The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe – Book 1: Shadow of the Torturer 1980, Book 2: Claw of the Conciliator 1981, Book 3: Sword of the Lictor 1982, Book 4: Citadel of the Autarch 1983
So a couple of times now, I have alluded to a mighty SF/F text that I have slowly been making my way through, and now, here we are at last: Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, one of the most extraordinary, mind-spinning epics I have ever encountered. Less well known than other SF/F writers, he has the distinction of being what one might call an author's author: Michael Swanwick has stated that Gene Wolfe is 'the finest writer in the English language alive today'1 and Ursula le Guin, Neil Gaiman, Patton Oswalt and George R.R. Martin have all showered praise upon Wolfe. The New Yorker itself described Wolfe as a 'genuis' and perfectly summed up New Sun's prestigious status: 'For science-fiction readers, “The Book of the New Sun” is roughly what “Ulysses” is to fans of the modern novel: far more people own a copy than have read it all the way through'2. Having actually finished both Ulysses (no, I'm bloody well not reviewing it!) and now The Book of the New Sun, the comparison is apt. Both are extraordinary pieces of writing that pushed the envelope in terms of their respective genre and left an indelible mark on the canon that followed them.
Right off the bat, I must state that in my limited experience of Gene Wolfe I have learnt one thing: Gene Wolfe does not write to be read. He writes to be re-read. Indeed, the Ulysess comparison is also highly accurate in that they are both difficult, often baffling, texts, far easier to start than to finish and if you do finish, you are left with a feeling that you've read something very good and very clever, but that will require rigorous re-reading before you work out just how good or clever it was. Gerald Jones, writing for the New York Times, declared that The Book of the New Sun 'does not make for easy reading'3, while Neil Gaiman, another Wolfe super-fan, has even produced a wryly written list entitled How to Read Gene Wolfe, of which number three is 'Reread. It's better the second time. It will be even better the third time'4. Indeed, a mere two pages from the end of The Book of the New Sun, Wolfe himself writes through Severian: 'Have I told you all I promised?...Before you assume that I have cheated you, read again'5. This, I have not done, mostly because, taken as one huge story, The Book of the New Sun is almost exactly 1200 pages in my editions, so my apologies if I obviously did not pick up on some key information, or have misunderstood something that should have been clear. When I re-read, and I certainly will, I may post subsequent thoughts (or I might spare you those!).
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The Book of the New Sun concerns Severian, a young apprentice in the Guild of Torturers, who lives in the Citadel, a vast construct of towers rising above the city of Nessus, the largest settlement in the Commonwealth, a land upon Urth, our own planet many millions of years in the future, long after humanity has risen to colonise the stars and fallen again, so much so that the great deeds of the species are little more than legends. In Shadow of the Torturer, Severian is banished from the Guild after he falls in love with one of their 'clients', a young woman called Thecla. Thecla is imprisoned in the Torturer's oubliette by order of the Autarch, ruler of the Commonwealth who is regarded by the people as somewhere between king and god because she is believed to have information about Vodalus, the leader of a force rebelling against the Autarch. Severian has, unbeknownst to any but them, already saved Vodalus' life, and provides Thecla with a knife to commit suicide with, rather than be submitted to the further ministrations of his guild. For this he is banished, and sent out to become the jailor/executioner of a distant city called Thrax, wearing only his black robes and armed with the sword Terminus Est, a parting gift from the master of the guild. In the course of his travels he falls in with a troupe of actors, meets and is betrayed by, a woman called Agia, is forced to fight a duel, encounters Dorcas, a woman who it appears has risen from the dead, and most importantly, gains, by seeming accident, a mystical jewel called the Claw of the Conciliator. In the second book of the series, The Claw of the Conciliator, he finally reunites with Vodalus, who, by use of drugs and unwitting cannibalism on Severian's part, inserts what remains of Thecla's consciousness into Severian's mind. Severian rejoins the acting troupe to perform at the House Absolute, the underground residence of the Autarch himself. In The Sword of the Lictor, Severian finally arrives at Thrax, but it is not long before his mercy once again makes him an outcast; this time fleeing into the mountains, he encounters a young boy who bears the same name as himself, and a two-headed man who claims to have once been king of the surrounding area, before leading a force of island dwellers against a giant who lives in a castle. And finally, in The Citadel of the Autarch, Severian experiences the war being fought on the Commonwealth's borders, re-encounters Vodalus and Agia, before coming face-to-face with the Autarch, ultimately succeeding him. Each book is followed by a short appendix by Wolfe, explaining his attempts at 'translating' Severian's manuscript, adding another layer of complexity to the shifting, dreamlike text that is The Book of the New Sun.
If the story of a figure walking over the snowy peaks and through dense forests, underneath an old, red sun, clad in a black cloak that leaves his chest bare, armed with a mighty sword and a mystical jewel, fighting monsters and two-headed men, bedding beautiful women and meeting aliens, and finally becoming the ruler of the land, sounds an awful lot like an appalling pulp novel of the Robert E Howard or Edgar Rice variety, then this is entirely deliberate. Just as Tolkien reached back into earlier narrative traditions, that of Norse mythology and Old English poetry, and reshaped them to his own needs, Wolfe does the same, borrowing tropes and aesthetic details from the pulp fantasy magazines of the twenties and applying them to an infinitely complex narrative. This is done mainly through weaving a densely layered labyrinthine narrative, but also by his vivid world building and extraordinary diction. Wolfe places us within the world, and leaves us to intuit for ourselves the fact that their sun is red, the ins and outs of the rigid hierarchical social systems and that the decaying civilisation is millennia after, or possibly before our own, only providing details once you are already brain deep in the mire. This intuition is made considerably harder by Wolfe's eclectic language, digging deep into the complete English lexicon, using words such as 'fuligin' for the colour of Severian's black robes, 'destrier' for the huge and impossibly swift horses of the world, and 'exultant', 'armiger' and 'cacogen' to name various social strata.
Of huge importance in discussing the novels is that they are told entirely in the first person, narrated by Severian – and it is important to note that this is not Severian the torturer's apprentice narrating events as they happen to him, but Severian the Autarch looking back, and telling the story of his ascension. We are assured time and time again that Severian never forgets anything, that indeed 'From my earliest memory I remember all'6,yet we also quickly learn 'I realised for the first time that I am in some degree insane'7. which immediately puts the reader on their guard. We are kept acutely aware that we are being told by a ruler the story of his rise to power, only ever being told what he wants us to know – the details of his guild are always kept suspiciously secret for instance – and that even if he is being as honest with us as he is capable of being, his may still be a very warped version of events. The gap between Severian's account and any supposed 'truth' widens when we discover the extent to which Thecla is still a conscious part of his mind, to the point of occasionally breaking into the narration, changing who the 'I' being referred to is, without Wolfe giving us any immediate notification. This effect is exacerbated towards the end of the final book, when Severian becomes the Autarch by absorbing the consciousnesses of all the previous Autarchs, as he did Thecla’s. As Peter Wright states, 'The gulf between plot and story, between the apparent and the real, alerts the reader to the fact that Wolfe is playing a complex and contrived textual game that facilitates a number of methods of interpretation.'8
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If this is sounding unbearably heavy, there is also a fair smattering of humour, sometimes due to witty dialogue – Jonas in particular tends to use phrases like 'I'm going to tell you what all housewives sooner or later tell their husbands: 'Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers''9. More often, however, there is a wryness to the narrative itself that counterbalances Severian's earnestness; the two-headed titan Typhon, who, after being accidentally resurrected by Severian, captures the torturer and boasts how he 'was autarch on many worlds. I shall be autarch again, and this time on many more'10 is easily dispatched by Severian within pages. Deeper still, there is the growing feeling that our unreliable narrator himself is even more clueless than the reader, which makes Severian's philosophic diversions awkwardly entertaining for the reader, as we begin to realise he knows less about what is happening than we do.
As I have stated, these are only some of my first impressions. There is so much, so densely packed into 1200 pages, that it will probably only be on a third or fourth reading that I can get anywhere close to understanding The Book of the New Sun. There are things that, having read more about the novels since finishing, I will appreciate the second time, such as the photo of the moon-landing that Severian sees at one point. There are also references that I will almost certainly never fully understand, particularly Wolfe's use of his Catholic faith, although even I recognise the messianic flavour of the Conciliator's legend and the parallels between the torturers' festival of Holy Katherine's feast and real-life celebrations surrounding saints. Perhaps Alison Flood, writing in the Guardian, describes The Book of the New Sun the best: that the 'whole thing is dreamlike in quality, unfathomably large in scope, deliciously, slyly puzzling'. For myself, reading Gene Wolfe's masterpiece has made me understand far more Neil Gaiman's fifth piece of advice for reading Wolfe: 'It's a knife-throwing act, and like all good knife-throwing acts, you may lose fingers, toes, earlobes or eyes in the process. Gene doesn't mind. Gene is throwing the knives.'11
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