51–59 of 59 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you happen to have any references for that? I in no way doubt you, but I hope to use this fact to dazzle a child when I get home; and maybe persuade her to read some top class sci-fi.
See #1 - http://mentalfloss.com/article/67583/12-crispy-facts-about-p...
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficul...
If you want to read a series about a time traveling torturer that becomes king of the planet earth and replaces the dying sun while raising the dead, eating the dead, avoiding death, all while working as a carnifex. Then read the Book of the New Sun and The Urth of the New Sun.
Spoilers!
a woe below woe!
the sun into darkness was thrown,
over all a dim shadow had flown,
and my heart sorrowed deep and alone
at the foot of that empty throne.
--
nec novitas solis
nec figura solis
gravitatem tuam lucemque effinget.
volumen necesse non est:
memoria tua tenemus.
pius dominus tibi requiem donet.
die post idus aprilis.Earlier quoted context omitted.
What bothers those female readers is not the behaviour of the morally flawed protagonist in itself. Rather, it is that the author seems oddly bent on making his protagonist use women for sex time after time, and that says something about the author. Furthermore, the work lacks a female voice that would serve as a corrective to Severian and put his actions in a clearer moral light. Now, one might disagree with all tha…
> the author seems oddly bent on making his protagonist use women for sex time after time, and that says something about the author All writings say something about their author, so that statement doesn't tell us much. Just because an author writes a flawed character does not mean that they are endorsing the character's flawed traits. There is also narrative meaning behind Severian's sexual behavior. This reasoning i…
I cannot say I would have become quite the person I am today without Severian or Silk. Some part of them, like Severian's great love Thecla, lives in me always. All this in spite of Wolfe's prurient obsessions, which we do all of us a disservice by explaining away.
Not just sometime after but directly after the writing of New Sun Wolfe flings himself into abandon with such relentlessly hyper-sexualized and objectified characters as Chenille, nicknamed "Jugs" by her lover Awk, who flings off her clothes once taken possession of. This is never explained and appears to be a fan service that wouldn't be out of place in a teen anime. Silk's own inamorata, Hyacinth, herself a sex worker, becomes the star of one of Wolfe's most clever dick jokes [1].
This does not cease for all, or nearly all, of Wolfe's corpus. The naked nymphettes with bodies like boys' of his The Wizard-Knight is all too problematic; the vamp-babe Jahi of the Short Sun, the house of prostitution in Cerberus, I could go on and on until I reached his very last piece of writing.
There is nothing wrong with writing or talking about sex. It is so nuclear to ourselves and its repression leads to much worse than hauling it into the light. I myself will soon be married to a woman who works the trade Wolfe just can't seem to let go. The issue is in his treatment of women as mere devices to be ridden or otherwise used, or as paper paragons who indulge in themselves without explanation.
I find this a great shame marring a writer who I unabashedly declare to be my favorite author of all time. Wolfe was a devout Catholic and his treatment of the spiritual is so sublime it may have been what first struck the thirst in me that led me to so many monasteries.
I am terribly sad no one succeeded in convincing Wolfe of his error, it would have brought in many more female readers who might have also shared in the many selves of Severian.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/genewolfe/comments/8s8pq0/this_sums...
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I recently reread Book of the New Sun for the first time in more than twenty years, and yeah, it makes a different impression at 54 than it did at 17, not least because it was familiar now and new then. The characters, especially Severian, quite often act in ways that are not admirable, and I can be pretty sure that Gene intended that we see some of the not admirable traits as actual flaws. He is not, for instance, s…
He is not, for instance, suggesting that sleeping with your grandmother is a good idea. Well, that is how Fry was able to save the universe from the Brain Spawn.
Oh My.
Wolfe wrote some incredible masterpieces. The Fifth Head of Cerberus , Peace , and some of his 1970s short stories deserve a place in 20th-century serious literature in general. The Book of the New Sun stunned me as a teenage reader, and I fondly reread the book every few years (that said, Severian’s habit of shagging everyone he meets doesn’t hold up well in this day and age, and I have seen female readers call The…
For one more recent work with more workaday prose, The Sorcerer's House, it helps to follow a 'superfan' and consider it a rewriting of the lamia of Corinth. There certainly is so much more there than meets the eye; as dense as BoTNS. I find it more fruitful to take the ostensible lack of clues to figure out the 'real' deal as challenge for us (or the braver readers of the future) to rise up to.
There's plenty good in late Wolfe, just deeper hidden, perhaps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the author seems oddly bent on making his protagonist use women for sex time after time, and that says something about the author All writings say something about their author, so that statement doesn't tell us much. Just because an author writes a flawed character does not mean that they are endorsing the character's flawed traits. There is also narrative meaning behind Severian's sexual behavior. This reasoning i…
This argument appears disingenuous if you have read any of Wolfe's other works. We must beware turning our beloved people into anything other than who they are, from the fictional to their human authors. I cannot say I would have become quite the person I am today without Severian or Silk. Some part of them, like Severian's great love Thecla, lives in me always. All this in spite of Wolfe's prurient obsessions, which…
> hyper-sexualized and objectified characters as Chenille, nicknamed "Jugs" by her lover Awk
Awk is a poor, uneducated, petty criminal and thug; he is a somewhat sympathetic character, but clearly meant to be deeply flawed and his ultimate fate (the one revealed in Short Sun) is quite horrifying. Even still, Chenille and Auk are in a consensual sexual relationship, the fact that he has a sexualized nickname for her doesn't seem like a problem to me from a literary perspective.
> who flings off her clothes once taken possession of. This is never explained and appears to be a fan service that wouldn't be out of place in a teen anime
I don't remember an explicit explanation for why she takes off her clothes when possessed (though, that is how Scylla is typically depicted in mythology, do a google image search for Scylla) but her nudity is entirely non-sexual and the men on the boat regard her with absolute respect, fear, and deference without a hint of sexuality; her nudity wasn't "fan service" it was simply nudity.
> the vamp-babe Jahi
What's wrong with her? She is one of the scariest characters in Wolfe's lore and her sexuality is almost an afterthought compared to everything else that goes on with her. She most certainly doesn't qualify as "mere devices to be ridden or otherwise used".
> the house of prostitution in Cerberus
So what? Prostitution is a theme that exists in many stories by many authors. I don't think just listing off sexuality in writing makes a compelling case.
> Hyacinth, herself a sex worker, becomes the star of one of Wolfe's most clever dick jokes
Personally, I don't think it's that clever, nor is it a dick joke. That poster goes to great length to make a big deal out of what can be summarized by the final line: "As part of her advances, she tells him she could teach him where to put the round jewel of the azoth's pommel". Anyone can understand the innuendo there without knowing anything about the source text.
I don't think anyone is wrong for being uncomfortable with repeated use of sexuality in writing, but I am yet to be convinced by claims that reoccurring sexual themes means the author is sexist.