(urth) Shadow, Chapter X

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 8:00 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> A little while ago, I mentioned that one of the two essays by Wolfe in
> _Shadows of the New Sun_ that I liked best was "Nor the summers as
> golden", but I didn't quote it then because I had forgotten to make a
> copy of it. But the final two paragraphs are relevant; the context of
> this 6-page essay is Gene discussing storytelling and how multi-volume
> works are more challenging than single novels (pg 213):
>
> "I said the end of the overshadowing story would provide an end for
> the final volume. Perhaps I should add, 'if you are lucky'. It must
> wrap up its own volume, obviously. It must also wrap up the entire
> work in a satisfactory way. In general, it should not undercut the
> endings of any of the earlier books, rendering them, in retrospect,
> trivial. Rather it must validate them, assuring the reader that they
> were indeed important points in the overshadowing story - that you did
> not cheat. Thus in _The Book of the New Sun_, Severian leaves his
> native city at the end of the first book, reaches the distant city in
> which he is to be employed at the end of the second, and reaches the
> war toward which he has been inexorably drawn at the end of the third.
> At the end of the fourth book (when he returns to his city) I
> attempted to show that all had been significant, moulding his
> character and contributing to his rise to the Phoenix Throne.
> There is one final point, the point that separates a true multivolume
> work from a short story, a novel, or a series. The ending of the final
> novel should leave the reader with a feeling that he has gone through
> the defining circumstances of Main Character's life. The leading
> character in a series can wander off into another book and a new
> adventure better even than this one. Main Character cannot, at the end
> of your multivolume work. (Or at least, it should seem so.) His life
> may continue, and in most cases it will. He may or may not live
> happily ever after. But the problems he will face in the future will
> not be as important to him or us, nor the summers as golden."

I've put up the whole thing at http://www.gwern.net/docs/2007-wolfe

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net