Ends of the Urth
the-tls.co.uk
the-tls.co.uk
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
By consequence I mean change and growth in characters. You can throw away every single story, detour, and encounter and nothing will change in the characters’ journey.
Is there a difference between Jonas and the namless boy dead in the mountains? Dorcas and Balanders? Vodalus and witches in the forgotten ruins? None. They come and go with no impact.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the way the books end and continue. Entire parts of the protagonist’s journey are just skipped from one book to the next. Does it have any effect? None.
I've been hesitant about reading BOTNS, and this just confirms my suspicions that I should skip it.
Yes, Severian is not a particularly good person, but does that make this a bad series of books? I don't think Wolfe is trying to present him as good, which would be hard to swallow. This is written entirely from Severian's viewpoint, not Wolfe's.
In the sequel-ish series, the Long Sun books, the protagonist _is_ a very good person, and he's a marked contrast to Severian.
And yet we’re made to swallow the fact that he’s an exceptionally good person, an amazing leader whome people follow with no afterthought, and the Chosen One who brings the era of the New Sun.
Are we? Wolfe has stated in interviews that Severian is not supposed to be seen as a good person, but rather a deeply flawed one.
> an amazing leader whome people follow with no afterthought
Severian only starts to draw a following once he becomes autarch, and then people aren’t following him as much as the office (or the effects of the office). Elsewhere, it is Severian who tags along with various people he meets.
> the Chosen One who brings the era of the New Sun.
Did you go on to read The Urth of the New Sun? I won’t spoil it here for others, but that book does reveal that Severian’s “chosenness” and “saving of the planet” isn’t ultimately all it was cracked up to be.
As for lack of character growth, it is strange that you list Dorcas an example, because IMHO her gradual development over books 1–3 (with the coda in book 4) is a poignant aspect of the work.
And incidentally, novels where a protagonist tours a world full of odd characters, and the author does not particularly develop these characters or even the protagonist, is a well-established literary genre that goes back many centuries (the picaresque).
Doesn't matter what he said in interviews. The third book is full to the brim with with thin hints or outright "we knew you were special, so we were searching for you high and low".
> Severian only starts to draw a following once he becomes autarch
Re-read the entire attack on Baldanders' castle. "The people naturally follow me" and all that.
> Did you go on to read The Urth of the New Sun?
I didn't and after the Book of the New Sun I frankly don't want to touch anything by Wolfe :)
> a well-established literary genre that goes back many centuries (the picaresque).
"picaresque: relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero."
The main problem is that Severian is anything but appealing.
Caveat: this is just a very general feeling I have. I haven't read all of Wolfe's books, nor have I seen all of Lynch's movies (although I have read/watched most of their oeuvre). I'm also not from the US, and English is not my first language, so I might be missing a lot of nuances.
He also says that Wolfe told him who Severian's mother is, but leaves that undisclosed.