Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice and the Reader (Liverpool University Press - Liverpool Science Fiction Texts & Studies) (Paperback)

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Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0853238286
• ISBN-13: 978-0853238287
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #862,627 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A highly enlightening guide to why Wolfe's narrative technique is so gripping, May 1, 2006

By	Christopher Culver - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars arguably one of the worst books i have ever read, February 23, 2006

By	Tyler Monroe - See all my reviews

i bought this book assuming that it would be similar to robert borski's "a solar labyrinth", in that it would hopefully shed some of light on some of the interesting and random little aspects of the book of the new sun that the casual reader would never notice or deduce. however, this is not the case at all. be prepared for long-winded blather and lots of "big words". i place "big words" in quotes, because within the first few pages of this novel, it becomes quickly evident that wright is far more concerned with attempting to impress the reader with his own intelligence, as opposed to providing any real content. the book amounts to little more than wright patting himself on the back over how intelligent he believes himself to be, while simultaneously essentially calling anyone else who has an opinion about the book of the new sun too stupid to really understand it. there is nothing at all in the way of actual content - most of the book is devoted to wright picking out random bits of text and then supporting his own beliefs about them with unrelated quotes (often hacked up and paraphrased to the point that they have come meaningless) from other book critics who (frequently) do not even have a background in science fiction. don't get me wrong - i absolutely love gene wolfe. however, i believe wright is giving him far too much credit for supposedly intentionally placing all these little allusions and whatnot throughout the book. sadly, the entire book sounds like a desperate author painstakingly trying to convince himself that his theories are correct by overanalyzing minute parts of the novel that fit vaguely within the confines of his boring ideas. as wright notes in the intro, this book originally started as his doctoral thesis - and unforunately, it reads like one. i'm sure this book would be great if you needed to skip on down to some professors' lounge at harvard and impress them with long-winded and essentially meaningless dialogue about "ulysses" (which wright practically spends more time discussing than wolfe's work), but if you want to learn something about the book of the new sun, dear god please look elsewhere.

as an aside, if you decide to purchase this book despite my best efforts to warn you of its terribleness - amazon shows this book's length at 240 pages. be warned - it's really not at all. expect more than 30 pages of footnotes and bibliography, as well as nearly 50 more pages that barely give the book of the new sun any mention (as these are dedicated to more vague and generally disinteresting dissections of minute parts of wolfe's other novels and short stories). if you want to actually read something interesting that provides legitimate insight into the book of the new sun itself, i highly recommend borski's "a solar labyrinth".

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An academic critique - with all the academic faults, July 15, 2006

By	Terence C Brennan "Tough marker" (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

Tylor Monroe (below) is a little harsh - but not very. This book is an academic critique of Wolfe's masterpiece, and like a lot of contemporary academic literary criticism, cannot get out of its own way. Lots of theory, lots of jargon, little illumination of the work for the average reader. This is the sort of book which gets on the author's resume, counts toward his publication list for tenure - and is immediately forgotten!

I do not want to say that that all of his ideas are worthless; just that they are very hard to extract from the jargon, and may not be worth the effort.