I don't get it

I don't get it.

Me too.
I didn't read it, though.

>"Severian, you must go o Thrax," said the gleaning plissimer of Master Bromine's spectral danse macaroon.
>So I departed for the North. On my way, I met a festoon-selling iridorian and we spent three days buttracing the gargantuan stairchimneys of the Antediluvian Tor of Grumblers. At the top, the Chatelainee of Slapchop deenuded my boomtube actuator, and I recalled a fable about butterflies.
>Chapter 9: The Hat Dimension
>I departed down the alley of blades and swiftly encountered an iridescent excrudescence of the scion of a manticore. "Two hats," I said. He nodded and tied his face to his face. Time makes liars of us all. Hyacinth.

There's nothing to get until near the end of Sword of the Lictor. Then the revelations start coming fast and furious.

Wow that was absolutely terrible

>fast and furious

Now I'm interested.

>didn't read it
Me neither but I think it's supposed to be a parallel of the story of Jesus or something. The planet is actually Earth in the far future. Or something. Of course, it's all obfuscated behind arcane made-up words and layers of allegory but it all comes together in the end and *pooooofffff* your mind gets blown when you see it.

None of the above qualifies as a spoiler since I'm talking out of my ass.

I read the first book in this book.
At first I hated it to hell, since it felt like a "guess what mundane thing the hero is looking at in this post-apocalypse world" story. Also I hated that they had a whole chapter where he found what he neglected to say was a dog.
By the end of the book it seemed very good.

None of the words are made up.

The first step is acknowledging that all these weak and effete generations cannot grasp the sublime and ineffable. Even those who think they get it do not. I know, because I think I get it. The will of the Increate is such that a dog is more than a dog, a claw more than a claw, but a coin just a coin.

Sublime beauty, pesky cacogens in masks within masks, and a fine non-jolly giant and his paracoita await you. Remember that two visions obsessed Severian from chapter two: a miraculous flambeau, and that the coming of the New Sun would engender life in the brush, and a leaf would sprout eyes, and you, too can be confused with the best of them, of whom I most assuredly am.

>made-up words
Wolfe literally went out of his way to avoid making up any words.

yes, only the occasional error, such as a misspelling of machicolation. The names are real Saint, old testament, or mythological names, the historical context to each is valid and interesting - a book of infinite research and care.

Take a throwaway character during the feast of St. Catherine: Sev notes that during his first feast, Gildas was captain of apprentices. In the proto-bluebeard myth, the wife of the then werewolf bluebeard is beheaded when pregnant, and St. Gildas puts her head back on. The beheading ritual of Catherine ensues ... that kind of depth and research is in every aspect of the text.

You are about 20% right. The revelation is not that he's a Christ figure. That is apparent as soon as they begin to speak about the Claw. Also, it is explicitly earth from the beginning.

Man, does that dog pay off though.

I liked the book, but you are just getting way too pretentious about it. It's good for Sci-Fi but it isn't the best book ever written. It does some interesting stuff but there's no need to place it on this lofty pedestal.

if you wish to walk no further with me on the aureate path, I cannot blame you. What is better? scatophagous pynchon and gas-sniffing Joyce? obvious tolstoy with horse as symbol? tedious realism? The manly but gay fascism of Mishima, obsessed with beauty and death? The truth, though humanity is blind to it, is that Wolfe is the best at what he does - very few other authors maintain the structural metaphors of deep meaning that continually elude even erudite readers. The depth behind the plot is something I value, and no one does that better than Wolfe, through nested metaphor and symbol.

All words are made up, son. All of 'em.

I didn't get it through a good portion of Shadow and Claw, but at some point it all started coming together. I'm on the last book in the tetrology(?) and it has been a great ride. I will pause to look up allusions I don't know, or words I don't recognize, and continue on; I feel that is one of the best ways to get the most out of these books.

I highly recommend you keep reading. It is absolutely worth it.

I... Whoa... Really made me think.

That's because it's a bad parody of how Wolfe actually writes.
I started catching on in the middle of Sword of the Lictor, it's also my favourite book of the 4.
this guy knows what's up. Wolfe overdoes it in Long Sun, and it becomes of obvious that BOTNS was as good as it is because he's a bit obscure about the details, not because he has some masterplan BTS.
The details he expands upon in Long Sun are kinda lame actually.

He's at his best when doing meta story stuff and getting into some philosophical conundrum about humanity and society.

Yeah, not to mention how Urth of the New Sun is way too literal and expository.

Yes, nearly all the people you mentioned are better than Wolfe.

Sorry, user. Being a sexual deviant doesn't make you a bad writer any more than being an archtypical WASP will make you a good one.

Wolfe isnt a wasp anymore, he is as Catholic as they come. These acronyms need precise use. If someone referred to me, white latinate slav catholic, as a wasp, i would laugh at their boorishness. Bwahahahaha.

I didn't want to sound like a /pol/ fucker slagging off Catholics so I used WASP to illustrate the point.

I know Wolfe is a Catholic.

I don't know, I came very close to having what you might call a religious experience during my third read-through, during Severian's confrontation with the undine. Scales falling from the eyes type stuff. Very few books have had this effect on me.

The Book of the Long Sun is high camp. BotNS is also camp, but it's sending up the genre, while working through a deeper symbolism. It's sort of the inverse in BotLS.

You don't think you might be bringing all that to the book instead of the inverse?

I think of the book as the catalyst for my experience.