A Study of Gene Wolfe’s New Sun Novels
By John DeNardo |
Thursday, February 12th, 2004 at
12:35 pm
A new non-fiction book called Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice and the Reader examines Gene Wolfe’s New Sun series of books. You’ll have to get it at Amazon UK, though. It doesn’t get released in the States until November 2004.
For a preview, see the author’s critcal review of The Book of the New Sun. And, for the hardcore Wolfe fan, here is a list of Wolfe’s Uncollected Short Fiction.
Filed under: Books
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The book blurb says the author eschews (love that word) the conventional spiritual (ie- religous) view of the books in favor of a secular approach.
That’s all well and good, but in the interviews I’ve seen with Wolfe, especially concerning The Book of the New Sun (and why don’t the URL, BOLD and ITALICIZE links show up under Mozilla/FireFoxBird?), Wolfe pretty much states those books are to be interpreted as having a religious meaning. To me its rather obvious that there is. I’m all for critical reviews, but what can you say when someone writes something that disagrees with what the authors himself has said?
Intent does not dictate interpretation.
Wish I could find a copy of “Lexicon Urthus”!
Bookfinder.com returned one hit at Alibris.com, for a measly $93. However, following the link showed the book had been sold.
The critical review you link to John is a rather dense piece in itself. I’ll have to read it more in depth when I have some time and quiet. Right now, the boys are playing Sonic on the GameCube and the house is rather noisy.