Ends of the Urth
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Ends of the Urth
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Ends of the Urth
#2Wolfe is terrific, and terrifically underrated. Some of his efforts I find unreadable ("The Knight", "The Wizard Knight") and some banal, but when he's good, he's really good. "There Are Doors" is my personal favourite - low key, complex and affecting. The Book of the New Sun is probably the most famous (and deservedly so) and it also bears rereading.
Just as pleasing is the fact that the Book of the New Sun is a rather cryptic callout to Jack Vance's Dying Earth, which shows great taste.
Re: Ends of the Urth
#3Wolfe is terrific, and terrifically underrated. Some of his efforts I find unreadable ("The Knight", "The Wizard Knight") and some banal, but when he's good, he's really good . "There Are Doors" is my personal favourite - low key, complex and affecting. The Book of the New Sun is probably the most famous (and deservedly so) and it also bears rereading. Just as pleasing is the fact that the Book of the New Sun is a ra…
Wolfe was terrific for the brief span of a decade or so. It is no accident that the books for which he is so often acclaimed (The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace, BotNS) were all written in the 1970s. At that time he managed to combine intricately plotted, deceitful-narrator plots with excellent prose that was fully the equal of Proust or Nabokov. Beyond those three book-length works, his short stories of this period are also worth reading.
Once the 1980s arrived, Wolfe’s prose suddenly became plain and lackluster. His works continued to mine the same vein of deceitful narrators where the actual plot and events have to be riddled out by attentive readers, but these started to get dull and frustrating. All that was left to his writing was the book-as-puzzle, and literary value or even mere enjoyment went out the window. His editor kept accepting what Wolfe gave him and took it on faith that the work was competent, but even Wolfe fans have wondered if A Land Across, for example, can even be completely figured out.
Not to mention some cringeworthy stylistic choices and concerns of the late books, like putting the speech of characters on a distant planet into 20th-century ethnic stereotypes (The Book of the Short Sun) or old-man rants about modern society (Pirate Freedom). As someone who got into Wolfe through the early books and then voraciously read everything he wrote after that, the gradual disappointment was crushing.
Re: Ends of the Urth
#4SPOILER ALERT. I'm reading the first volume of The Book of The New Sun right now for the first time, so was surprised that Neil introduced a spoiler in the first paragraph of the linked article so I had to stop reading it...
Re: Ends of the Urth
#5Wolfe is terrific, and terrifically underrated. Some of his efforts I find unreadable ("The Knight", "The Wizard Knight") and some banal, but when he's good, he's really good . "There Are Doors" is my personal favourite - low key, complex and affecting. The Book of the New Sun is probably the most famous (and deservedly so) and it also bears rereading. Just as pleasing is the fact that the Book of the New Sun is a ra…
Wolfe was terrific for the brief span of a decade or so. It is no accident that the books for which he is so often acclaimed ( The Fifth Head of Cerberus , Peace , BotNS) were all written in the 1970s. At that time he managed to combine intricately plotted, deceitful-narrator plots with excellent prose that was fully the equal of Proust or Nabokov. Beyond those three book-length works, his short stories of this perio…
Can't say I disagree. Wizard Knight through to Borrowed Man all left me pretty cold. Personally "A Land Across" felt comparatively accessible (if random) as compared to "An Evil Guest" (which felt unreadable), Home Fires or Borrowed Man.
As an F/SF enthusiast, I'd say "crushing gradual disappointment" is more or less our lot. I think it's very easy to read way more sophistication and significance into people's earlier work based on enjoyment and sheer energy - then they slide into their ickier or more annoying obsessions, or redo their earlier work, or what have you.
See also: Iain Banks, J.G. Ballard, Frank Herbert, Jack Vance, Roger Zelazny, Fritz Leiber... whether it's an appetite for gore, bad sex, bad (or just tedious) politics and social commentary, gadget-too-far driven plots - all of my favourite F/SF authors tend to drift over the years.
Re: Ends of the Urth
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wolfe was terrific for the brief span of a decade or so. It is no accident that the books for which he is so often acclaimed ( The Fifth Head of Cerberus , Peace , BotNS) were all written in the 1970s. At that time he managed to combine intricately plotted, deceitful-narrator plots with excellent prose that was fully the equal of Proust or Nabokov. Beyond those three book-length works, his short stories of this perio…
Can't say I disagree. Wizard Knight through to Borrowed Man all left me pretty cold. Personally "A Land Across" felt comparatively accessible (if random) as compared to "An Evil Guest" (which felt unreadable), Home Fires or Borrowed Man. As an F/SF enthusiast, I'd say "crushing gradual disappointment" is more or less our lot. I think it's very easy to read way more sophistication and significance into people's earlie…
Or Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, or Poul Anderson...
Re: Ends of the Urth
#7Wolfe is terrific, and terrifically underrated. Some of his efforts I find unreadable ("The Knight", "The Wizard Knight") and some banal, but when he's good, he's really good . "There Are Doors" is my personal favourite - low key, complex and affecting. The Book of the New Sun is probably the most famous (and deservedly so) and it also bears rereading. Just as pleasing is the fact that the Book of the New Sun is a ra…
Just read "the Book of the New Sun" in its entirety and I can't understand the appeal people find in it.
The author really enjoys telling stories, and is very bad at telling a story. The world is glorious, and he does nothing with it. The protagonist is a nymphomaniac borderline[1] rapist who goes on long monologues about women as nothing more than objects (and many more monologues that are rarely insightful). The protagonist never changes, the story jumps from a chance encounter to a deus ex machina and back through random events of no consequence.
But, as with literature, its very subjective, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[1] Yeah, not even borderline. "Oh, look at this beautiful woman sleeping. I couldn't help but start sex with her".
Re: Ends of the Urth
#8Wolfe is terrific, and terrifically underrated. Some of his efforts I find unreadable ("The Knight", "The Wizard Knight") and some banal, but when he's good, he's really good . "There Are Doors" is my personal favourite - low key, complex and affecting. The Book of the New Sun is probably the most famous (and deservedly so) and it also bears rereading. Just as pleasing is the fact that the Book of the New Sun is a ra…
Just read "the Book of the New Sun" in its entirety and I can't understand the appeal people find in it. The author really enjoys telling stories, and is very bad at telling a story. The world is glorious, and he does nothing with it. The protagonist is a nymphomaniac borderline[1] rapist who goes on long monologues about women as nothing more than objects (and many more monologues that are rarely insightful). The pr…
Wolfe's treatment of women is controversial. However, Severian is about 18 years old, and he grew up in a male-only community, so his perennial interest in women and shagging them is not unbelievable in this protagonist.
As for "events of no consequence", there are no such things in the book. Everything is somehow tied together, which is a large part of the book's appeal.
Re: Ends of the Urth
#9Wolfe is terrific, and terrifically underrated. Some of his efforts I find unreadable ("The Knight", "The Wizard Knight") and some banal, but when he's good, he's really good . "There Are Doors" is my personal favourite - low key, complex and affecting. The Book of the New Sun is probably the most famous (and deservedly so) and it also bears rereading. Just as pleasing is the fact that the Book of the New Sun is a ra…
Just read "the Book of the New Sun" in its entirety and I can't understand the appeal people find in it. The author really enjoys telling stories, and is very bad at telling a story. The world is glorious, and he does nothing with it. The protagonist is a nymphomaniac borderline[1] rapist who goes on long monologues about women as nothing more than objects (and many more monologues that are rarely insightful). The pr…
Same thing...
Re: Ends of the Urth
#10Wolfe is terrific, and terrifically underrated. Some of his efforts I find unreadable ("The Knight", "The Wizard Knight") and some banal, but when he's good, he's really good . "There Are Doors" is my personal favourite - low key, complex and affecting. The Book of the New Sun is probably the most famous (and deservedly so) and it also bears rereading. Just as pleasing is the fact that the Book of the New Sun is a ra…
Just read "the Book of the New Sun" in its entirety and I can't understand the appeal people find in it. The author really enjoys telling stories, and is very bad at telling a story. The world is glorious, and he does nothing with it. The protagonist is a nymphomaniac borderline[1] rapist who goes on long monologues about women as nothing more than objects (and many more monologues that are rarely insightful). The pr…
But even aside of the sexism, the story is completely artificial...