Customer Reviews

Peace

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

PEACE is a beautiful, strange, intricate novel; it is also a puzzle, but the puzzle is not concerned with cleverness or authorial tricks--rather, here, the puzzle is the essential human question: "What kind of story is this?" PEACE, as it invokes Lovecraft, the Arabian Nights, Sherwood Anderson, Borges, Flann O'Brien, and other restless spirits, answers and re-asks this final question. This is Wolfe at his finest, and Wolfe at his finest is as good as it gets. PEACE is also an excellent introduction to Wolfe, for those daunted by THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN. The only better introduction, in my opinion, is the equally touching and marvelous THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, which may especially be preferable for long-time readers of science-fiction.

Gene Wolfe's "Peace" is one of the strangest, yet most satisfying books I've read in a long time. It's very hard to talk about the plot, except that it is largely a reflection of an old man on his life experiences. The book says so many things that almost overwhelm the reader, but I imagine looking back over a lifetime of experiences can be overwhelming. I recently read an interview with Wolfe in which he said that authors often reveal clues several times in their books. He only reveals a clue once. He presupposes that the reader is smart enough to stay with him on his level. The ability to do that, at least for me, was difficult, but the journey was extremely worthwhile.

This book must be read by everyone. Wolfe usually writes SF, but this is like nothing so much as a haunting and frighteningly literate retelling of "Spoon River Anthology" -- the spirit of an early-twentieth century man endlessly reenacts a series of vignettes that illuminate (obtusely) the story of his life, which is also the story of the end of the small town in America. The prose is meditative and elegaically beautiful, but the novel itself is uncomfortably honest in the manner of someone who pretends to make light of something about which they are, in fact, quite serious. Wolfe claims that his narrator, Alden Dennis Weer, is "more autobiographical than anyone suspects" -- odd, given that it's hinted that Weer may be a mass murderer. Very meaty, rich stuff that I commend to any reader without reservation.

Agreed with the foregoing: PEACE is indeed a "haunting and frighteningly literate retelling" of Edgar Lee Masters's SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY, situated somewhere on the literary spectrum between H.P. Lovecraft and Sherwood Anderson. What is most remarkable about PEACE, to me, is the way it defies any easy categorization, from genre (it's not exactly science fiction, but if not, what is it?) to form (ostensibly the interrelated, and frequently interrupted, deathbed ramblings of an old man, which ultimately construct their own dream-like architecture). In this sense PEACE is most similar to the novels of Jonathan Carroll, who mines similar territory.

My only caveats would be Tor's tiny, occluded typesetting (a valid regret, as noted elsewhere here) and the fact that Wolfe chooses to drop us into Weer's meditations without any gloss or preparation. The first thirty pages are indeed rough going--even for those of us who were in fact schooled on Joyce, Garcia Marquez, and Faulkner.

Like Carroll, Alan Garner, and other contemporary fabulists, Wolfe has yet to receive his due from the mainstream literary establishment. It's a pity. This novel should have at least started that ball rolling, long ago.

The entire Universe is contained in this book. So much pathos and so much wisdom have not been seen in an American novel since MOBY DICK. The intelligence brought to bear in Wolfe's understated and brilliantly layered book lies somewhere between Dickens and Joyce, with a little Shakespearean flair thrown in for good measure. Wolfe's primary topic here is memory and its effects (causality?) on human existence, and the shaping of human existence by story. Layered and interlocking stories relate the life of the narrator, and significantly, the stories merge together, the boundary between stories becoming increasingly blurred as the book winds down. It is, in essence, The Book of the Dead (and here is the significance of the title), telling the tales of the dead, so that they ultimately rest in Peace. It is not an easy read, but one which patient readers will treasure and hold dear--and reread incessantly--forever.

It took several attempts for me to get past the first chapter of this book, but it is well worth it, so don't give up! I really don't know what this book is "about", but it concerns a dying man's look back over his life. Hmmm... sounds deadly dull. Luckily, Gene Wolfe's intricate prose breathes life into an eclectic set of personal recollections which winds around and finally swallows itself. It has all the complexity, the secrets within secrets, and the knowing asides better left unsaid that characterize all of Wolfe's work. Whatever he's trying to say, he says it well.

It seems to be Gene Wolfe's fate that his most marvelous works be re-issued by his current publisher with the most hideous, second-rate cover designs. While Peace may be an after-thought for his editor, it certainly is not for his readers. Peace is a haunting selection of memories, nightmares and moments of joy from the life of a very successful, lonely old businessman named Alden Weer. So carefully and cleverly is the story written, that at times you are not sure whether the narrator is deluding himself or only for the first time confronting the possibility that he is guilty not only of neglect...but of monstrous crimes. As for the reader below who apparently likes his fiction explicated in color-by-numbers fashion, anything written for adults would probably strike him as hopelessly impenetrable as James Joyce.

So I started this thinking it might be about ghosts or fantasy worlds. Nope. Think old man's wandering thoughts. It's not BAD, but it's not great, either. There's a few small mysteries, a couple of which are cleared up, others that aren't. There are a few ghost/fairy tales, but they are told by people, not happening. The most fantastic world is that this old man is in a huge house (think Winchester Mystery House)and he can consult dead doctors about a stroke he's going to have. But mostly it's childhood reminiscing, with some adult memories, in that slightly depressing style popular at the time. It's a well-written book, the characters are complex and realistic. Just not much happens.

Peace is not a book for everyone. It is best left to experienced readers who are eager to look between the lines. Casual readers will be frustrated by this novel, as with much of Wolfe's work.

This book is a masterpiece deserving a place next to the works of Dickens, Hemingway, and Melville. Like other fine literature, it is a work which should be savored with multiple readings. Like many of Wolfe's works, Peace is a horror story in disguise. If you're not paying close attention, you may not notice the mystery haunting this book.

I can assure you that while much of the book may not seem to make sense at first, everything does add up. What appears random is not. The pieces of the puzzle are scattered across the various unfinished stories in the novel. One story's beginning must serve as another's end. Characters masquerade across different stories. If you give up, as some reviewers apparently have, you can always search the internet for answers to this book's many riddles.

Although virtually unclassifiable, Gene Wolfe's 1975 novel, "Peace," was chosen for inclusion in both David Pringle's "Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels" AND Jones & Newman's "Horror: Another 100 Best Books." While the novel certainly does have shadings of both the horrific and the fantastic, it will most likely strike the casual reader--on the surface, at least--as more of an autobiography, telling, as it does, the story of Alden Dennis Weer, in the first person. Weer, a 60-something bachelor who has suffered a stroke shortly before he begins his tale, and who may or may not be a ghostly spirit, gives us the story of his life, in piecemeal fashion, withholding much and skipping about in accordance with the vagaries of his consciousness. A product of small-town America, somewhere in the Midwest (the fictitious burg of Cassionsville) of the early 20th century, Weer has many interesting incidents to think back on and ponder. The town where he spent his entire life, and his relatives, friends and coworkers, are revealed to us, "Our Town" fashion, but with innumerable digressions and tangents of tangents. I should mention right here that "Peace" is hardly an easy read. Its story is certainly nonlinear, its anecdotes always interrupted by Weer's side thoughts (he constantly leaves his tales unfinished, in favor of some other tale that has just popped into his head), his side thoughts seemingly inconsequential and meaningless. He is just as likely to ramble off into the telling of a fairy tale that he read as a boy, in the middle of one of his narratives, as not. Even Pringle has to admit that it is "definitely not a book for the impatient," and Roz Kaveney, writing about "Peace" in the Jones & Newman volume, tells us that the book "hops back and forth through [Weer's] life without resolution and without any clear sense of who ultimately he is." And that last statement is absolutely true. Weer, we get the feeling, is holding much back from the reader, and though we come to like and admire the man, we never get a clear picture, with all his circumlocutions, of who he is. His pinball consciousness may be hard to follow (but still, isn't this representative of how most of us really think...nonsequentially, with other thoughts and snatches of song and extraneous images constantly intruding?), and the man/ghost remains a cipher by the novel's end, but still, we sure do learn a lot about Cassionsville by the telling.

Or do we? In a key statement early on, Weer tells us that some of his remembered events "never occurred at all, but only should have, and that others had not the shades and flavors" that he has chosen to give them. He is an unreliable narrator at best. Still, the tales he tells us are fascinating ones. We learn of his eccentric Aunt Olivia, a lover of all things Chinese, and her three suitors; of Weer's job at a synthetic orange drink factory; of the local druggist's experiences with a man who is slowly turning to stone; of the local bookseller who is engaged in a very peculiar sideline; of Christmas at his grandfather's house; of Olivia's quest to obtain a rare porcelain egg. Many of Weer's tales seem to lack a payoff, although that payoff may come 100 pages later, while he is telling another tale. Other stories are seemingly the pointless ramblings of a meandering mind. Still, Wolfe writes beautifully, in this, a change from his usual sci-fi/fantasy epic format. "Peace" (that title is a troubling one...if Weer really is at peace when he writes his life story, that peace certainly does not seem to bring him any real solace) is a book that almost demands to be read slowly, and then reread in parts. Many casual statements and even characters that at first blush appeared unimportant acquire a greater significance at second glance. I'm not sure that I agree with Pringle when he declares the book to be "a masterpiece," but have no problem with his declaration that it is "moving and delicately written." It certainly is different, and, as I suggested up top, a completely sui generis experience. Mysterious, atmospheric and tinged with nostalgia and the grotesque, it is a book not easily shaken off.