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

maybe we should have a wyrd fiction thread.

^ yes

Dripping death astride a bacchanale of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial? Don't mind if I do (a weird fiction thread)

awesome

k so i've been thinking about what you guys said and i am going to make an admission

for awhile the third book was definitely my least favorite and i agree i was also taken aback by the sudden downshifting, so much so that i totally skimmed a lot of the thrax stuff. it was also one of the books that i found most improved by rereading. now i feel kind of silly for being so badly thrown by the transition because the same thing happened at the beginning of the second book.

so here's how i look at the books so far

shadow of the torturer - so the shadow stretches out before severian because it's the beginning of his journey, poisoning the things it falls across (thecla, agia / agilus, nessus, severian himself). at the same time his shadow falls across things more or less by chance. there is also the intimation of a shadow falling across him. there's the story about the angel that alludes to either doom or invincibility, baldanders, the atrium of time, malrubius' ghost, etc.

claw of the conciliator - after having caused so much misfortune in the first book, severian takes up his religious and mystical calling. he gives counsel to agilus, frees the man in green, tames the man-apes, turns the other cheek to agia, takes mass, nurses jonas, meets caesar, glimpses cacogens, nurses jolenta, meets witches and resurrects apu punchau. at this point it becomes clear that carrying the claw is a bit like carrying a cross or a crown of thorns. in contrast to this charity, he's actually abandoned by his companions more than once (jonas and talos)

sword of the lictor - so now the claw has lengthened into a big long sword and he has to learn to deal with the burden (remember the sword is actually described as looking like a cross) of heroism and authority. there's this strong contrast between traditional fantasy heroism and christian heroism. on both levels he is harshly tested. he succumbs to temptation with cyriaca. his faith is tested when he learns humanity is controlled by cacogens. he has another vision of hell. he does manage to resurrect a child but realizes he can't do anything about the squalor. dorcas doesn't accept her rebirth and leaves. he baptises the prisoners but can't save them. he can't save the family from the alzabo. he gets his adopted son killed. typhon is interesting because to defeat typhon he performs a mercy killing of an innocent. he meets the cacogens but barely understands their reassurances that they - the hierodules, anyway - treasure free will. he fights baldanders to a draw.

so i think also part of sword of the lictor is that it reflects a lot on the lengthening story and a lot of these episodes reflect back on the events of the first two books.

thrax is like an inversion of nessus, and now he is in charge of his own citadel. he descends into and back out of thrax as he does nessus. this whole bit reminded me a lot of proust taking the carriage down in the valley, etc etc. unlike severian at the nessus river, dorcas at the river rejects her rebirth. he leaves in exile again after repeating the whole thecla debacle with cyriaca. the alzabo thing is like a meditation on the thecla thing. he duels baldanders as he dueled agilus and again there's a miracle and his opponent flees. again, this is a bit of a debacle. there's a whole lot of mercy-killing going on here too. speaking of which, the baldanders thing completes the story that talos and baldanders have been telling since severian ran into them and severian is left again questioning what exactly being a hero is accomplishing.

anyway i'm kind of losing my train of thought.

hey LGG thanx for that post.
midway thru book 4 now and it seems like severian is trying himself to put perspective on all the things that have happened to him which is sort of a 'big moment' in terms of understanding the earlier books.

oh yeah, did that make sense?

i'm way, way behind because i, uh, lost the shadow of the torturer for a while there. i looked and looked but couldn't find it, so i read other things instead (amelia gray's threats is wonderful, btw, if crushingly sad). turns out it was in an old grocery bag. so...

i'm midway through the claw of the conciliator. i'm not sure i really like these books, tbh, but at least volume two has a bit more momentum than the first. my problem is that i don't find the prose, characters or plotting particularly engaging, and i'm not yet sure what i'm supposed to be reading for. i gather that the ostensible appeal, as the late great says, is that digression and atmosphere, but the writing only occasionally hooks me on that level (despite my love of both borges and lem). for instance, i was giddy with happiness of the suggestion, at the beginning of book two, that nessus' wall divides the world "as the mere line between their covers does two books." easy basket, maybe, but wonderful nonetheless. unfortunately, such moments are rare, at least so far.

have had the suspicion from the beginning that the series will resemble borges' "the approach to al-mu'tasim", attar's "the conference of the birds" and pamuk's the black book, with the seeker eventually becoming the thing he seeks. we'll see...

i also like how severian piously warns that if you're looking for gore, death and suffering, you won't find it here. then launches into a bunch more gore, death and suffering than the first book held. that sounds snarky, but i really do enjoy the occasional suggestions of unreliability in his narration.

oh i don't think it's too similar to lem.

it is similar to some borges, but not other stuff. for example, apu punchau vs circular ruins, sign of the compass vs the whole agia/autarch thing, etc.

the seeker eventually becoming the thing he seeks

no, i don't think so. severian is not the new sun, severian is the "white fountain" (hint hint) that cancels the black worm at the center of the sun.

severian's symbol is not the sun or the cross, it's the rose, the thorn (claw) and the fountain

thy sweet rose survived
while shone the morning sun, then drooped and died.

E. C. B.

now the rose symbolizes blood and martyrdom in a lot of cultures, but i'm going to argue that in christianity it is the thorn that symbolizes sacrifice (no one is martyred by the torturers)

the messianic male leader over every nation, serving as the only suitable replacement sacrifice to God in the place of all humanity, which had been sentenced to eternal death for their disobedience in the Garden of Eden... thus forshadowing the crown of thorns.

note though that he only carries one thorn. the real messianic leaders is ... the one character who gets martyred again and again, the autarch (not the same as severian)

so what about the rose, then?

i would argue it's the rosy cross

"the cross represents the human body and the rose represents the individual's unfolding consciousness ... to prepare a new phase ... to be used during the coming age now at hand, for as the world and man evolve so also must religion change"

severian is a sort of rrosicrrucian

according to eckert rosicrucians are "children of light, are opposed to darkness. They dislike mystification and secrecy; they are open and frank, have nothing to do with secret societies and with external ceremonies. They possess a spiritual temple, in which God is presiding"

from wikipedia

"As regeneration is the key to spiritual existence, they therefore founded their symbolism upon the rose and the cross, which typify the redemption of man through the union of his lower temporal nature with his higher eternal nature ... the rose female and the cross male, both universal phallic [...] As generation is the key to material existence"

albert pike

"But [the cross's] peculiar meaning is that given to it by the Ancient Egyptians ... represented on the oldest monuments ... it is the symbol of Life ... The ROSE, was anciently sacred to Aurora and the Sun. It is a symbol of Dawn, of the resurrection of Light and the renewal of life, and therefore of the dawn of the first day, and more particularly of the resurrection: and the Cross and Rose together are therefore hieroglyphically to be read, the Dawn of Eternal Life which all Nations have hoped for by the advent of a Redeemer."[20]"

severian is tested by four elemental beasts (salamander, slug, notules ... ascians?)

The four arms of the cross belong to the four elements and are colored accordingly. The white portion belongs to the Holy Spirit and the planets.

and this sounds like the magic mirrors of father inire

The petals of the rose refer to the twenty-two paths on the Tree of Life and the Twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It is the cross in Tiphareth, the receptacle and the center of the forces of the Sephiroth and the paths. The extreme center of the rose is white, the reflected spiritual brightness of Kether, bearing upon it the Red Rose of Five Petals and the Golden Cross of Six Squares; four green rays issue from around the angles of the cross. Upon the white portion of the lamen, below the rose, is placed the hexagram, with the planets.

five petals = five severians

six squares = oannes, eata, autarch, dorcas, thecla, sun

four green rays = green man, jonas, tzadkiel ... severian?

the planets would be:

- hierodules (barbatus, famulimus, ossipago, cumaen, inire, ?)

- sephirot (tzadkiel)

- undines and abaia (green man?!)

- arioch, scylla and the alzabo (the spice must flow)

- time (hethor, jonas, psychics, witches, torturers, baldanders, man-apes etc)

- mirror universe (where hethor and jonas and malrubius and triskele come back from)

not sure what the cross is, i think there are six caskets in the open tomb?

severian is not jesus, he's jesus' son

i'll take your word for it, i think

these guys are the six leftover gods

oannes - severian, death, dawn
dorcas - mother, life, moon
thecla - temptress, sex, moon
odilo - father, autarch, sun
the sun - god, life, sun
eata - atheist

i guess the six caskets are the five severians + the open casket of TIME

i like the way you think.
if i had any knowledge of the new testament at all (lol jews) would this stuff seem more apparent to me? because i wouldn't say much of this stuff is obvious on the surface to me.

yeah i have some knowledge of this stuff

there are a lot of hints in lexicon urthus, also remember i've reread it a bunch of times!

finished. sorting thoughts. ending improves sequence significantly. but still doesn't explain away episodic narrative. something about teleology and dr. talos.

word

now ... reread!

oannes - severian, death
atheist - eata, nihilism

just realized that the aspects here are equinox (severian) and eclipse (eata)

a lot of the mystical stuff that's hinted at in the first four books (for example, what happens when the sun comes back and what kind of godz humanity has in the age of new sun) are fully explicated in "urth of the new sun"

actually that's backwards, apu punchau causes the eclipse, the equinox is when they're in eata's boat

*crickets*

who are people's favorite characters?

put me down for palaemon and malrubius, jonas and the archivist

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

I like Jonas! I didn't realize how much I liked him until he was gone. And I didn't realize the extent to which he was a humanizing influence on Sev (ironically, I guess...). And I liked sad Jolenta. I think I missed some of her story? She was the waitress who served Talos, all glamoured up by the good doctor homunculus. Then she died. In between, she may have been raped by Sevarian. Yes?

you got it

severian def has sex w passed-out jolenta but it's not clear how she feels about it (i don't recall her bringing it up but when they get back they're embarrassed)

Time to list Father Inire's numerous appearances?

no no no wat a few days.
i am almost done.

ultimately glad i read these, not planning on a re-read at least for a few months. i have too much other stuff to read. like the "new" ed sanders book and a stack of charles williams paperbacks and that byrds bio i stalled on 4 months back.

lg: is inire a hierodule?

yes, as is the cumaean

who are people's favorite characters?

there are no characters in this book, thats part of the reason its so annoying

i am trying to reread this but its p stultifying and sort of empty, like i get excited about the book reading the late greats posts but i dont think the novels really bear him out they dont really seem to about anything even while signifying so much, like how much of this stuff matters?

so what book do you think i'm reading?

in search of lost time?

needs more elric

finished this last night, finally.
good book.
should re-read. will re-read. but not right now.
picked up in the last four-five chapters, but i still would not consider this to be like, one of the best things i've ever read or anything. gene wolfe must've been real proud of himself for crafting such a fine puzzle so full of references to itself and to science and etc but i still find the structure of the book and its pacing to be v problematic for me personally.

i spent enough time thinking 'maybe i will reread this' that i could probably have read another, smaller book in that time

i read three other books during my reading of the book of the new sun. whenever i would get bored or feel like it was going nowhere i would read a nice short detective story full of action and adventure

you know, there is a sort of tradition in writing of "the encyclopedic novel", starting w/ don quixote, where the author attempts to include, well, everything!

i think book of the new sun falls in there

now whenever you feel bored of whatever you're reading though you can dip in to one chapter of book of the new sun

:)

have you read book of the long sun/short sun etc? what do you think

i keep starting long sun and i can't get farther than a few chapters. i am not sure if there's problems with the OCR in the ebook i got or if there's just weird language and formatting issues going on. it has a very different feel to book of the new sun, i'll tell you that. much lighter, i think. i guess it seems more like a standard sci-fi story and less of a weird, elegaic meditation on humanity and its executioner

also short sun looks like bog-standard sci fi stuff but i still plan to read it

i think a major part of the book is just that theme of how much of "everything" is in the particular event. are all events linked? is it all part of god's plan? is the design of the rose, of the whole rosebush, hidden in the thorn? what things are part of severian's destiny and what things are accidents? what details are illuminating, yes in the sense of medieval illuminations?

i think of it actually as a novel of religious and philosophical ideas. my parents have always been into christian history and apologetics and my sister is a prof of medieval art, so i mainly enjoy it on that level rather than the mystery. i think after a few readings this is what the mystery becomes about, not whether that was father inire we glimpsed or just a hunchback in a cowl.

i mean the book even includes a book-inside-the-book that purportedly holds the sum of human wisdom (orange catholic bible?) but every time severian opens it's totally obscure what it's getting at and very ambiguous about how it relates to the present i think that's the real mystery of book of the new sun. is oannes a loving god or a cruel god? which characters in tale of frog and fish are human and which are cacogens? what does the parable of fechin represent. what does it say about art and reproduction that the fechin story is the last story dude tells in his life - and then the alzabo shows up!

i appreciate your insight into this, i want you to know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqY0dCmAyNM

awesome!!!

:-D

lol