» Friday, 28 January A.D. 2011
reading into gene wolfe
Ultan's Library is a resource filled with articles about Gene Wolfe's books. Reading them is fascinating stuff; all sorts of possibilities are opened up by people who have clearly thought harder about this stuff than I have. Consider this passage, from the essay The Reader as Augur: Beginnings and Endings in Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun:
Chapter two of Nightside implies much: Silk visits the marketplace to buy a sacrificial victim, a signal that divination is imminently necessary; the fact that animals and vegetables, their names corresponding to the human nomenclature of Viron (men have animal, and women vegetable, names) are on sale suggests that a struggle is on for the ransom of souls; Silk rejects the purchase of a catachrest (which speaks distortedly, as its name implies) in favour of that of a night chough, which speaks clearly, if brokenly: he (and we) should heed whatever signs are honest in a world of deception (pp. 33-42).
Wow. That's just a small taste of the symbolism the essay author pulls out of the book. However...I understand that the point of this essay is to suggest how the reader can act as augur, drawing out the subtle implications of things as Silk himself might do. Fine. But am I really supposed to think about all that and understand all that while I'm reading? “A struggle is on for the ransom of souls.” Really? Did I miss the week of class (or even the whole class) where learning to read in this way was presented and practiced? Failing that, do people have a recommended book or two that discusses learning to read this way?
posted by Nate @ 7:34PM