that i can tell. robert penn warren talks eloquently of the 'yearn' at the heart of every great character, the inarticulable, inchoate, desire for some (x) that motivates the character like the virgin mary's immaculately burning heart and is expressed or denied in terms of the outside action in the narrative. but with sevarian....

now, not every story need follow so strict a path as warren says –– but sevarian's story is clearly, one about growth and an expanding understanding of the world, and the slow drip of information about humankind's fall and afterlife. but why? is sevarian especially curious? no – not based on anything i've read. in some chapters, as ian alludes to, he's a hollow shirtless navigator bumbling around and seeing A Thing and engaging The Thing and moving on. But, for many of the chapters, there's no thrill or contribution to the meaning. the village of mages? the fire salamander? the green man? they're interludes, but on the way to what? you can make an argument that together they are all blips in a pointillist painting that will make sense only upon completing the novel, but i'm not buying it. at least not now. many of the incidents don't contribute to the story (i.e. sevarian's journey; education; growth) nor the plot (his physical steps to becoming Whatever He Becomes), which, ideally, are entwined ends. they're just 'a funny thing happened on the way to return the claw'

like ian, i'll continue reading. and i'll continue enjoying. but i'm reserving my right to be critical.

also nobody seems to have a body, a la george martin

you're not reading carefully enough

severian's yearning is to bring things back to life

maybe that becomes clear later on, and he is always 'thinking about trying to use the claw' but tbh a much more motivating factor for him seems to be sex? with thecla and cyriaca especially, his lust causes him all sorts of problems and seems to motivate a lot of the major action in the book.