Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986

by Marc Aramini

Between Light and Shadow is the first volume in a two-volume analysis of Gene Wolf's literary works and takes a comprehensive look at Wolfe's astonishing body of work from 1951 to 1986. Wolfe is famous for creating labyrinthine and complicated stories full of allusions that are not always easily understood; Between Light and Shadow explores every short story and novel that Wolfe composed in the first half of his career.

Between Light and Shadow is not only a holistic illustration of Wolfe's work, but attempts to solve many of the narrative mysteries that have eluded readers for decades. From focused essays interpreting masterpieces such as "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" and "Peace" to complete story analyses which not only delineate allusions and themes but also take a rigorous, logical approach to reading Wolfe, the book is above all an enormous commitment to understanding the work of one of modern literature's most unique and challenging figures.

Between Light and Shadow presents the thesis that objective closure is possible in even Wolfe's most complicated cosmological and metaphysical narratives, and reveals that the mysteries behind the ideas and images inspiring Wolfe are ultimately comprehensible.

Genres: Nonfiction

826 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 17, 2015

About the author

Born of military parents, Marc Aramini has lived throughout the United States and even for a time in Western Europe, but has spent most of his adult life in the American Southwest. With an undergraduate degree from Notre Dame in Biochemistry and a Masters Degree in Literature, he has worked in gyms, banking, and teaching at both the high school and college levels. He also had a handstand balancing act in a circus show, though his primary job there was in finding properties, attaining permits, and negotiating short term agreements. One day he hopes to return to college teaching.

Reviews

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Review and Author Interview) Between Light and Shadow: A prodigious study of SFF’s most elusive writer
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Last year I tried twice (unsuccessfully) to finish The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Retrospective of His Finest Fiction, giving up in defeat. Gene Wolfe is frequently described as one of the most brilliant SFF writers in the genre by critics, authors, and readers alike. Some fans prize his books above all others, and there is a WolfeWiki page dedicated to discussing his work. But there are also many SFF readers that are baffled and frustrated by his stories because they are packed with metaphors, literary references, and hidden themes, and require extremely close reading to understand and appreciate. So I didn’t expect to make any more attempts in the near future.

However, when the 2016 Hugo Awards were announced, I noticed that Marc Aramini’s Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986 was the runner-up in the Best Related Work category. It’s an 826-page analysis covering Wolfe’s output through 1986, including all of his short stories (no matter how obscure, including his earliest works) along with his novels The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace, Free Live Free, and The Book of the New Sun. It is truly a work of dedication, a painstaking analysis of symbols, names, literary references, and themes of each story, and yet clearly the work of a fan rather than a dry scholarly study.

I recalled that someone by that name had posted a number of very helpful and insightful comments on my initial, frustrated review of The Best of Gene Wolfe. Indeed they are the same person. And so here I am, making a third attempt to scale Mount Wolfe, armed with some serious firepower. My technique was to read the Wolfe story first, read Aramini’s analysis of it, and then, if it felt worth it, read the story again. This often revealed a great deal of insight as I picked up on many of the clues and allusions buried in the text, previously unrecognized.

Each review in Between Light and Shadow contains a summary of the story, commentary on its themes, literary allusions, significance of character names, unanswered questions (there always are, even after exhaustive analysis), and connections with other works. Aramini even includes bibliographies that reference sources as wide-ranging as the Urth Mailing List, the Bible, The Wizard of Oz, The Arabian Nights, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Goethe’s Faust, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gerard Manly Hopkins, Edgar Allan Poe, James Branch Cabell, Gore Vidal, along with scholarly works about Wolfe like Michael Andre-Druissi’s Lexicon Urthus, Robert Borki’s Solar Labyrinth: Exploring Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun,” and Peter Wright’s Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice and the Reader.

What this suggests is the incredible depth of literary knowledge Wolfe brings to his stories. It’s hard to imagine even the most well-read literature professor or critic catching most of Wolfe’s oblique references, so it’s incredible the amount of research and analysis that Aramini has done, of course with the assistance of the other contributors to the Urth Mailing List. I’m sure many of these insights came after years of discussions on the meaning of his stories. I wonder just how many of these references most of Wolfe’s fans pick up on.

What’s equally impressive about Between Light and Shadow is that he brings this level of attention to every single story Wolfe has written between 1951 – 1986. The early stories, in particular, I didn’t even know existed. Aramini has indicated he plans a second volume to discuss more recent works like The Book of the Long Sun, The Book of the Short Sun, Latro in the Mist, The Wizard Knight, etc. It’s the effort of a lifetime, and deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in Wolfe’s body of work.

Below I’ve listed some of Wolfe’s most notable stories that would be a good entry point if you want to give Wolfe a try. I gained great insight into them from the analysis of Aramini, a truly dedicated Wolfe scholar and fan. He also has a series of YouTube videos explaining Wolfe’s major works — here is the first one with a general overview: Marc Aramini on Gene Wolfe and Literature, Part 1. If you think you might be interested in Between Light and Shadow, perhaps you can listen to some of Aramini’s YouTube videos first to get an idea of his erudition and enthusiasm. For detailed reviews of these stories, please see my review of The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Retrospective of His Finest Fiction.

“The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” (1970)
“The Fifth Head of Cerberus” (1972)
“The Death of Dr. Island” (1973)
“The Hero as Werwolf” (1975)
“Seven American Nights” (1978)
“A Cabin on the Coast” (1981)
“The Tree is My Hat” (1999)

INTERVIEW WITH MARC ARAMINI

Stuart Starosta: First off, congratulations on publishing this massive study of the first half of Gene Wolfe ’s body of work. It’s a tremendous achievement, clearly a labor of love. I assume it took shape from numerous discussions on the Urth Mailing List over many years. At what point did you actually start writing down your thoughts about his work, and when did you decide that you wanted to make this into a book-length analysis?

Author Marc Aramini: I encountered Wolfe quite by accident in the fourth grade when my father’s friend, knowing I loved science fiction, gave my a box of books from the SFBC which included The Claw of the Conciliator. I had to track down a used copy of The Shadow of the Torturer, but the disparate attitudes of my immediate family, with my mystical and superstitious grandmother, my staunchly religious Catholic mother, and my pragmatic father, drew me in to the numinous and tense atmosphere of the book.

When I was at college in the late 90s, I came across the postings of the Urth Mailing List and began to intermittently post, on and off, for years. I felt some of my insights were unique, but I had no idea that anyone would think much of my writings about Wolfe until I attended the Fuller Award Ceremony in Chicago in March of 2012, in which Wolfe was honored in an amazing ceremony. When I introduced myself to someone, a gentleman nearby recognized my name and came over to speak with me, and the sense that, at least in this small circle, I was well known, produced a vivid realization.

As I talked with other prominent fans like Patrick O’Leary, Michael Swanwick, James Wynn, and Michael Andre-Driussi, among others too numerous to name here, we lamented the fact that all of the discussion seemed focused on the New Sun books, when the early work was also very rich and, at least in our opinions, important. I vowed to go home and start a chronological study of the neglected short stories, imagining myself as a facilitator on the Urth List. After about a dozen of those, I realized true discussion required thorough research and the willingness to make strong thematic claims, and by the time I got to about the sixtieth story or so I had started to normalize the format and realized I had enough for an actual book … which would require some serious editing for those first sixty entries in terms of both format and quality – something which became a little bit of an unending nightmare.

Gene Wolfe’s works are notorious for being difficult for beginning readers to understand. The narrators are generally unreliable, and the surface story usually hides a wealth of themes, allusions, and hidden agendas. What type of reader is likely to become a Gene Wolfe fan? How much knowledge of classical and modern literature is needed to really appreciate his work? Do you immediately pick up his literary references or do you have to research them while or after reading? Does Wolfe really expect his readers to be as well-read as he is?

Wolfe’s difficulty is real, and his attitude is one that requires a certain level of real engagement from the readers. I would by lying if I said he doesn’t enjoy tricking the reader: sometimes he isn’t telling you the story that you think he is, and this genre confusion is even present in The Book of the New Sun, which reads so much like a fantasy while playing with the tropes of SF, autobiography, and religious narrative (perhaps even hagiography). Sometimes you can just enjoy the book, but the vast historical backdrop behind a story such as “The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun,” with its wealth of mythical and literary allusions, really brings home the beautiful theme of the story: all things pass away from their physical forms in time and risk being lost, but many things cast into the vast immensity of the sea, somehow, are still rediscovered, their oblivion but temporary.

I must do research, though I fancy myself well-versed in both the history of SF and Fantasy and in English and American Literature. The most unfair thing Wolfe ever did was refer to a volume of Guy de Maupassant’s short stories in “In Looking Glass Castle” … I had to read a ridiculous amount of them before I realized he was riffing on “The Horla,” about a shadowy thing driving the main character to suicide. In that same short story, he refers to obscure works on mathematics by Lewis Carroll, the works of Kafka, The Cradle of the Deep by Joan Lowell, and is also in a dialogue with James Tiptree Jr and perhaps Joanna Russ as well – and one could easily imagine him throwing in a particularly Catholic symbol or two if he were so inclined.

That requires an erudition and breadth of interest that I think is beyond the vast majority of readers, and I, too, have to do a fair amount of research at times, some of it coming to nothing (though I am a Catholic ex-scientist who loves classic literature, puzzles, and pulpy SF and Fantasy as well – I think some of my appreciation for Wolfe is in that close overlap of interests – though Wolfe is trickier and smarter than me, with a much firmer grasp on the currents of history). Wolfe’s stories are fun even if you don’t understand them, at their best. I don’t think Wolfe expects his readers to get every puzzle, but he does throw down a gauntlet. The irony is of course that many otherwise competent critics and readers seem to think that there is nothing behind the artifice: you are dealing with a Catholic engineer here, who uses symbols like a concrete scaffolding.

Gene Wolfe has always been open about being a Catholic SF writer, and I believe his religious beliefs strongly influence his stories, particularly The Book of the New Sun. However, I think his ideas of sin and redemption, and the Christ-like role of Severian as a potential but flawed savior for the dying Urth, are much more complex than the overt Christian overtones of C.S. Lewis ’s Aslan in THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA. Do you think Wolfe explores these themes for his own personal reasons, or because he wants readers to think about them? Is there an agenda?

The difficulty here is that Wolfe, unlike most extremely religious writers, is actually a brilliant and practical man. He can look at the world and see both the capacity for good and for evil in human beings, but he also focuses on something that Naturalistic fiction has suppressed: no matter the conditions, no matter the pressure, a human being has the ability to make choices which have real consequences, but also has the capacity to deceive themselves almost infinitely to justify those decisions, good and bad.

I have always argued that if Wolfe deconstructs anything, it is actually subjectivity. The author or demiurge leaves his readers free to make subjective interpretations, all the while knowing that the backdrop of reality has been carefully constructed, and that Truth lurks somewhere, silent, and, even if unknown, not entirely unknowable. I think he loves symbols, but can’t help creating such complicated systems and narrative tangles, sometimes making allegories so complex that they lose the simplicity we associate with the form.

At other times, especially in his short stories, he is clearly being allegorical, as the giant in “The Legend of Xi Cygnus” represents the natural world and its exploitation at the hands of evil dwarfs who even mine its blood for selfish resources to make their lives more indolent until some force greater than nature, which we should respect lest we perish, takes notice. The mythical creatures in that who serve the giant are of course the myths that hold a great respect for the natural world, and so forth. Somehow, even that isn’t obvious on a first read. His agenda is complicated, but first and foremost he wants to tell a rich, deep story that can be appreciated more than once.

The entire SOLAR CYCLE constitutes 12 volumes, including The Book of the New Sun, The Urth of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, and The Book of the Short Sun. I have read The Book of the New Sun twice and recognize it as a masterpiece that rewards repeated readings and listenings. However, when I tried the Long Sun series I found it a struggle to get past the first two books. The pace seemed painfully slow and the events unengaging, particularly the extended break-in of Blood’s house that stretched for 100 pages. Would you say that these latter two series are not as accomplished or reader-friendly as The Book of the New Sun series? For example, the The Book of the New Sun books have a total number of ratings in the thousands (from 14,872 ratings for Shadow of the Torturer to 3,790 ratings for Urth of the New Sun), but only 625-991 ratings for The Book of the Long Sun, and 905-1,113 ratings for The Book of the Short Sun. Can you explain the gap?

I actually think Wolfe was trying to be MORE reader friendly in The Book of the Long Sun by dropping the archaic vocabulary and twisted sentences, as we can see a definite change in his style and a shift towards more minimalist techniques. However, his very need to do something different (save, of course, being cryptic as hell) every single time can alienate readers. I read The Book of the Long Sun when it first came out, and remember thinking, gosh, is this the same author who wrote The Book of the New Sun? However, the second time I read the entire cycle, after the release of Exodus from the Long Sun, I realized that it was just as deep, symbolic, and rewarding as The Book of the New Sun, without the baroque excess, and that this fit Wolfe’s new goal. They are all great novels, but Wolfe’s increasing reliance on subtext rather than text, moving the miraculous behind the scenes, definitely, in my opinion, keeps readers from truly appreciating these later works. (Which is a shame, because The Book of the Short Sun is the best thing he has written, in my opinion, working on every level.)

The truth is that Peace, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, and The Book of the New Sun are OBVIOUSLY great even if the reader puts in no work beyond the surface, and the wealth of analysis and help along the way make it quite clear that they are dealing with an author of genius, while Wolfe’s later works trade in the pyrotechnics and ornate embellishment for an ever increasing subtlety and economy of expression that is almost antithetical to our initial impressions of Wolfe as an artist from The Book of the New Sun: he is far more literary than we at first supposed.

I believe you are planning to publish a second volume to cover the second half of Wolfe’s work, but I noticed in a recent comment you made in the Gene Wolfe Fans group on Goodreads that you might have to split volume 2 into two separate books due to length. What do you think is a rough timetable for the next two volumes, and what works are they likely to cover?

This has been a difficult year for everyone. I had planned to be done by July with everything, but while I was busy with those plans, life happened, as they say. I have finished the analyses of all of the short stories, and am working on finishing up the Latro in the Mist and The Book of the Short Sun essays, which will be the capstone of the second volume, and thus need to be as perfect as I can make them. Luckily, I know exactly what I want to say and each of them is about halfway done. The second volume, Beyond Time and Memory, will contain write ups on Latro in the Mist, The Urth of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, The Book of the Short Sun, There Are Doors, Castleview, Pandora by Holly Hollander, and all of Wolfe’s short fiction from 1987 to 2001.

The project was simply getting too long to fit in one volume. The third, as yet unnamed, will have everything else up to now. For that, I must finish a write up each for The Wizard Knight, Soldier of Sidon, An Evil Guest, The Sorcerers House, The Land Across, and A Borrowed Man. So eight essays left total. In a project which spans almost 250 essays, that doesn’t seem like much, but the novels have to be as strong as I can make them, so I really can’t give you a time table yet considering that my editor must also look over the second volume.

Luckily, I have done a much better job of editing as I composed this time and have also written in a format which can be immediately translated into an ebook with individual entries for a table of contents, something which had to be done after the fact last time. On my end, little editing is left. I hope to have them as soon as possible, but that will also rely on my editor Matthew King’s workload. I owe him a special debt – the first volume would have been a truly complex, dense, and impenetrable mess without his painstaking attention and patient effort. I hope this time around he will have to do much less.

[Aaron Singleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a member of the Gene Wolfe mailing list urth.net since sometime in 2005. The archives are filled with discussion about the works of Mr. Wolfe: theories, symbols and symbolism, interpretations, hidden meanings, cameos, etc. I quickly focused on a few posters whose commentary I enjoyed greatly. One of these posters was Marc Aramini, this book's author.

Marc's posts, as well as his work in this book, show a deep understanding of Wolfe's work. It is obvious that he has spent a considerable amount of time contemplating the stories and their myriad details to arrive at his conclusions. I love the fact that Marc pays just as much attention to a relatively obscure story such as "Mountains Like Mice" as he does to major works such as the Solar Cycle. Not to mention that reading this book is almost as enjoyable as reading Wolfe himself. It is truly engrossing. Great job, Marc.

For anyone who loves Wolfe's work and has read it multiple times in an attempt to tease out more meaning or to solve that niggling mystery or just whatever, this book is highly recommended. It is the perfect companion to Andre-Driussi's Lexicon Urthus 2nd Ed., which focused solely on the Book of the New Sun series. Marc's concerns that as well as everything else up to 1986. Happy reading!

[Shadowdenizen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exhasutive (and VERY dense) and in-depth review and analysis of the fiction of Gene Wolfe, one of the most profilic authors in the SFF genre. (This is the first of two volumes, and it covers the first half of Gene Wolfe's career.)

Even though I wans't familiar with Mr Aramini before this, let me begin by doffing my metaphorical cap to him! This book is clearly a tremendous labor of love and effort, and I was utterly blown away by not only the thought that went into his discussion and dissection of the works in question, but by the cogent way that he explained his reasoning when assessing/critiquing/explaining the works.

(As an aside, though the arguments he makes are quite compelling, I'm not entirely certain that I buy into the theory that objective closure can be obtained [or that it's even necesary] for many of Wolfe's fiction pieces.)

I'd highly recommend this book for those with more than a pasing interest in Gene Wolfe's fiction, and are willing to take the time to parse this weighty tome, as the payoff is well worth the time and money spent.

5 "Shadow of the Torturer" stars for this.

[Tijana]

Araminijev hvale vredan poduhvat sastoji se u tome da ponudi tumačenja svega što je Vulf pisao. Svega. A ovaj tom obuhvata prvih tridesetak godina.
E sad, ne mogu sve analize da budu jednako uspele. Ja sam se zadržala na onima o romanima i pripovetkama koje sam čitala i mogu da kažem sledeće:
- Araminijeva analiza Pete glave Kerbera je, čisto kao tumačenje toga šta se zapravo dešava u te tri povezane novele, nešto najbolje što možete da očekujete. Nema dalje.
- Ono što dobijamo o Spokoju jeste zanimljivo, ali ni izdaleka toliko ultimativno; a ključna pitanja koja mene muče posle ova tri-četiri dosadašnja čitanja i dalje su bez odgovora.
- O Novom suncu dobijamo nekoliko lepih eseja na teme koje su samog Araminija najviše zanimale, ali tu se možda najviše razilazimo po, hm, tome šta nas interesuje. I šta i kako vrednujemo: Araminijev stav prema pojedinačnim likovima i njihovim postupcima dosta se razlikuje od mog, što nije toliko kritika s moje strane koliko konstatacija stanja stvari.
- pojedinačni eseji o pripovetkama variraju kao i same priče, od osrednjih do intrigantnih, ali da se ne lažemo, tu smo zbog romana.
Sve u svemu, ovo je super štivo za nekog ozbiljnog fana Džina Vulfa, i čini mi se da zaslužuje više pažnje - i mnogo bolji urednički predgovor, ali hej, šta da se radi, više sreće idući put.

[Yórgos St. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must for everyone who consider himself a fan of Gene Wolfe. Aramini has a unique way to interpret and reveal the solutions to all the Wolfean puzzles. This book will be the Ariadne's thread that will guide you out of Wolfe's labyrinth like text.

[Robert Defrank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like a thread guiding you through a labyrinth...

I’d gotten this book awhile ago and was just reminded that it’s overdue for a review.

Having come to Gene Wolfe and his works only recently and having other responsibilities, I was in need of some guidance in navigating the puzzles of the prose. While Driussi’s lexicons have been invaluable, Aramini’s name also turned up with continued perusal of Wolfe fan sites and theories, and his approach to Gene Wolfe’s work as a whole and it’s place in literature makes him vital reading for any who would take on the collected canon. I’ve referred to his book on numerous occasions before or after reading a short story or novella, and more often than not was left dumbfounded by all I missed in terms of literary and historical references and themes Wolfe had infused in his work. His meticulous approach to each story and unfailing reliance on the primary text in no way dims the excitement he clearly feels for his subject matter. Aramini is first and foremost a fan, and this is a book for fans.

And while I may disagree with one or two of his interpretations, my interest in this vast and varied selection of Wolfe’s early output is only deepened by this companion. I eagerly await the release of the next installment.

[Fantasy Literature]

5 stars from Stuart:

Last year I tried twice (unsuccessfully) to finish The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Retrospective of His Finest Fiction, giving up in defeat. Gene Wolfe is frequently described as one of the most brilliant SFF writers in the genre by critics, authors, and readers alike. Some fans prize his books above all others, and there is a WolfeWiki page dedicated to discussing his work. But there are also many SFF readers that are baffled and frustrated by his stories because they are packed with metaphors, literary references, and hidden themes, and require extremely close reading to understand and appreciate. So I didn’t expect to make any more attempts in the near future.

However, when the 2016 Hugo Awards... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

[Martin Crookall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing

A thoughtful, but sometimes too didactic review of Gene Wolfe' short fiction. Stamina knows his stuff and isn't any about 'correcting' the opinions of others. Never less than interesting.

[Alex Feinberg]

Excellent exploration of themes of Gene Wolfe's work (both Book of the New Sun and the short fiction), yet one that still gives room for the reader to solve the puzzles (e.g., no, it won't tell you who Severian's mother was).

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic source for research and ideas on Wolfe's short fiction. It's useful to have a source like this at hand, so that you can puzzle out Wolfe's sometimes enigmatic stories, and solidify your own ideas about what happened, and what it means.