I hear a lot about Wolfe's prose, with many of the detractors voicing insubstantial complaints...

I hear a lot about Wolfe's prose, with many of the detractors voicing insubstantial complaints. Most of them sound like pseuds who haven't read him, other than what's posted on Veeky Forums.

For the sake of discussion, here's a passage from New Sun that epitomizes the gothic aspect of its narrative:
>The necropolis has never seemed a city of death to me; I know its purple roses (which other people think so hideous) shelter hundreds of small animals and birds. The executions I have seen performed and have performed myself so often are no more than a trade, a butchery of human beings who are for the most part less innocent and less valuable than cattle. When I think of my own death, or of the death of someone who has been kind to me, or even of the death of the sun, the image that comes to my mind is that of the nenuphar, with its glossy, pale leaves and azure flower. Under flower and leaves are black roots as fine and strong as hair, reaching down into the dark waters.

Fellow anons and shitposters, what's your impression of Wolfe's prose?

Yeah so while you're caught up in prose you're missing a research opportunity. The nenuphar is more commonly known as a water lily, the blue/purple kind is called Nymphaea caerulea, or Egyptian blue lotus. It has psychoactive properties and was used by Ancient Egyptians and the Maya.

Why is this important? Why does the necropolis have a pool of water and flowering lilies? Well, in Egyptian mythology, the blue lily represents (get this) the Sun, because it's closed at night and opens during the day. In fact, certain mythological sources say that Ra (the supreme diety and sun god) created the world by rising from the primordial waters beneath the lily, much like how Severian emerges from the pool of nenuphars, having 'died,' and returning to bring the New Sun.

In addition, the lily is represented frequently in Egyptian art and hieroglyphics, and represents in that instance the passage to the afterlife.

*stifles a yawn*

Why the fuck are you on lit? Seriously. Are just here to shit on people's interests? Do you think you're funny?

it's just boring, man! talk about space ships and explosions please.

Main character lives in a spaceship desu

now you're talking. does he shoot anyone with lasers?

>space ships and explosions please

yeah he has a sword too and he kilsl a guy with 2 heads and a little kid too

Or how the New Sun will bring a deluge, from which a new Urth will raise above the waters.

sounds like gaskun tier porn.

anyone heard from him lately? a lot of people bullied him, and those people shared a lot of interests with him.

It's hyped as more dense than it actually is, it's pretty straightforward most of the time.

In terms of quality, how might it rank alongside Nabokov, Pynchon, or Fitzgerald?

he kills a guy with two heads? dude. how could this not be the best? i read some lame story about some loser killing an old lady, and she didn't even have two heads! shit was lame.

No where near. As much as I actually like reading fantasy, I've never read any sff author who can holds even a candle-stub to anything in, or within proximity of, the meme trilogy.

Those three have immensely different styles. God I hate you faggots. The comparison that first comes to mind is Eco.

>Those three have immensely different styles.

>alongside Nabokov, Pynchon, ((((((OR)))))) Fitzgerald

Hm, I wonder what the key word here was, apropos to your criticism?

I saw that, the question is still an impossibly inane one.

Better. Gene Wolfe is more similar to Melville and Borges than he is to Tolkein.

Okay, but can you explain why Nabokov, etc, are better than Wolfe, other than "muh academia makes me fellate dead guys". Compare. Analyze. Prove other people wrong if you can.

Otherwise I can likewise make a cheeky stance and safely rank Wolfe alongside any of those. Perhaps even the position of .


Just as you have an impossibly inane mind.

Please stop posting and read more.

I will follow your example, but you'll have to take the first step.

>supperior in every way

I know a window in a western tower

That opens on celestial seas,

And wind that has been blowing through the stars

Comes to nestle in its tossing draperies.

It is a white tower builded in the Twilit Isles

Where Evening sits for ever in the shade;

It glimmers like a spike of lonely pearl

That mirrors beams forlorn and lights that fade;

And sea goes washing round the dark rock where it stands,

And fairy boats go by to gloaming lands

All piled and twinkling in the gloom

With hoarded sparks of orient fire

That divers won in waters of the unknown sun:

And, maybe, ‘tis a throbbing silver lyre

Or voices of grey sailors echo up,

Afloat among the shadows of the world

In oarless shallop and with canvas furled,

For often seems there ring of feet, or song,

Or twilit twinkle of a trembling gong.—

O! happy mariners upon a journey long

To those great portals on the Western shores

Where, far away, constellate fountains leap,

And dashed against Night’s dragon-headed doors

In foam of stars fall sparkling in the deep.

While I, alone, look out behind the moon

From in my white and windy tower,

Ye bide no moment and await no hour,

But chanting snatches of a secret tune

Go through the shadows and the dangerous seas

Past sunless lands to fairy leas,

Where stars upon the jacinth wall of space

Do tangle, burst, and interlace.

Ye follow Eärendel through the West –

The Shining Mariner – to islands blest,

While only from beyond that sombre rim

A wind returns to stir these crystal panes,

And murmur magically of golden rains

That fall for ever in those spaces dim.

This is purpley purple prose and is Lovecraft tier.

>purple roses
>purPleROSEs
>PURPLE PROSE
holy shit

You just haven't seen it's final form jet.

You can't answer the question because you're a pseud and don't know what you're talking about.

Wolfe's prose's flow and beauty is as good if not better.

low quality bait, silly user.

>It was too dark inside for me to see anything, but I found that the porch circled the house as far as the edge of the cliff, and there ended without a railing. I knocked again as fruitlessly as before and had laid myself on the porch to sleep (for having a roof over it, it was a better place than any I was likely to find among the rocks) when I heard faint footsteps.
It's purely functional prose and far more plain than anyone makes it out to be. It's clean and has an staccato cadence to it that successfully evokes older storytelling, but it's nothing incredibly unique on its own. It has the advantage of being conscious of language in a genre that doesn't know how. Does Wolfe successfully use language to achieve what he's trying to do? Yes. There's no reason to go beyond that. The original question is a bad one since "who has the bestest prose" is a meaningless and juvenile "my dad is better than your dad" conversation that always goes in circles.

You'r right. Sorry...

Regarding Nabakov; the level of craftsmanship he demonstrates in his prose, I think, and feel, makes my soul swoon. Can't say anything much more than that. I mean, all one has to do is look at the opening line of Memelita:
>Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns
Comparitively, Wolfe's prose is readable, understandable, even nice -- good, but overall less remarkable.
>It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer's apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned.
Nowhere in Wolfe's style do I remember encountering anything like the phonetic flow and rhythm Nabakov demonstrates.

Regarding Pynchon ... Oboy. You can't really rank anything beside Pynchon, can you, because in the end, shit like V, Gravity's Rainbow, Bleeding Edge, etc., says 'not today' to being slotted into linear order of Best to Worst, and flies off sideways instead, then diagonally into other uncharted categories entirely, doing a loop-de-loop while it's at it because They could be here, observing, judging for normalcy -- gotta act severely p'noid to get them observing the wrong candidates (what better way to do that than write in more themes than you could count on the spines of a porcupine's back?). That's all I can say.

Regarding Ftizgerals, we find a similar comparative problem to Nabakov: rhythm of prose. Once again, Fitzgerald demonstrates the ability to string words together that not only make sense, and read easily, but milk your ears. I'm getting carried away here. But, if I had to put it into a verdict, I'd say that even if Wolfe doesn't write ground-breaking prose (which is a lot to ask of someone), at least has a good story with strong themes going for him.

That doesn't prove anything.

Nabokov in that passage tend to use a lot of Ks (which is visually and audibly a harder, sharper, harsher sound), and that interrupts the smoothness you mentioned, much in the way constantly uttered Hs may billow halitosis. Not to mention the false T of "trip" that damages the spoken smoothness of its sentence.

Furthermore:
>Did she have a precursor?
I don't want to nitpick, but this is not a smooth sentence and is very rough sounding when spoken aloud, compared to the L-heavy sentences. I don't know how you hear it yourself, but the word cacophonous applies to it.

Similarly, Wolfe has the same sorts of interruptions in his prose, but the prose otherwise has a silky smoothness to it, as far as its phonetic qualities are concerned. Also, you were speaking in terms of your own rhythmic preference. That is a matter of taste and not a universal standard. In addition, each of us anons have different speech patterns, as do authors. Certain speech styles and taste of rhythm will be incompatible with certain prose styles. From all this, your critique thus far has been ambiguous and unclear. Using an ill defined and preferential standard of rhythm to compare the two prose styles is fruitless, unless we have an agreed upon standard, which we probably won't, as neither of us is an expert linguist.

If I have a bias, it's that Wolfe's choice of symbols is more evocative in its use of imagery from physical experience, and dwells less on narrating abstractly about dwelling on a puerile childhood, and would translate better more generally across various languages. So from those terms, and your selection of quotes, Wolfe is the better stylist. But that is a matter of personal taste, and is less relevant to the comparison. I want a comparison using a general scheme. But definitions of rich prose tend to be conflicting and inconclusive.

You made a good post and I admire the scholarship. Unless someone autisms about this deeper we should probably agree to disagree.