(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Will No One Rid Me Of This Troublesome Writer?

Tue May 10 08:10:31 PDT 2011

At 06:17 AM 5/10/2011, you wrote:
>Yeah, this just looks like a red herring to me.  Wolfe is the 
>'brilliant student' of far more writers than Vance, many of the 
>others being 'mainstream'.

Certes. In the New Sun, there is a lot of Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

JBJordan (formerly Nutria)

>  Even if we were to only consider fantasy pre-cursors, just the 
> mere fact of mixing something of Vance with healthy doses of the 
> likes of Hodgson and Lovecraft already creates something 
> wonderfully new and fresh (something that some will far prefer to 
> Vance it has to be said).
>
>It's no secret that Wolfe almost never invents any new s.f/fantasy 
>scenario - his originality is all in the exquisite craft and 
>artistry of the prose itself, the utterly weird sleight-of-hand form 
>of storytelling, and the dense depth of psychology and narratology 
>(all of which have their derivations - but Wolfe truly sounds, in 
>the thick of his narrative, like no one else).
>
>Having said that, I actually agree that the oft-repeated 
>(re-bleated) blurbs can be rather misleading.  Gene Wolfe will live 
>up to his praise in a way that probably many (most?) people just 
>won't 'get'.  And I don't necessarily blame them.  It just depends 
>on your tastes and backgrounds.  I think the 'problem' is that some 
>of us have been willing to follow Wolfe into and through his 
>literary labyrinth and thereby been shown wonders that have 
>resonated so deeply and lastingly that we can't heap enough praise 
>on him.  This is understandable but perhaps unhelpful and misleading 
>to the non-initiate.  Wolfe needs blurbs that will perhaps rather 
>more cautiously entice readers into his rare brew if they they can 
>be convinced to pay the fee (because, frankly, reading Wolfe is 
>costly, as most of us will admit).
>
>Then again, all the outrageous praise from Gaiman and others totally 
>roped me in and I'm not the least unthankful!
>
>DOJP
>
>On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Jack Smith 
><<mailto:jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com> wrote:
>Wolfe is derivative?  Yes, but so is Shakespeare.
>
>
>On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 1:22 AM, Lane Haygood 
><<mailto:lhaygood at gmail.com>lhaygood at gmail.com> wrote:
>This is just demonstrably false to boot!  Vance's prose, his diction,
>and his writing style are highly distinct from Wolfe's.  I mean, the
>only line of intersection is that they each chose a certain thematic
>motif (a dying world) for a few of their stories.  But Wolfe's writing
>tends to be more dialogue-heavy and witty, whereas Vance eschews
>dialogue in favor of lyricism and structured prose.  The "Dying Earth"
>stories are lighter and more mythic (not to mention fairly
>straightforward), whereas Wolfe's tend to be labyrinthine and
>multi-layered.
>
>I enjoy both, but to compare Wolfe to Vance is to compare apples to oranges.
>
>That said, aren't all writers at least somewhat derivative?  Talk to
>any of them and they can list a whole line of authors that influenced
>their development. But there's a clear difference between, "Oh yeah,
>Borges was totally influential on my work" and "Hey guys, I totally
>rewrote a Borges story with spaceships and swords."
>
>LH
>
>On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 10:30 PM, Gwern Branwen 
><<mailto:gwern0 at gmail.com>gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just in time for Gene's birthday celebrations:
> > 
> <http://foreverness.createforumhosting.com/what-to-do-about-gene-wolfe-t337.html>http://foreverness.createforumhosting.com/what-to-do-about-gene-wolfe-t337.html
> >
> >> This is driving me nuts. I'm far beyond my limit of tolerance 
> for cover-jacket blurbs declaring Gene Wolfe to be "... the 
> greatest writer in the English language alive today." and "... 
> there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of 
> prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning." That's Michael 
> Swanwick's embarrassing fawning, which has apparently become 
> required promotional jibber-jabber for every book Wolfe gets 
> published. Other literary critics who don't know anything about 
> science fiction take this at face value, and occasionally 
> regurgitate it with their own variations, completely oblivious to 
> Jack Vance's work. And, readers new to science fiction (or 
> speculative fiction if you prefer) are being grossly misled. 
> They're amazed by the pebble but aren't told about the mountain. 
> Don't get me wrong; I don't dislike Gene Wolfe's writing. I pounce 
> on every new chunk of fiction he comes up with. I'll go so far as 
> to say that his "The Book of the New Sun" i
> >  s required reading for anyone who believes that some sci-fi is 
> serious literature equal to the best in mainstream fiction. But, 
> Wolfe is derivative. He obviously used Vance as a starting point, 
> whereas Vance developed his literary voice independently. Vance is 
> authentic and original, and Wolfe is the brilliant student. It's 
> true that Wolfe's most recent work seems to be moving in a 
> direction that is more of Wolfe himself and less of Vance's style 
> and technique. Hopefully, Wolfe's future works will be ships with a 
> wind in their sails that flows from Wolfe's lungs alone. But we're 
> still being pounded over the head with the uninformed blather of 
> Swanwick, et al. What to do? Who will sound the trumpet for Vance? 
> Who will illuminate Vance's status as the progenitor?
> >
> > --
> > gwern
> > <http://www.gwern.net>http://www.gwern.net
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>
>
>--
>Best wishes,
>Jack
>
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James B. Jordan
Director, Biblical Horizons
Box 1096
Niceville, FL 32588
http://www.biblicalhorizons.com 
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