Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice and the Reader

by Peter Wright

This new study of the fiction of Gene Wolfe, one of the most influential contemporary American science fiction writers, offers a major reinterpretation of Gene Wolfe’s four-volume The Book of the New Sun and its sequel The Urth of the New Sun. After exposing the concealed story at the heart of Wolfe’s magnum opus, Wright adopts a variety of approaches to establish that Wolfe is the designer of an intricate textual labyrinth intended to extend his thematic preoccupations with subjectivity, the unreliability of memory, the manipulation of individuals by social and political systems, and the psychological potency of myth, faith and symbolism into the reading experience.

Genres: Science Fiction, Literary Criticism

254 pages, ebook

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gene Wolfe's four-volume (plus coda) work The Book of the New Sun is widely regarded as one of the greatest works in science fiction, with a setting of great mystery and plot of enormous complexity. Since its publication in the 1980s, it has won many admirers, but few detailed examinations, and most of what's in print, such as the guides of Andre-Driussi and Borski, are amateurish and self-published. In ATTENDING DAEDALUS: Gene Wolfe, Artifice, and the Reader (Liverpool University Press, 2003), Peter Wright presents the first critique of academic quality on Wolfe's masterpiece.

ATTENDING DAEDALUS begins with a general introduction to Wolfe's body of writing, and two of his early stories are explored in depth, "Trip, Trap" and "In the House of Gingerbread". What I found especially enlightening here is that Wright presents the long series of critical reactions to Wolfe's work, even admitting that CASTLEVIEW is a problematic novel, and showing that OPERATION ARES was worth surpressing.

Wright's examination of the Urth cycle is based on two aspects of the work that have gained wide consensus through discussion on the Urth mailing list and other fora. The first is the deceitful religiosity of the book. While the Hierogrammates seem divine, the Claw a holy relic, and the deluge upon the coming of the New Sun sacrificial, humanity is really only being manipulated by the inhabitants of Yesod into furthering their own ends. God is, in the final analysis, nowhere in the picture. The second is the unreliability of Severian as narrator. Wolfe attended introductory courses in psychology in Texas and later in Ohio, and Wright conjectures that here Wolfe would have studied historic cases of perfect memory, providing a model for Severian's behaviour. Just as historic mnemonists, such as "S." studied by Aleksandr Romanovich Luria, were incapable of reflecting on their experiences, instead merely re-remembering events without analysis, so Severian stands between the reader and the true events of the work.

With these in mind, Wright's main thesis is that the Book of the New Sun is the epitome of a very complicated literary technique devised by Wolfe in which the reader is consistently challenged and baffled, and yet consistently given the necessary keys to unlocking the plot. Wolfe also consistently reminds the reader that what he is reading is fiction through a continual stream of metaliterary allusions and jibes. Wright's assertion that all of Wolfe's novels after the Book of the New Sun are meant to provide a series of elucidations for its mysteries is sure to be controversial, but is for me nonetheless quite convincing in many instances.

If you are a dedicated fan of Wolfe, having sought out everything he's ever put written and read the Urth cycle more times than you can remember, I would highly recommend ATTENDING DAEDALUS. With the intricacies of plotting revealed here, I appreciate Wolfe's skill more and more, and see him as one of the most significant English-language writers of our time. Don't heed what naysayers claim, this book is entirely dedicated to Wolfe's oeuvre and is very relevant to those investigating the Urth cycle.

[Andrew Bishop · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very, very good analysis of Wolfe's work in general and Book of the New Sun in particular. Wolfe used similar narrative strategies in most of his work so the analysis of that in works before Book of the New Sun was very helpful. You can go away from this book well-prepared for all of Gene Wolfe which I appreciated a lot. The analysis of Book of the New Sun is the major focus here so be prepared for entire chapters on one or two narrative or stylistic choices at a time. Book of the New Sun has an unreliable narrator and a very particular diction so this granular attention was warranted. However the book went too far into the weeds when discussing Giulio Camillo's influence on the text (interesting but a stretch) and discussing via paleontology the significance of extinct animals encountered in the book (there's even a table linking it to major geological periods!) which really just distracted from the more sure-footed literary analysis. Aside from that this was a great analysis of Wolfe's general narrative strategies, his work at large, and Book of the New Sun in particular. I highly recommend it if you ever want to go deep on these books.

[Mark LaCour · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are good parts to this book that will help you understand and theorize about BotNS that deserve 5-stars. There are other parts that are REALLLLLYYYY reaching and deserve, like, 2.5-stars. I'll just put 3-stars?

[Aaron Singleton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Attending Daedalus is a collection of scholarly essays on the fiction of Gene Wolfe. It covers nearly all of Wolfe's work up to the mid to late nineties. For hardcore fans of Wolfe, it will be an interesting read. It certainly offered new perspectives on many stories I have read several times. Besides, I enjoy reading literary criticism. I like to see an author's work dissected and analyzed, even if I disagree with half of it. So this is recommended only for hardcore Wolfe fans and lovers of literary criticism.

[Dominic · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was essential in writing my undergraduate thesis.