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Mapping a Masterwork: A Critical Review of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun
Critics
and reviewers were unrestrained. The Book of the New Sun was applauded
in a variety of periodicals ranging from The Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
to The Library Journal and The New York Times. In short,
it became a publishing event, the repercussions of which were felt in
fanzines, journals and mainstream publications alike. It was acclaimed
widely for its imaginative fertility, its formidable characterisation,
its controlled and meticulous style, and the craftsmanship of its construction.
Colin Greenland, reviewing The Shadow of the Torturer and The
Claw of the Conciliator for Foundation provides a somewhat
restrained endorsement when he considers the texts as 'the next classic
sf sequence, on a par with Earthsea, the Titus Groan Books or even…the
Foundation Trilogy.' 1 However,
embedded within this, and more extravagant praise, was a burgeoning paradox.
On the one hand, critics like Michael Bishop were lauding The Shadow
of the Torturer for being:
Conversely,
Algis Budrys was expressing a growing scepticism as the tetralogy saw
print. Whilst recognising that the publication of The Book of the New
Sun was a 'seminal event' in the history of science fiction, Budrys
gave voice to his growing suspicion that the narrative might not be as
straightforward as it first appeared:
The
image of Wolfe as illusionist and card-sharp is accurate and one which
critics would adopt as they began to share Budrys' sense of deception.
Colin Greenland, in his tellingly entitled article, 'Wolfe in Sheep's
Clothing', observes:
The
feeling of having been duped by Wolfe led Baird Searles to suggest the
origin of this critical discomfort and pose a provocative question:
Twenty
years after the publication of The Shadow of the Torturer and four
years after completing a Ph.D. that attempted to answer Searles' question,
the reprinting of The Book of the New Sun provides me with an opportunity
for a retrospective view. Indeed, everything about the new SF Masterwork's
edition invites retrospection, from the Jim Burns cover of Shadow and
Claw - itself a homage to Bruce Pennington's evocative, eroded image
on the first UK edition - to the very term 'Masterwork' that appears several
times on the jacket. Whilst the SF Masterworks imprint is just that, an
imprint packaged to sell books under a grandiose banner, there is a strong
case to be made for considering The Book of the New Sun as a 'masterwork'. Although
Searles prophesied that The Book of the New Sun was 'certainly
the sort of novel that will provide a field day for critics, essayists,
people who make lists, analysers, and academics', his prophecy has gone
largely unfulfilled, with the notable exception of Michael Andre-Driussi's
commendable Lexicon Urthus (1994). 6 Consequently, any claims made for viewing
Wolfe's tetralogy as a masterpiece are somewhat flimsy and subjective.
Rather than engaging with the text to any meaningful degree, critics have
tended to extol The Book of the New Sun for its fluidity of style,
the conception of its enigmatic, alien Earth, and the depth of its characterisation.
This conventional, narrow and unimaginative approach was unsatisfactory
in 1983 and will remain so until readers take up the gauntlet Wolfe throws
at their feet. Clearly,
it is impossible to provide satisfactory justification for considering
The Book of the New Sun a 'masterwork' in the space of a short
review or to anticipate Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice and
the Reader, my own study of Wolfe's fiction to be published by Liverpool
University Press in 2001. However, it is possible to suggest criteria
that would enable critics to qualify Wolfe's beguiling, manipulative text
as a 'masterwork' - if they are prepared to face the intellectual challenge. On
a first, superficial reading, there is little to distinguish Wolfe's tetralogy
from many other sf and fantasy novels, with the exception of the aforementioned
xenography, or world building, the credible characters and the polished,
literate style. The plot itself is apparently unremarkable. Set on the
ancient world of Urth, under the roseate glow of a dying sun, The Book
of the New Sun is the memoir of Severian, an apprentice torturer exiled
from his guild for showing mercy to a condemned 'client' with whom he
had fallen in love. Leaving the sprawling and manifestly ancient city
of Nessus, Severian begins his phantasmagoric journey north to Thrax,
the City of Windowless Rooms, where he is to act as Lictor to the Archon.
Once in Thrax, he refuses to murder a faithless wife for the Archon and
must flee ever northwards. Eventually, he finds himself on battlefields
scarred by the constant war between Severian's Commonwealth and the armies
of the northern continent, Ascia. It is here that he encounters the Autarch,
ruler of the Commonwealth, who nominates Severian as his successor. The
Citadel of the Autarch concludes with Severian awaiting judgement
on the world of Yesod, where the Hierogrammates will assess his worthiness
as the epitome of Urth. If he succeeds in his trial, Urth will receive
a new sun; if he fails, he will be emasculated and condemn his world to
entropic dissolution. Wolfe picks up the story at this point in the sequel
to the tetralogy, The Urth of the New Sun (1987). Throughout
Severian's journey, there are moments of creative brilliance: Severian's
unwitting 'resurrection' of Dorcas at the Lake of Birds; his bizarre duel
with Agilus; the chilling execution of Morwenna; his incarceration in
the House Absolute; Dr. Talos' allegorical and metafictive play, 'Eschatology
and Genesis'; Severian's encounter with the alzabo and, later, with Typhon,
the two-headed tyrant whose legacy is felt again in The Book of the
Long Sun; the apocalyptic battle between the Commonwealth and Ascia;
the final meeting between Severian and the Autarch; and the revelations
provided by the aquastor of Master Malrubius that recontextualise the
entire narrative. Each
of these encounters provides the reader with an indication of the story
that can be reconstructed from the plot. Reconciling plot with story,
perceiving the text not as the religious document it purports to be but
as the product of a manipulated individual caught in the Hierogrammates'
evolutionary machinations (something made explicit in The Urth of the
New Sun) is the first step towards understanding Wolfe's strategies
and purpose. The gulf between plot and story, between the apparent and
the real, alerts the reader to the fact that Wolfe is playing a complex
and contrived textual game that facilitates a number of methods of interpretation. Coming
to understand The Book of the New Sun is like learning the rules
of a game. If the reader succeeds in perceiving the rules of Wolfe's literary
game, achieves the reconciliation of plot with story, then the experience
of reading becomes an educational one. By stimulating the reader to reject
primary assumptions and existing preconceptions, Wolfe not only lifts
the reader onto a level of alertness that allows for his most subtle effects,
but also reveals to the more cautious reader how they ascribe meaning
to a text. This is, perhaps, the most fundamental factor in any claim
that The Book of the New Sun is a 'masterwork': it encourages the
growth of the reader towards what Jonathan Culler terms 'literary competence'.7
In short, Wolfe organises the text to be understood only by those readers
willing to question their own literary assumptions, pause, reflect, and
reread. The
literary game Wolfe constructs is most notable in terms of textual structure.
Wolfe's presentation of his rational sf novel as a non-rational fantasy,
together with his subversion of the Campbellian heroic cycle, provide
an insight not only into the possibilities of the genre but also into
how habitual modes of reading inform and construct the reader's reception
of a text. Of course, there are a number of novels that achieve this synthesis
and/or recontextualisation, which alone is insufficient to distinguish
The Book of the New Sun. However, for Wolfe, the recontextualisation
is little more than a starting point for his wider concerns. He is not
necessarily preoccupied with demonstrating how proficient he is as a writer.
Rather, by effectively concealing his narratological sleight of hand and
constructing a puzzle for his reader, Wolfe attempts to alert that reader
to the level of perception required. Hence, The Book of the New Sun
does not invite the reader to marvel at how clever Wolfe can be, but to
marvel at his or her own intelligence in perceiving one facet of the elaborate
textual game the author plays. In this sense, Wolfe's tetralogy is a masterwork
in that it can be read as a paraliterary fantasy but demands
to be read as a comment upon, and a reaction to, such narratives. In effect,
it is a coolly intellectual denunciation of passive reading practices,
a clarion call to readers dulled by formula fiction. Similarly,
Wolfe's deployment of a first person narrator and the autobiographical
form confronts the reader with familiar paradigms that oppose the reader's
reception of the subtle subversions Wolfe works on their conventions.
As other critics have noted, without realising the implications of their
observations, Severian is one of the most detailed and complex characterisations
found in contemporary literature. He is also the principal means by which
Wolfe distracts the reader from apprehending the story of his text. Despite
appearances to the contrary, Severian is an unreliable narrator - and
not only because he tells lies detectable by the cautious reader. Ironically,
Severian is unreliable because of the very characteristic that makes him
appear wholly reliable: his eidetic memory. Although Wolfe provides indicators
of Severian's fallibility, it is his status as a mnemonist that marks
Severian as someone who cannot be trusted. As a mnemonist, he is characterised
by a passive-receptive attitude that precludes organised striving, by
limitations of intellect concealed behind his capacity for thought and
imagination, and by his tendency to be a dreamer whose fantasies constitute
another world through which he transforms his everyday experiences. Even
the concealment of the story driving the plot of The Book of the New
Sun is explicable in terms of Severian's characterisation, given that
mnemonists have a tendency to remember a wealth of detail (plot) which
scatters meaning (story). Wolfe provides clues to Severian's 'inconscience'
- to borrow a term from Henry James - on a number of occasions, provoking
the reader to see beyond the masquerade to what lies beneath. In this
way, Wolfe not only asks his reader to question the narrator's reception
and interpretation of events, but their own reception and interpretation
of the text. Whilst
the reader is attempting to decode what is actually occurring in The
Book of the New Sun, Wolfe elaborates his textual games-playing by
introducing significant levels unfamiliar diction, designed to 'convey
the flavour of an odd place at an odd time.' 8 This apparently innocuous comment obfuscates
the fact that despite the conceptual, allusive and thematic functions
served by words like 'peltast', 'optimates', 'carnifex' and so forth,
Wolfe is deliberately opening his text to post-structuralist analyses.
In his appendix to The Shadow of the Torturer, Wolfe invests his
diction with an enforced polysemy when he explains that the obscure nouns
found in his 'translation' of The Book of the New Sun are 'intended
to be suggestive rather than definitive'. 9 In
this appendix, which, in a typical inversion, reads more like an introduction,
Wolfe destabilises the status of his language; previously concrete nouns
have their unequivocal meanings subverted by his 'translation'; they become
indeterminate 'substitutions'. Accordingly, by destabilising the meaning
of his signifiers, Wolfe ensures that his narrative can be perceived as
a writerly text in the Barthesian sense of containing indeterminacy of
meaning.10 Thus, The Book of
the New Sun may appeal to a post-structuralist reading as it marks
a shift from meaning to staging, from the signified to the signifier.
It fractures the relationship between the stable sign and the unified
subject. Equally, the text's obscure diction invites any deconstruction-orientated
approach by showing a limitlessness of linguistic play, a dérive
or drift of meaning. Equally, reader response critics can invoke Wolfgang
Iser's gap theory to discuss the 'spots' of indeterminism created by Wolfe's
indeterminate nouns.11 These critical
approaches, all of which were prevalent before and during the publication
of The Book of the New Sun, are a part of Wolfe's intellectual
gamesmanship. The reader should not be fooled, however. As Severian states
early in the narrative, 'rational people know that things act of themselves
or not at all',12 that is, they act in context, in harmony
with their own nature, regardless of their name or terminology. Ironically,
then, The Book of the New Sun can be claimed as a 'masterwork'
because it both acknowledges and denies the validity of critical theory.
Whilst it permits, and even invites, post-structuralist or deconstructivist
approaches, which would provide one form of insight into the text, it
undermines the potential of such analyses by indicating the contextualising
story that reveals how 'things act of themselves.' Theoretical approaches,
Wolfe seems to be suggesting, will generate interpretations, but a more
holistic understanding will only follow from personal and untheorised
reflection. Similar
observations could be made regarding Wolfe's deployment of metafictional
devices. Not content with changing generic codes, subverting literary
conventions, employing an unreliable narrator, and exploiting the deflective
effect of the unfamiliar, Wolfe manipulates traditional metafictional
strategies. These devices are used to create a confusing series of connections
between the text and its hermeneutic circle, between the action of its
heavily intertextual hypodiegetic tales and that of the main narrative.
Critics have largely overlooked the metafictional aspects of the text
and the purpose they serve. This oversight, which would have exposed the
text's self-reflexive preoccupation with itself, arises from the fact
that Wolfe and his commentators, including John Clute and Joan Gordon,
have their creative and analytical powers concentrated in opposite directions.
Where Wolfe turns his attention inward to fabricate a lengthy and involved
puzzle for his reader, his critics have peered outwards from the text,
searching for a point where The Book of the New Sun correlates
with life itself. Accordingly, they have failed to appreciate that the
metaphorical significance of the text (its examination of faith and deception)
is sustained and deepened by the game Wolfe initiates with the reader.
It is only by observing how s/he has been deceived and cajoled that the
reader comes to appreciate more fully Wolfe's vision of humanity as a
helplessly subjective species attendant to the whim of manipulatory forces.
This observation is encouraged by the self-conscious stress on deception,
artifice and artificiality that permeates the text and which emblematises
Wolfe's textual game with the reader. It
could be argued that The Book of the New Sun is science fiction's
Ulysses. Like James Joyce, Wolfe has 'put in so many enigmas and
puzzles that it will keep professors busy for centuries over what I meant,
and that's the only way of ensuring one's immortality.' 13 However, to do so would be to deny Wolfe's
determination to wed the reading process with his particular conception
of existence through his games playing. From his other fiction, it apparent
that Wolfe perceives the world as an ambiguous round of perceptions and
misperceptions in which the individual struggles, and ultimately fails,
to apprehend the precise nature of existence. The senses form a barrier
to understanding; the memory an unreliable recording device to which the
individual must return for clues to the conundrum of life; the world a
system of manipulation where in people must live as best they can according
to their physical, psychological and social restrictions. Whilst
it could be argued that the literary importance of Wolfe's fiction derives
from the thematic integrity by which this vision is conveyed, it is, perhaps,
more pertinent to argue that the real strength of his work arises from
his ability to make the reader experience this conception of existence
during the reading process. Accordingly, throughout The Book of the
New Sun, habitual modes of reading become metaphors for systems of
manipulation and deception; unreliable narrators emphasise the reader's
own subjectivity; and unfamiliar diction calls into question the accuracy
with which we can perceive the actuality of 'the real'. Like
the constriction in an hourglass, The Book of the New Sun marks
the point at which, and from which, Wolfe's themes, techniques and preoccupations
converge and diverge. To understand it is to understand Wolfe's oeuvre
entire. Yet, it is much more than that. The Book of the New Sun
reminds us of our potential and our vulnerability as readers and, in so
doing, it reminds us of our potential and vulnerability as individuals.
Through each reading of the text we learn not only what it is to read,
perceptively and critically, but also what it is to live, perceptively
and critically, in the world. Every reading is, then, an individual resurrection.
For that reason, if for no other, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New
Sun deserves to be hailed as a masterwork and not just a masterwork
of science fiction but a considerable achievement within twentieth century
fiction itself. *
* * * * Footnotes 1. Colin Greenland, review of The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator, Foundation, 24 (1982), 82-85 (p. 85). 2. Michael Bishop, 'Pitching Pennies Against the Starboard Bulkhead: Gene Wolfe as Hero', Thrust: Science Fiction in Review, Fall 1980, pp. 10-12 (p. 12). 3. Algis Budrys, review of The Claw of the Conciliator, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1980, p. 49. 4. Colin Greenland, 'Wolfe in Sheep's Clothing', City Limits, 21-27 October 1983, p. 17. 5. Baird Searles, review of The Citadel of the Autarch, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May 1983, p. 167. 6. Ibid. 7. Jonathan Culler, 'Literary Competence' in Reader Response Criticism from Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. by Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), pp. 101-117. 8. Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (New York: Tor, 1992) p. 236. 9. Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer (London: Arrow, 1981), p. 302. 10. Roland Barthes, 'From Work to Text' in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. by Joshué V. Harari (New York: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 73-81. 11. Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, trans. by The Johns Hopkins University Press (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), p. 24. 12. Ibid., p. 17. 13. James Joyce, cited in Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 64.
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