A TRIBUTE TO GENE WOLFE
IF EVER A WIZ THERE WAS: The Ineffable Art of Gene Wolfe
by Patrick O¡¯Leary
"Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named
there¡ªthat, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of
the thing not named." ¡ªWilla Cather
¡°Now, Dorothy, dear, stop imagining things. You always get yourself into a
fret over nothing.¡±
Like most of us, my family had an annual tradition of watching The Wizard
of Oz. We relished this improbable concoction of vaudeville and pop,
Broadway and Hollywood, classic Children¡¯s Lit and MGM¡¯s formidable
showmanship. Only problem was my family didn¡¯t own a color TV until 1975.
For years, I didn¡¯t know Munchkin Land had all those colors. I didn¡¯t know
what I was missing. When I learned that most of the film was in color, I
filled in the blanks. In either case I never felt like I was shortchanged.
That is, until I had grown up and finally saw the film as it was intended
to be seen.
For me, that was the equivalent of discovering Gene Wolfe.
Gene Wolfe is the Best Writer Alive. Let me attempt to explain why.
I can¡¯t.
¡°Because, Because, Because, Because, Because¡¡±
Because what makes him great is simply not on the page. It is somewhere
tucked inside the heads of the people he has enchanted. There in those
unreachable reaches of the psyche and the soul, you will find new
landscapes, unapproachable by any other route. You will find terrible
beauty and beautiful terror, mystery and comfort, hilarity and tricks and
truth.
You will find the ineffable.
¡°This is a highly irregular procedure! This is absolutely unprecedented!¡±
What Wolfe does for me more than any other storyteller is provide that
magical moment when your face passes through the membrane of a book and
you are inside the story. Through the looking glass. Into OZ. How he does
this is the subject I¡¯m tackling here. It is a complicated if not
impossible question to answer, because his craft is so transparently
perfect that its effects are almost invisible on the page.
You could say this is because Wolfe¡¯s work is rich and he operates on many
levels: symbolism, suspense, hidden motifs like depth charges,
slight-of-hand plotting where we have been directed away from something
very important by the dazzling surface of the tale--misdirection if you
will. The oldest conjurer¡¯s trick. You could also say that this is because
Wolfe hides his climaxes offscreen, or he throws them casually away, or he
does them in a whisper, so that they are easy to miss. This is a writer
who delights in defeating expectations while, paradoxically satisfying our
hunger for narrative. No one mystifies and charms like Wolfe.
¡°Now, you'd better close your eyes, my child, for a moment - in order to
be better in tune with the infinite.¡±
And yet. And yet. I will venture into dangerous territory and say part of
the reason why we put up with this shell shuffling is because of something
else going on. Something deeper. Wolfe always hides his story below the
story. By never telling us directly what he is talking about, he plants
the true superstructure of the tale in our minds. It is almost a sketch
artist's trick, drawing the shadow not the form. And the shadow, which is
to say, the surface, the thereness of the lead on paper is so vivid and
enchanting that the true shape of the work often escapes us. The portrait
suggested by this dazzling outline is not on the page. It is in our
imagination. And when we¡¯ve read well (and Wolfe does demand we read him
well) we often find the afterimage of the tale rising up from our mind¡¯s
eye like a monster emerging from its hiding place beneath a swamp, or the
photograph taking shape in the red light of the developing room, seeming
to coalesce from a sunken flat bottom of pure whiteness. Most stories end
and, if they¡¯re good, we¡¯re left with a powerful memory. Wolfe¡¯s stories
seem to linger. Days later we still smell them on our clothes. And it
dawns on us that we are still reading them.
¡°I, your Wizard¡am about to embark on a hazardous and technically
unexplainable journey into the outer stratosphere.¡±
And yet. And yet there is more. For the story behind the story is not what
is really happening in a Gene Wolfe story. What is really happening is
something much deeper. Something I don't think I can talk about without
sounding silly.
I think, to paraphrase Johnny Rotten, ¡°He means it, man.¡± The true story
of Wolfe¡¯s work is always under the apparent story and still below the
uncovered story. He is trying to tell the truth and any one who has tried
to will tell you, it is the hardest thing in the world to tell. Which is
simply to say he is a moral writer.
It is easy to take that for granted. Most popular art tells us what we
want to hear, appeases us, entertains us with cotton candy notions which
go down easy and will never disturb our most unconscious and unexamined
values, as well as our most dearly held prejudices. Wolfe forces us to
look at the unthinkable. His work is never simply comforting, never simply
amazing. It does that rare challenging thing: holds up a mirror and dares
us to see ourselves in it. Under the Gee-whiz special effects of
speculation, under the impressive virtuoso techniques, and still under the
deep and rich and satisfying pleasures of a sublime fiction narrative,
Wolfe is playing for higher stakes. He is daring us to examine our lives.
Or do we think he is talking about dragons and aliens, witches and demons?
This is the ineffable shape of the hidden book in every Gene Wolfe Story.
It is risky stuff, for like any true work of art it carries the promise of
catharsis, and it hides the virus of change: the chance to enlarge
ourselves. His work demands a response so different than tears or
laughter, surprise or contemplation--it requires neither an audience or a
critic. It requires a soul reaction.
This is why I believe that his work, while resembling other fictions of
various genres and often crazy quilting a pastiche of tried and true
forms, is a new thing in and of itself. He is creating original
experiences you cannot get in any other medium while masquerading under
the guise of speculative fiction.
¡°Oh, we dream lots of silly things¡¡±
Perhaps the art of his stories cannot be translated because it is
essentially dream stuff¡ªpersonal, intimate, woven from the private fabrics
of our individual unconscious, and it cannot survive the transition into
waking. It will unravel. Because the most important things are what cannot
be said. Once cast into the spell of words, they are not on the page; they
are in you. You are the manuscript; you hold the secrets and the treasures
and you are the map. In the realm of the fantastic the only exchangeable
currency is wonder. And wonder isn¡¯t something you can buy; it¡¯s something
you must invest in.
So. Let¡¯s take a journey.
You are dreaming. You are transported to a realm where the impossible
occurs daily. And you believe it. You can¡¯t help it. Your eyelids are
pressed open, which is to say: closed. Not always a pleasant experience,
but it definitely takes you somewhere. And you rediscover the power of the
only medium that is truly internal. There is no separation between what
you¡¯re seeing and what you¡¯re experiencing.
Dreams are you.
Here¡¯s what you see (The Sword Of The Lictor ):
You see a man being held upside down by the ankles over a terrifying
gorge. The camera pulls back to reveal a two-headed monster is gripping
him. Pull back further to reveal the held man is hanging like a tear in
the corner of a huge empty stone eye, pull back further to reveal this eye
resides in an enormous stone face, and further until it crowns a mountain:
a gigantic carved portrait of one of the monster¡¯s two heads.
Take a bow. That was nice camera work. Wolfe didn¡¯t do it. You did. Do you
see?
Here¡¯s another ("A Cabin on The Coast," Endangered Species):
A man is standing in the doorway of a cabin on the Pacific. He is soaked
in saltwater. He has spent 20 years in hell¡ªone paragraph that feels like
a novel¡ªand he has finally returned to claim his love, the one he rescued
20 years before, the one he has dreamed about for two decades. He has
lived for this moment. She hasn¡¯t aged a blink. She is naked on the bed.
She doesn¡¯t recognize him¡ªwhich shocks. She takes him for his father¡ªwhich
horrifies¡ªimagine if your lover took you for your mom... And he has no
words for all of this; she does all the talking.
¡°Oil can what?¡±
The scene is about misunderstanding. And what makes it so powerful are the
looks on the man's face. Now get this: Wolfe never describes them! He has
put a description of a man¡¯s face on paper in three lines of dialogue that
say nothing about how he looks. The only way we know is by his lover¡¯s
reaction to him. The reader must create the man¡¯s face, the shock, and the
overwhelming heartbreak. And what we come up with in our own imaginations
will be much more powerful, will invest us in the story much more vividly
than any eloquent description Wolfe might write. Do you suppose he knew
that?
¡°Why, it's just like you could read what was inside of me.¡±
But wait there¡¯s more. The tale has ended. Yet it¡¯s not over. It has what
Kim Stanley Robinson has dubbed the prototypical Wolfean ¡°slingshot¡±
ending. Here¡¯s what happens next:
The man now must tell his lover an appalling story, a story impossible to
tell, and, once told, all but impossible to believe. And in the end there
are no guarantees that his lover, the one whose absence has sustained him
during his long and lonely journey, will be his lover any more. And all of
this, remember, is off the page. Wolfe did not write it, but it is crucial
to the story. Do you see?
¡°Of course, I don't know, but I think it'll get darker before it gets
lighter.¡±
Wolfe is about moments, moments that take you off guard.
Imagine a child in a house about to be burned down by rioters, going
upstairs to his bedroom, knowing he must escape but needing to put on (you
see, he¡¯s a good boy and has been taught well) his coat and boots against
the winter outside. And, as if that weren¡¯t sad enough, he insists on
taking the most impractical toy available: a helicopter. (¡°And When They
Appear,¡± Strange Travelers).
It is in these surprising moments of gentleness or violence, or sudden
swings into desire and love that Wolfe captures that happenstance flavor
of reality; where people do not act as characters in stories but as humans
in life. These glancing, spontaneous, real moments that show us ourselves
and say this is truth, this is what would happen. Do you see?
Here¡¯s another ("The Map," Endangered Species):
A man finds a corpse floating on the river at night.
"It was a woman, naked and not long dead. Her staring eyes¡her teeth
gleamed faintly through half-parted lips. He tried to judge her as he had
judged the women whose compliance he had secured for coins, to weigh her
breasts with his eyes and applaud or condemn the roundness of her belly;
he discovered that he could not do so, that in the way he sought to see
her she was beyond his sight, unreachable as the unborn, unreachable as
his mother had been when he once, as a boy, happened upon her bathing."
Something truly strange is happening here. Wolfe is describing a state of
mind that is not happening, that cannot happen, a potential paradigm, if
you will, that cannot be described, because the character cannot
experience it. And he is describing something else. A hunger for something
that isn¡¯t there. Desire, in other words. An emptiness longing to be
filled. Do you see?
"Come out, come out, wherever you are...."
Now understand all the while all these moments are happening, great prose
is streaming along, wonderful images are cracking us on the head, witty
puzzles are presented and solved, living characters are saying fascinating
things, and, perhaps, more importantly, all this takes place somewhere
which exudes context. Possibilities almost as vivid as actualities are
trembling along the margins of the tale, like actors waiting for their cue
offstage--you can feel them, you can almost smell them--anything is
possible in a Wolfe tale. Because it has so much of the texture of life,
we expect things to pop out of closets and truth to emerge at the most
unexpected times. He is telling the tale of our lives which, truth to
tell, might be and frequently is, interrupted. This sense of potential
lurking is what I find missing in most of what I read. And it is something
that Wolfe has in spades.
"I can't come back! I don't know how it works!"
There are no maps to this treasure. There are only rumors and words. Most
of the poetry I read seems to make this mistake¡ªit takes the words for the
poem. A type of literary fundamentalism/idolatry which regards language as
sacred in and of itself. So you get all these "word objects" twirling on
ego, waiting to be admired, insulated in excellence. Wolfe isn¡¯t fiddling
with words. He never forgets that he is talking to a human who just
changed the baby¡¯s diapers, fantasized killing their boss with a hatchet,
remembered the smell of burning leaves, forgotten how to love their
children, admired their mate¡¯s rump, sweated over the electric bill and
had a flashback about the time they were slapped by someone they trusted.
So much depends on that. If these precious words on paper share no
connection to the real world of pain and joy we swim in everyday¡ªthey will
not work. They cannot gain entrance. The reader will not swallow their
magic. They are a banging gong or a clanging cymbal.
¡°Ooo - EE - hoo! YoOO - ho! Ooo - EE - hoo! YoOO - ho!¡±
Any musician knows that space is both the true medium and the most
critical element of music. Not sound. Not what you play, but what you
leave out. In the same way you have to see past Wolfe¡¯s words to find out
what he's doing. You can¡¯t read the notes of the score and forget you¡¯re
listening to music. It is as if Wolfe were playing a different sort of
instrument than everyone else which nonetheless uses the same materials
(metal, wood, skin and bone) and the same scales (do re mi...) and looks
almost exactly like any other instrument (ink, pulp, typesetting and
cardboard.) But he is playing an entirely different ballgame. When you get
that, you get Wolfe, I think.
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
Gene Wolfe is the Great and Terrible Oz. Approached with a trembling
enthusiasm he gets cranky: "How dare you presume to question me! I will
send you on a perilous journey and set for you an impossible task: to
confront the most horrible creature, and I want you to steal her Volvo and
bring it back to me!" And this terrible fantastic green god is, of course,
like any storyteller, a fraud. He is, as we all are, a contract actor
playing multiple roles: a fortuneteller with a heart of gold stuck in a
godforsaken gulch in Kansas. He is a forgetful, sentimental gatekeeper of
the Emerald City who cries a river at the drop of a hat. He is a cabby
whose horse changes colors when you blink¡ªnot something you see every day.
He is a great and powerful Martian apparition of smoke and flame and
death¡ªhe knows why you¡¯ve come! He knows all! He is a whimpering engineer
behind a curtain: constructing wonder while covering his ass: hiding his
true nature: letting us see, finally, the mechanism of his divinity. He is
a marooned human being using all the showbiz tricks up his sleeve to get
through his day, to live up to the impossible expectations of his
followers. He is something like a university president addressing new
graduates. He presents us with what we¡¯ve possessed all along¡ªnow that is
genius: a salesman who satisfies customers by giving them symbols of their
most common possessions: hearts, heads, souls and homes. Ourselves, in
other words. And last we see him he is floating clumsily away on a balloon
of hot air.
¡°No, Aunt Em, this was a real, truly live place. And I remember that some
of it wasn't very nice - but most of it was beautiful.¡±
Imagine a writer who writes children¡¯s books in disguise, because he has
absolutely nothing to say to grownups. For, after all, what can you say to
someone who has never seen the foggy figure of a ghost disappear at the
head of the stairs, never felt the wet velour of a curious dinosaur tongue
on their cheek, never played scrabble with an alien, never danced with a
leprechaun, never fucked an escapee from Hell, never made a devil¡¯s
bargain with a vampire, never juggled in zero gravity, never been
possessed by a very bad god, never wept for a blind robot, never lost a
golden book that changed their lives, never been haunted by the forgotten
memory of a stained-glass window, never tortured the woman they loved,
never floated on a dirigible over a volcano whose yawning mouth resembles
a lamprey?
Grownups know: these are just stories. Impossible. Ridiculous. Useless.
Like this one: a story which isn¡¯t on the screen in black or white or
color. When they were preparing costumes for the MGM movie of The Wizard
of Oz they found the perfect Ring Master¡¯s coat for Professor Marvel. In
its pocket they discovered a dry-cleaning receipt made out to the
costume¡¯s original owner: L. Frank Baum.
Children know: There is another world. It isn¡¯t far. It is as close as
your own backyard. And it isn¡¯t like school or church. Attendance isn¡¯t
mandatory. But, once you¡¯ve entered, you will be changed.
This is what Gene Wolfe isn¡¯t telling us: We already live there.
¡°But nobody can see the great Oz! Nobody's ever seen the Great Oz!
Even I've never seen him.¡±
¡°Well then, how do you know there is one?¡±
3/29/00
From OTHER VOICES, OTHER DOORS, a collection of essays, stories and poems.
References
Visible links
1. http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.TheBookOfTheLongSun
He interrupted her. Close at hand is a stable where two beautiful ponies are kept. They are snowy white, and are consecrated to the goddess Ku-wanon, the deity of mercy, who is the presiding genius of the temple. They are in the care of a young girl, and it is considered a pious duty to feed them. Pease and beans are for sale outside, and many devotees contribute a few cash for the benefit of the sacred animals. If the poor beasts should eat a quarter of what is offered to them, or, rather, of what is paid for, they would soon die of overfeeding. It is shrewdly suspected that the grain is sold many times over, in consequence of a collusion between the dealers and the keeper of the horses. At all events, the health of the animals is regarded, and it would never do to give them all that is presented. On their return from the garden they stopped at a place where eggs are hatched by artificial heat. They are placed over brick ovens or furnaces, where a gentle heat is kept up, and a man is constantly on watch to see that the fire neither burns too rapidly nor too slowly. A great heat would kill the vitality of the egg by baking it, while if the temperature falls below a certain point, the hatching process does not go on. When the little chicks appear, they are placed under the care of an artificial mother, which consists of a bed of soft down and feathers, with a cover three or four inches above it. This cover has strips of down hanging from it, and touching the bed below, and the chickens nestle there quite safe from outside cold. The Chinese have practised this artificial hatching and rearing for thousands of years, and relieved the hens of a great deal of the monotony of life. He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly: "Dying--really?" He turned to his fellows--"Boys, Captain's dying." Assuming an air of having forgotten all about Dick¡¯s rhyme, he went to his place in the seat behind Jeff and the instant his safety belt was snapped Jeff signaled to a farmer who had come over to investigate and satisfy himself that the airplane had legitimate business there; the farmer kicked the stones used as chocks from under the landing tires and Jeff opened up the throttle. ¡°Yes,¡± Dick supplemented Larry¡¯s new point. ¡°Another thing, Sandy, that doesn¡¯t explain why he¡¯d take three boys and fly a ship he could never use on water¡ªwith an amphibian right here.¡± Should you leave me too, O my faithless ladie? And years of remorse and despair been your fate, That night was a purging. From thenceforward Reuben was to press on straight to his goal, with no more slackenings or diversions. "Is that you, Robin?" said a soft voice; and a female face was seen peeping half way down the stairs. HoMElãñÔóÂÜÀ³ó
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