Gene Wolfe
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Gene Wolfe: 14 Articles on His Fiction
By Michael Andre-Driussi
Text copyright © 2016 Michael Andre-Driussi
All Rights Reserved
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“A Closer Look at the Brown Book” originally appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction No. 54, February 1993.
“Gene Wolfe at the Lake of Birds” originally appeared in Foundation No. 66, Spring 1996.
“Posthistory 101” originally appeared in Extrapolation Vol. 37, No. 2, Summer 1996.
“Naming the Star of The Fifth Head of Cerberus” originally appeared in the chapbook Cicerone Sinister, published by Sirius Fiction in 2001.
“Lions and Tigers and Bears ... of the New Sun” originally appeared online at Ultan's Library, Dec 2003.
“Gene Wolfe: the Man and His Work” originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Apr 2007.
“The Death of Catherine the Weal and Other Stories (1992)” originally appeared online at Ultan's Library, Aug 2008.
“Gene Wolfe’s Novels and The Book of the Long Sun” originally appeared as an introduction for the Romanian edition of Nightside the Long Sun, 2008.
“Japanese Lexicon for the New Sun” originally appeared online at Ultan's Library, May 2009.
“What Gene Wolfe Expects” originally appeared online at The Internet Review of Science Fiction, Apr 2009.
Review of Nightside the Long Sun for Quantum No. 43/44, spring/summer 1993.
Review of In Green’s Jungles for The New York Review of Science Fiction No. 145, Sep 2000.
Review of Strange Travelers for Ultan's Library, May 2000.
Review of Shadows of the New Sun for The New York Review of Science Fiction No. 307, Mar 2014.
Gene Wolfe: 14 Articles
A Closer Look at the Brown Book (1993)
Gene Wolfe at the Lake of Birds (1996)
Posthistory 101 (1996)
Naming the Star of The Fifth Head of Cerberus (2001)
Lions and Tigers and Bears ... of the New Sun (2003)
Gene Wolfe: the Man and His Work (2007)
The Death of Catherine the Weal and Other Stories (1992/2008)
Gene Wolfe’s Novels and The Book of the Long Sun (2008)
Japanese Lexicon for the New Sun (2009)
What Gene Wolfe Expects (2009)
Review of Nightside the Long Sun (1993)
Review of In Green’s Jungles (2000)
Review of Strange Travelers (2000)
Review of Shadows of the New Sun (2014)
More Books
A Closer Look at the Brown Book: Gene Wolfe’s Five-Faceted Myth
The Book of Wonders of Urth and Sky is perhaps the most referred-to book within Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun and The Urth of the New Sun (the only other contender being Canog’s Book of the New Sun) and some readers feel that its stories are digressive padding that serves only to slow down Severian’s narrative. The “brown book,” as Severian quickly comes to call it, is a collection of ancient legends obscured by time, the most interesting of which to Master Ultan is the legend of the Historians, “‘which tells of a time in which every legend could be traced to half-forgotten fact. You see the paradox, I assume. Did the legend itself exist at that time? And if not, how came it into existence?’” (I, 64). Yet when Severian first opens the book, he reads “‘... by which means a picture might be graven with such skill that the whole of it, should it be destroyed, might be recreated from a small part, and that small part be any part’” (I, 65). This describes a hologram, and is thus a verifiable bit of truth in a book of mythological odds and ends. So the brown book is full of myths underlain with history, a tug of war between legend and half-forgotten fact, or between the soft sciences of psychology and history.
One can approach myth from at least two directions, psychological or historical. To the scholar with a psychological orientation, like Joseph Campbell, mythic types are universal to man, prehistoric in origin (i.e., non-historical), and shaped by events that are both pivotal and long forgotten (discovering fire, domesticating animals, et cetera). The danger of such a global outlook is that of becoming so diffuse that, for example, everything is a “solar myth”: Buddha, Odin, Achilles, St. Sebastian, even the mayor of your town, all solar myths.
Campbell avoids this failing, and in fact offers convincing evidence that all the world’s myths share key elements which constitute a Jungian “collective unconscious.” Wolfe has a firm grasp on this Worldwide Mythology, daring to mix such diverse gods as Abaia (Oceania), Erebus (Greek), Oannes (Babylonian), and Jurupari (South American Indians) where scholars might balk and lesser writers fail horribly.
On the other hand, for the scholar with a historic outlook like Robert Graves, myths very often refer to specific events in the history of a tribe, and so tell the group’s history. Graves is so bound to historical events and speculative theories (especially those revolving around the White Goddess) that some consider him merely a sophisticated von Däniken, yet his notion of the five-part life of the sacred hero is compelling: Birth (unusual birth and childhood of the hero), Initiation (usually chthonic in nature), Reign (hero becomes king), Repose (hero does his kingly deeds, killing monsters), and Death (hero dies).
The tales of the brown book are all literary constructions, yet they play off on the tensions between fiction and fact, and they often incorporate the five-part life of the sacred hero. Furthermore, each tale from the brown book is a hologram-like representation of the entire Book and Urth, compact and concentrated, but never discursive.
The Tale of the Student and His Son
We begin this inquiry with a tip-off from the 1986 essay of John Clute (Strokes, p. 171), wherein Wolfe himself alludes to the punning transformation of “Theseus and the Minotaur” into “Thesis and the Monitor” in “The Tale of the Student and His Son” (II, 142-159). While Clute gives the answer in a nutshell, the clues bear looking into, so in dealing with these stories we must watch for the mythic hook (in this case, Theseus), the historical hook (the Monitor), and the pun that transforms.
“The Student and His Son” is a five-part story. After a great deal of procrastination in “The Redoubt of the Magicians,” the Student pens the words to create his Son. In “The Fleshing of the Hero,” the Student initiates his new Son into the mystery of the Corn Maidens and the naviscaput that receives them as tribute. In the third section, “The Encounter with the Princess,” the Son adds armor to a ship that he renames Land of Virgins, then sails off to meet Princess Noctua, who gives him the secret to killing her father and a clue to navigating his watery maze. Empowered by the goddess/princess, the Son slays the monster in “The Battle with the Ogre” by using tar smoke. Finally, in “The Death of the Student,” the Student sees the ship’s sails (blackened by tar smoke) and, fearing that his son had been slain, dies of grief.
As “Theseus and the Minotaur” plays a part in this story, a review of that myth is in order, using Graves’s five-part life of the hero as a scaffold:
1) Birth: King Aegeus of Athens has no son by either of his two wives, and when he consults the Oracle about this he is warned not to unloosen his wineskin until he reaches home or he will die of grief. In spite of this cryptic warning, he wakes up with a hangover in Aethra’s bed in Troezan. Theseus is born out of wedlock and raised by his mother. (Aegeus’s inability to engender offspring becomes the Student’s inability to conceive of his masterwork.)
2) Initiation: Theseus is sent in his teens to meet his father Aegeus in Athens. He learns the mystery of the Minotaur and the tribute of Athenian youth sent to him, a practice Theseus vows to stop by killing the monster, whereupon Aegeus gives him a white sail to raise upon returning victorious. (Theseus first appears to Aegeus a
s a teenager, just as the Son appears to the Student.)
3) Reign: sailing to Crete, he meets the princess Ariadne, who offers to help him kill her half-brother the Minotaur, gives him a magic ball of thread, and instructs him on how to enter and leave the Labyrinth. This is where the sacred marriage so crucial to myth takes place, and Theseus becomes, in effect, a sacred king because of his bond to the holy and royal princess.
4) Repose: Theseus is now able to kill the Minotaur, after which he successfully fights a sea battle before escaping Crete. Unfortunately he forgets to raise the white sail. (For the Student’s Son, the sea battle and slaying of the monster are merged into one.)
5) Death: Aegeus throws himself into the sea at the sight of the black sail, thinking that his only son has been killed. Somebody must die in this section, either the sacred king or, as in this case, his “tanist” substitute. (Jonas is familiar with this version of the story, as he points out to Severian “‘the hero had told the king, his father, that if he failed he would return to Athens with black sails’” [II, 160].)
It is clear that “The Student and His Son” is structurally based on “Theseus and the Minotaur,” but there are many details that seem cut from a different cloth: the guns, engine, paddle-wheels, and armor-plated sides of the Land of Virgins, as well as the naviscaput itself, the visible portion of which is described as “a long hull of narrow beam, with a single castle of iron amidships and a single gun ... thrusting from its one embrasure” (II, 153). This is the stuff of history, in particular the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack, the first battle between ironclads. At the beginning of the War Between the States, Union forces scuttled the powerful steam frigate Merrimack when they abandoned the Norfolk Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Virginia. The Confederates raised the Merrimack, converted it into an ironclad with several cannon on port and starboard sides, and renamed it the Virginia (which might be translated as “Land of Virgins”). On March 9, 1862, the Virginia engaged the Union ironclad Monitor (which had two canon in a rotating turret) in a four-hour close-range duel, which resulted in a draw. In April the Virginia again challenged the Monitor, but the challenge was refused. In May, her captain destroyed the Virginia as the Confederates were forced to abandon Norfolk, and in December the Monitor floundered and sank in heavy seas. Despite the inconclusive nature of their battle, the event marked a revolution in naval warfare.
The pun “Thesis and the Monitor” shows the confluence of “Theseus and the Minotaur,” “The Monitor and the Merrimack,” and “The Student and his Thesis.” In regard to solar imagery and Severian’s narrative, “The Student and His Son” is also a compressed version of The Book and Urth, with Severian (the “original”) playing the part of the Student, Severian (the “avatar”) playing the part of the New Sun, and the old Autarch as the naviscaput/minotaur at the heart of the maze, against a backdrop of war between the north and south.
The Tale of the Boy Called Frog
Next we look at “The Tale of the Boy Called Frog,” a four part story (III, 147-157). In “Early Summer and Her Son” a queen beyond the shores of Urth conceives of a son by way of a rose and names him Spring Wind. He grows up into an accomplished agriculturist and soldier, and in his travels to Urth meets a woman named Bird of the Wood, whose uncle had forced her to become a virgin priestess. As a result of this encounter, Bird of the Wood gives birth to twin sons who are immediately set out on the river in a basket.
The twins are adopted by sisters and separated in “How Frog Found a New Mother”; the one taken by the herdsman’s wife is named Fish, while the other, taken by the woodcutter’s wife, is named Frog. A year passes, and on the night Frog speaks his first words (“‘Red flower,’” his name for fire) a saber-tooth tiger attacks the family campsite and Frog finds refuge in a wolves’ den. The sabertooth (a.k.a. the Butcher), backed by the hyena, demands that Frog be given to him to eat, but the wolves refuse, adopting Frog as their own. The Senate of Wolves officially accepts Frog over the objection of the sabertooth in “The Black Killer’s Gold,” largely due to the vote of the Naked One, teacher of the young wolves, and the ransom in gold paid by the Panther. In “The Plowing of the Fish” Frog takes control of the animal kingdom by his mastery of fire. The twins are reunited, and they divide their legacy such that Fish gets the city and farmlands and Frog gets the wild hills. The human population of Frog’s kingdom grows, and they steal women from other people, until Frog decides that they need a city of their own, so he takes a white cow and bull from Fish’s herds, harnesses them to a plow, and plows a furrow to mark the future wall. When Fish sees the furrow, he laughs and jumps over it, and Frog’s people kill him for doing so. Frog has Fish buried in the furrow to assure the fertility of the land, a technique he learned from Squanto, the Naked One.
“The Boy Called Frog” seems to be based upon the story of Romulus and Remus, legendary founders of Rome. Again, applying the five-part pattern:
1) Birth: Juno (who gives her name to June, a month in ‘early summer’) is impregnated by a flower and gives birth to Mars (who gives his name to March, a month know for its ‘spring wind’). Mars grows up as an agricultural god, but then takes up arms and becomes a soldier god (this is one of the distinctions between him and Ares the Greek god of war). Mars dallies with Rhea Silvanus (‘bird of the wood’) and she has the twins Romulus and Remus, whom she must set adrift on the river.
2) Initiation: Romulus and Remus are suckled by a she-wolf, and then adopted by the herdsman Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia. Frog and Fish are raised separately.
3) Reign: the twins inherit the kingdom. This occurs in the fourth section of “The Boy Called Frog.”
4) Repose: Remus jumps over the half-built wall of Romulus’s new city and is killed for doing so. Romulus creates a senate of one hundred senators, whose descendents would be called patricians, and leads the capture of the Sabine women. All of these elements recur in “Frog,” though the order is a bit scrambled: Frog’s people steal women before they kill Fish, not after. The senate of Wolves appears in the second section.
5) Death: Romulus dies and is deified as Quirinus. The four-part structure of “Frog” is a truncation of an implied five-part structure, paralleling “Student” as well as Book and Urth. This technique of abruptly cutting off the story is nowhere better illustrated than in the performance of Dr. Talos’ five-act play, “Eschatology and Genesis.” We see four acts of eschatology, but the last act (that of genesis) is never played out for the audience, perhaps because Baldanders is an enemy of the New Sun and cannot bear to see him triumph, even in play.
The direct correspondence between “Frog” and “Romulus and Remus” is not so rigorous as that between “The Student and His Son” and “Theseus and the Minotaur.” The narrative style takes on some of the characteristics of American Indian legends, where animals are essentially humanoid: the Wolf fingers his sword; the Butcher, by clues a saber-tooth tiger, is said to fight with two daggers; the She-wolf wears a skirt. The separation of the twins, the host of animal characters, and the Senate of Wolves all form another thread, one that leads to the Jungle Books of Rudyard Kipling.
“Mowgli’s Brothers” fits “Frog” like a glove, filling in the sections that do not fit the legend of Romulus and Remus. It opens with the wolf couple in their burrow with four cubs. They hear the sound of the Tiger (compare “it was the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger” with the similar line in “Frog”) and then the boy crawls into their den. The Tiger and the Jackal demand that the boy be given to them, but the wolves refuse. The she-wolf names the boy “Mowgli,” meaning “Frog.” At the Wolf Pack at the Council Rock, the wolf-couple ask that Mowgli be recognized as a wolf. The Tiger restates his claim, but is countered by the vote of Baloo the bear and the ransom of a killed bull paid by Bagheera the panther. Mowgli refers to fire as “Red Flower,” which the animals fear.
So the mythic hook of “Frog” is do
uble: the legend of Romulus and Remus fused with the feral child tales of Kipling. (Do you balk at my reference to “Mowgli’s Brothers” as mythic? I should trace the “wild man” motif back to the Epic of Gilgamesh.) When Frog and Fish divide up their heritage there is a trace of the Sumerian Gilgamesh (the king) and Enkidu (the wild-man), and the biblical Cain (the farmer) and Abel (the nomad), but both models are inverted when Frog (Enkidu/Abel) kills Fish (Gilgamesh/Cain). The unresolved details cluster around the character of the Naked One, whose role in “Mowgli’s Brothers” is taken by Baloo the bear. But a bear would hardly be called “the naked one,” and the character in question is also known as the Savage and “Squanto.” Which leads to the historical stratum.
Squanto was a North American Indian of the Pawtuxet tribe, kidnapped in 1615 by an English captain. He lived in England for four years, then returned to North America, where he acted as an interpreter in concluding a treaty between the Pilgrim settlers and Massasoit in 1621 (the source, perhaps, of the Naked One’s vote to recognize Frog as a wolf). Squanto became friendly with the Plymouth colonists, and is known for helping them with their fishing and planting (parallel to the same in “Frog”). He contracted smallpox and died in 1622 while acting as a guide and interpreter.
The historical thread leads us to the first Thanksgiving Day in Plymouth Colony, 1621. Other details seem to confirm the American setting: the Senate of Wolves (not Kipling’s “Wolf Pack”) is led by a President; Bagheera, the panther of the Jungle Books, has escaped from captivity and bears the mark of a collar, recalling the slavery practiced in the United States — honed by the existence of the “Black Panthers” of the 1960s and the fact that in “Frog” the Black Killer pays the ransom for Frog’s freedom in gold rather than a slain bull. Other correspondences are simply curious: Early Summer conceived of Spring Wind by a rose, and the Mayflower which brought the Pilgrims was named after the hawthorn, a type of rose; the fratricide of Fish might be another reference to the War Between the States; and the “woodcutter” who adopted Frog may be a mask for John Carver (died 1621), the first governor of Plymouth Colony.