Comment by observation | Hacker News Reader

Comment by observation | Hacker News Reader

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Typically I'd agree. I don't mean the text has no answers or is subjective - the text does contain the answers to nearly every puzzling thing within it, if you can see it. Wolfe is an engineer and the pieces fit together. Neil Gaiman has a nice essay on how to read it properly (Gene Wolfe is the favorite author of many famous authors you've heard of):

https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2007/gwng0704.htm

The main character is an unreliable narrator.

However consider all the veils that would have to be cast aside to understand reality:

1. The narrator could be lying to you. 2. The narrator could not understand what is truly happening. 3. The narrator may have mental models which are not accurate. 4. The narrator may be passing on inaccurate information or lies. 5. The narrator may be using words in a way that you think you understand, but do not. 6. The narrator may be expecting you to implicitly understand something that you do not e.g. we make certain assumptions about information because the Internet now exists, something similar exists in the world of the New Sun. 7. The narrator may be using the language of metaphor to describe something that is quite real but not what we think it is. 8. The narrator may not be one person. This won't make sense until you read the book. 9. The narrator could be telling you the truth, but you merely do not understand what he is really saying. 10. The narrator may not be lying at all, merely leaving out information that makes him look bad.

I could go on for many more points. I found thinking of Vernadsky's theories useful while reading it. If reading Gene Wolfe does not fire up your neurons, nothing will.

Again: the answers are in the text, it is not subjective in my experience, but you're going to have to think real hard on many different levels. Your understanding of the New Sun's world will be in flux for the duration of the book. Gene Wolfe gives you the answer, but he gives it once so you have to pay close attention. If something puzzles you, tuck it away and keep reading.

And, by to way, that's not actually an essay about how to read Gene Wolf.

5) Reading Gene Wolfe is dangerous work. It's a knife-throwing act, and like all good knife-throwing acts, you may lose fingers, toes, earlobes or eyes in the process. Gene doesn't mind. Gene is throwing the knives

How does that help me exactly? Answer, it doesn't. Reading Gene Wolfe apparently motivated Neil Gaiman to write a bunch of words that say almost nothing. This is not encouraging.

Ugh. Because you've piqued my curiosity I read http://www.waggish.org/2007/gene-wolfe-the-book-of-the-new-s...

The reviewer disagrees that all the questions are answered. Unanswered mysteries for the sake of nothing? Not sure I can stomach it.

Ha! You read two essays but won't read the first chapter of the book? :-)

The reviewer is kind of wrong. I can think of high probability answers to half the questions that he posed and I've read the volumes just once. The observation on text stability is one that all books with unreliable narrators have, not just the Book of the New Sun, but I don't think we're about to throw out all that literature. More important I think is that the reason to have an unreliable narrator is because it is more realistic - the world around us, its people, its ideas, its history, it's all unreliable on a good day. That's part of why I like Gene Wolfe's wriing: it's multi-layered and multi-faceted, that is why I said it feels real. People with the Wolfe Gene aren't part of a mystery cult, most things I can think of in the text have answers, only perhaps you need to have read widely e.g. greek myth, dark age/enlightenment philosophy to get at all of it. If you have a bad habit of scanning text very quickly, like many readers of science fiction with their enormous multi-thousand pageturners, then you shall inevitably lose resolution on what's going on, I think that happens to quite a few readers new to Wolfe.

tldr; The Book of the New Sun is not Lost the TV show.

I've already read the first chapter, actually, and most of the second. The thing I'm worried about isn't reading the first chapter, it's reading all the chapters and later wishing I hadn't wasted the time.

Good that it's not Lost. What I'm worried is more that it'll be House of Leaves though. Or Finnegan's Wake. But I'm already invested enough to keep going so we'll see how it goes. :)

I think you will be rewarded for your efforts :-)

That's a good list. I'm curious about what you're referring to in 6. The only thing I can think of is beneath Nessus, but I can't for the life of me recall how it plays into what Severian writes (or perhaps rather what he doesn't). It's been a few long years since I was last there though.

Possible spoiler alert: Can think of two examples.

I am readying myself for a reread (including Urth, as yet unread), so this is all IIRC, but there is a paragraph mentioning how Erebus or Abaia have influence in the world - likely through a computer network similar to the Internet (as telegraph to Net, Net to ...) but unimaginably more sophisticated e.g. embedded into everything, like the IoT. Of course there are other entities with access to infrastructure that the peasants are either ignorant of or dimly aware of e.g. cacogens, Father Inire.

Another example is Jonas's past life as a sailor. I believe at first he is a sailor, but later... very poetic.

The bit that is bugging me about BOTNS is part of the final book, where a young woman is seen by Sevarian in an old part of the city - it's beautifully written and this feels familiar but I can't place it, I know there's something I'm missing about that experience.

That has settled it, next time I take notes ;-)

Great moments for me include:

Sevarian's explanation of his craft's morality (which he later discounts!) The battle of the flowers. I could see it. Realizing Agia's betrayal. Rethinking everything I've read after the gemstone, and then again after the nature of Sevarian's role is uncovered, and again as I realize the meaning of a Autarch. The Ascians! So much more. Often I'll realize something about it hours or days later after reading.

Note: if you read this past the spoiler alert, do not be afraid, read the book!

I'm rereading now and have spotted a third example: <spoiler alert>

Severian describes how Master Gurloes is an educated man and that he talks to other people/beings through something like a radio network at the top of the Tower.

It was phrased like this:

"He was the only one of our guild - Master Palaemon not excepted - who was unafraid of the energies there and the unseen mouths who spoke sometimes to human beings and sometimes to other mouths in other towers and keeps."

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