/lit/ - Literature

>>15432223
He is popular. Stop reading prose.

How is he highbrow? I don't get that impression at all

>>15432714
middlebrow is highbrow for the average sci-fi/fantasyfag
Just look at the garbage they read

>>15432462
define popular

>>15432223
Do you mean commercially popular? Probably not. He’s too dense for genrefags. Unless he gets a big tv or film adaptation, but even then you can’t really film Wolfe without severely diminishing his strengths as an author. I suppose you could do a decent adaptation of Peace or The Wizard Knight, but TBotNS is nearly unfilmable without drastically deviating from the techniques which make him unique.

As far as critical popularity, I think he will continue to rise in stature.

the only thing that I worry about is how people can try to inject bs into him with stuff like
>"Gene Wolfe: sf/f problematic underground author"
>"racism, misogyny, white pride, pedophilia: alt right embraces new author"

>>15432223
Never saw the appeal desu. His stories are all intricate puzzles that require multiple readings to decipher, but are ultimately devoid of any greater truth or spirit. It's like the kind of story an engineer might write if they had a mastery of their craft.

>>15434745
I see this critiaque leveled against Wolfe a lot. It’s wrong. You’re probably just too impatient or wrapped up in tropes to peel away the layers of theological and philosophical depths which permeate Wolfe’s works

>>15434929
I don't know man, maybe. But most of his so called philosophical "depth" just seems referential to me. Questions beyond plot matters are never raised. I'm happy to be proven wrong, though, if you've got an example of what you're talking about.

>>15434966
Did you even read BotNS where he literally outlines the world's spiritual morality. They literally go to a planet like heaven where he is judged. The entire series is chock full of symbolism and ideas. Do you ever think about how Baldanders, the giant is a scientist and atheist who's actively working counter to Severian? The world literally falls apart because of a flood and they go through extreme ideas on faith and righteousness. Read the book again, or at least one time.

>>15434966
I can give you a few quick examples of this

>BotNS
One of the (many) major themes is divine providence and the Christian understanding of Eschatology. The idea that history and events are directed towards God but not necessarily by God, as Severian fails multiple times yet revisits and reinserts himself over the course of history to ensure the ultimate divine purpose of bringing the new sun to humanity. Bound up with this is the idea of memory and mythology. Mythology is a sort of shared cultural memory, and though it may shift or change throughout history, the core story remains the same, as is seen in all of the stories in the Brown Book, the play Eschatology and Genesis, and Jonas’ recollection of the argonaut/Romulus/Merrimack mythology. This is intertwined with Severians own flawed memory, which he believes is eidetic. The particulars of his memory are wrong, but the overall story remains intact. Wolfe is expanding upon Tolkien’s idea of Mythopoeia and the role of mythology and story in human society as a form of spiritual and cultural survival. The same principle applies to The Island of Doctor Death

>Peace
The core theme in peace is grace, sin, and redemption. Weer is a man who cannot confess his sins, and as a result, he must relive his life repeatedly until he essentially recognizes and atones for his actions before he can be gifted Grace. To deny your sins is to live in hell, both figurative and literal, and escape from self inflicted suffering is only found through repentance and grace—itself a terrifying reality.

>Latro
A subtle inverse of the themes of BotNS, where in the spiritual reality and truths found in the old religions is only realized in Christ, hence why Latro can’t recall anything but ultimately finds spiritual truth through the framework of his broken memory and the grace of God.

I could go on, but there’s a lot going on in Wolfe

>>15432223
He's not popular. Anyone who says he is spends way too much time online. That being said, he's probably the best contemporary-ish American writer, Pynchon being a close second

>>15434722
This

>>15435187
Pretty based

>>15435100
Is there any reason why in BotNS Dorcas is Sev's grandmother? This seemed to me as having nothing to do with the themes of the story and something Wolfe only did to troll the reader.

>>15435724
Someone else told me is was done as a way to indicate to the reader that something else is going on besides "torturer begoms the king", like a tutorial puzzle or something.

>>15435736
I don't understand. Please explain.

>>15432223
I hope so, I think his science fiction and style of writing is among the best of the sci fi genre. The fantastical high-science universe is the most interesting that exists. But the fact that most people only really like accessible entry level sci-fi fantasy means that he probably will be unknown outside of a small group of readers.

He just died and genre fiction is very popular. To add to that the authors who grew up reading his works as he published them are currently at their own peak. He is never going to get any more popular than he is right now.

>>15432714
Dude the average sci-fi fan has trouble reading Kurt Vonnegut and I wish I was joking. These are the people that say Dune is the greatest book of all time. These are the people that say "Wowee muh brain hurts after reading Gene Wolfe so many big words like "tenebrous" wow what does "tenebrous" mean such a difficult word
Fuck these retards. Slap JR by William Gaddis in front of them and I guarantee you they won't think Wolfe is so hard anymore.

>>15435187
Makes me want to read him.
But he's so boring.

>>15435724
My personal theory is that Wolfe was trying to again drive the point home that Severian is ultimately human and his choices are his own. He is, in essence, a material flawed human endowed with free will rather than merely an automaton-like being who is merely a pawn of the hierogrammates and, thus, the Pancreator. He is not some supernatural being who can manifest himself whenever and wherever he needs to be.This is where borski gets Wolfe all wrong in reading him as a a determinist

>>15435187
Alright boys, just ordered the new sun.

>>15436822
What does tenebrous mean?

>>15437335
Huh? How does this make Severian more flawed than he already is? He didn’t know he was committing incest. If he knew beforehand he wouldn’t have done it in the first place.

>>15432223
Never

>>15434929

This post is why Wolfe isn't more popular. He has the most obnoxious fans of any writer. Nobody could possibly be more up their own asses than a Gene Wolfe fan.

>>15441452
>NOOOOOO YOU CAN’T JUST HAVE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF AN AUTHOR THAN ME! YOU CANT JUST SAY IM WRONG BECAUSE I’M AN ILLITERATE FAGGOT WHO REFUSES TO ENGAGE WITH HIS TEXTS BEYOND A CURSORY, SURFACE LEVEL READING OF HIS WORK! STOP IT!

>>15441533

>Oh you disagreed with me I guess you didn't read Wolfe
>Read him again
>Then read him again you obviously didn't understand the second time
>IT'S ABOUT MEMORY AND JESUS IT'S DEEP AND SO AM I!

Every Wolfe fan ever.

>>15440359
Because he is a product of natural human procreation rather than a divinely incarnates being ala Christ. It negates the theory that Severian is merely a manifestation or incarnation of the Increate, which is a reading some critics and readers have settled on. Yet the problem with the is that it negates the core Orthodox position which Wolfe goes to great lengths to preserve. This is the guy who retroactively claimed that Urth may not be Earth but rather another planet when he considered the promise God made to Abraham when He said he would never flood the earth again.

>>15441567
Dumb shit. The original anon stated that Wolfe has no deeper themes or ideas, which is patently false and has been debunked many times, even in this thread. The argument wasn’t if Wolfe’s themes are handled well or are otherwise engaging. It was that there was nothing to engage with to begin with, which is flat out wrong. No wonder you hate Wolfe so much. Comprehension isn’t your strong suit

>>15441595

>No wonder you hate Wolfe

I don't hate Wolfe. I hate you. The question is why he attracted such douchebag fans. I think the symbolism attracts pseuds whose dumb theories can't be proven wrong, which is why every response they have is either "you didn't read Wolfe" or "I am in fact smart, stop saying I'm not smart because I'm smart."

>>15441644
I’m curious if you think this applies to any other writer when someone levels a false claim regarding their work and anons come to the defense of the writer. These instances aren’t limited to Wolfe fans. it happens with almost everyone. Joyce, Wallace, Pinecone, McCarthy, Melville, etc.. Calling people out for making ignorant statements isn’t pseud. It’s par for the course for /lit/. This isn’t hugbox reddit. Not everyone’s positions are valid. If someone doesn’t like Wolfe because his style of writing isn’t for them, that’s an opinion. When someone makes a claim that he has no larger ideas or themes present in his work, this is patently false. Pointing out this fact isn’t pseud. It’s basic literary criticism.

>>15441705
Yet another sad sad case! You see it too often. Pseud fell right into the pseud-trap. What's that he's shouting from the bottom of the pit? Is he crying for help? Asking for a ladder? No, no, he's saying he likes it better down there...

>>15441705

All I am saying is that at the heart of every Gene Wolfe fan are deep feelings of intellectual insecurity. They seem to know that they are in a sense a fraud, posing at being intelligent when they aren't. If you criticize Joyce or Melville you don't instantly see their fans jump to insulting the intelligence of anyone who dares to disagree with their 200 point theory of Melville. Yet no Wolfe fan can go more than two or three posts without claiming that someone else hasn't read him or sniffing their own farts while insulting the intelligence of someone who told them they might be wrong. Why is this? Are Wolfe fans MFA students who have been shit on too many times for liking a fantasy author and thus are super sensitive about their own intelligence? Do stupid people latch on to Wolfe because they can't be proven wrong? These are important sociological questions and only years of study can resolve them.

>>15441578
Ah I see. The twist makes more sense when you start to look at Sev as an inversion of Christ

>>15441567
I never said that shit. I told you to just lay back and enjoy Jolenta's sci-fitastic rack.

>>15432714
BotNS is very well written. It’s literary sci-fi. The vast majority of sci fi is not.

>>15434256
>TBotNS is nearly unfilmable
This is what made the book so special to me. The setting itself is a sort of double entendre. It appears to be a high fantasy, but it’s really a low sci fi

>>15441837
Actually for Joyce and Proust, they often do. Joyce and Proust are some of the biggest pseud magnets. Wolfe is a magnet for autists.

>However, in an earlier editorial in (Modern Plant Manager), Wolfe revealed the somewhat startling source of his creative power. "At the moment of orgasm, I slide my thumb over the meatus to block the ejaculate, reserving it's generative force for my own uses" he writes."I can feel the individual seconds expand just as my focus narrows down to a pin's width. On occasion I've gone out to mow the lawn, sent my astral body off to spy on an old college flame, and sat down at my desk to dash off a 14,000 word tale for Omni, and looked up at the clock to discover that only 15 minutes had elapsed"
LOLing my ass off at anyone who thinks anything this madman ever wrote was a Catholic allegory

>>15442954
>14k words in 15 min
>1k words/min typing speed

>>15442965
Typical Wolfe hater, you obviously didn't understand my post and you better read it again.

>>15440210
>dark; shadowy or obscure

>>15442908

The only valid interpretation of BotNS is that it is a reflection of Wolfe's deep seated hatred for his own fan base. The books are a work of genius in that respect, a meta act of torture designed to trap the unwary pseud in a hall of mirrors from which they can never return. Just as Severian is a torturer, so is Wolfe. He says everything and nothing, and he does so purposely. He warns the pseud, do not proceed, do not attempt to understand. The alzabo represents one incarnation of the pseud. It pretends to be an intelligent being, just as the Wolfe fan does. But its ravings are just as meaningless, mere snippets of thought absorbed from others. And the Ascians, just like Wolfe's pseuds, speak only in simple repetitive phrases with other meanings. "You must not have read Wolfe" translated roughly as "I have no response," and so on. Jolenta is a brilliant representation of the pseud Wolfe fan's endless symbological constructs. She may look beautiful, but only for a time. And like the Wolfe fan's raving interpretational constructs, her supposed beauty collapses with time. Wolfe even warns the non-pseud, having Severian jettison his book into space. "Do not read Urth," he is saying, but the pseud Wolfe fan does not listen. And thus he is forced to pretend that a garbage pulp novel tacked onto the end of the series for money is a brilliant Christ allegory. BotNS is genius in the tortures it inflicts on its awful fandom. Doomed to never be intelligent, but to think they are, they roam message boards and growl incoherently at anyone they confront. But it is all a prison, and Wolfe has trapped them inside it.

>>15443187
kek

>>15443187
SEETHE

You got filtered by Wolfe and are mad about it

>>15432714
I'm reading latro in the mist and you do need to have some knowledge of Greek mythology and history. Basically if you read the start with the Greeks chart you'd know enough to really enjoy the book. So I'm that sense it might seem a little high brow for the fantasy genre

>>15443187
Now this is an epic post, proof that lit/ is still alive. Put me in the screencap. Holy based, Kek.

>>15443187

>>15443187
>>15443706
OK I got the next Gene Wolfe general picture hot off the press.

Free bump for Waffen