/lit/ - Literature

>>21363802
His sci-fi work sucks, so yea, it's inaccurate, unless you don't think highly of Tolkien.

>>21363802
it's accurate to call him literally Eggman

Every character you meet in the story turns up again, hundreds of miles away, to reveal that they are someone else and have been secretly controlling the action of the plot. It feels like the entire world is populated by about fifteen people who follow the narrator around wherever he goes. If the next two books continue along the same lines, then the big reveal will be that the world is entirely populated by no more than three superpowered shapeshifters.

Everyone in the book has secret identities, secret connections to grand conspiracies, and important plot elements that they conveniently hide until the last minute, only doling out clues here and there. There are no normal people in this world, only double agents and kings in disguise. Every analysis I've read of this book mentions that even the narrator is unreliable.

This can be an effective technique, but in combination with a world of infinite, unpredictable intrigue, Wolfe's story begins to evoke something between a soap opera and a convoluted mystery novel, relying on impossible and contradictory scenarios to mislead the audience. Apparently, this is the thing his fans most appreciate about him—I find it to be an insulting and artificial game.

There is simply not enough structure to the story to make the narrator's unreliability meaningful. In order for unreliable narration to be effective, there must be some clear and evident counter-story that undermines it. Without that, it is not possible to determine meaning, because there's nowhere to start: everything is equally shaky.

At that point, it's just a trick—adding complexity to the surface of the story without actually producing any new meaning. I know most sci-fi and fantasy authors seem to love complexity for its own sake, but it's a cardinal sin of storytelling: don't add something into your story unless it needs to be there. Covering the story with a lot of vagaries and noise may impress some, but won't stand up to careful reading.

Overall, I found nothing unique in Wolfe. Perhaps it's because I've read quite a bit of odd fantasy; if all I read was mainstream stuff, then I'd surely find Wolfe unpredictable, since he is a step above them. But compared to Leiber, Howard, Dunsany, Eddison, Kipling, Haggard, Peake, Mieville, or Moorcock, Wolfe is nothing special.

Perhaps I just got my hopes up too high. I imagined something that might evoke Peake or Leiber (at his best), perhaps with a complexity and depth gesturing toward Milton or Ariosto. I could hardly imagine a better book than that, but even a book half that good would be a delight--or a book that was nothing like that, but was unpredictable and seductive in some other way.

I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never really did. It all plods along without much rise or fall, just the constant moving action to make us think something interesting is happening. I did find some promise, some moments that I would have loved to see the author explore, particularly those odd moments where Silver Age Sci Fi crept in, but each time he touched upon these, he would return immediately to the smallness of his plot and his annoying prick of a narrator. I never found the book to be difficult or complex, merely tiring. the unusual parts were evasive and vague, and the dull parts constant and repetitive.

The whole structure (or lack of it) does leave things up to interpretation, and perhaps that's what some readers find appealing: that they can superimpose their own thoughts and values onto the narrator, and onto the plot itself. But at that point, they don't like the book Wolfe wrote, they like the book they are writing between his lines.

>>21363802
He is better than Tolkien at Fantasy too. Just read Wizard Knight. Get fucked faggot pasta guy in these threads. Wolfe is king

>>21363985
>>21363987
Unrefuted.
>>21364039
>He is better than Tolkien at Fantasy too
lmao delusional wolfefag

>>21364044
come talk to me again when you have a collection half as good as mine, pleb.
>>21363250

>>21364098
>all that Wolfe shit
Gross! My collection contains actual literature.

>>21364104
all gay paperbacks and gay foreign writers

>>21364294
>foreign writers
All of whom are superior to Wolfe, yes.

>>21364300
Americans are the best writers and the best nation this world has ever known.

>>21364390
lmao nice bait

>>21363985
>every analysis I've read of this book mentions
I have to get out of this place I have to get out of this place I have to get out of this place

>>21363985

>Every analysis I've read of this book mentions that even the narrator is unreliable.

In Book of the New Sun, the narrator IS the main character, Severian, and a scrupulous reader would detect he is unreliable after only a few chapters. Part of the pleasure is for the reader 'figuring this out' on their own in fact, that's partially why it's praised. If you'd actually bother reading it you would know this. If you did read BoTNS then you were simply filtered and should find some kind of remedial reading program at your local library.

>>21364692
>the narrator IS the main character
who said he wasn't?

>>21363802
No, Tolkien was a great author, Wolfe is a hack.

>>21364692
>In Book of the New Sun, the narrator IS the main character, Severian, and a scrupulous reader would detect he is unreliable after only a few chapters. Part of the pleasure is for the reader 'figuring this out' on their own in fact, that's partially why it's praised. If you'd actually bother reading it you would know this. If you did read BoTNS then you were simply filtered and should find some kind of remedial reading program at your local library.