I also finished reading a new novel by Gene Wolfe entitled "The Sorcerer's House". It was described as a fantasy, and I have found Wolfe to be an erudite, engaging, ambitious writer whose style has influenced my own. I wish at times that I had walked along the path that he cleared, he having also been an engineer who gave himself over to literary pursuits, and produced such indelible works as "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", "The Sword of the Conciliator" and "Soldier of the Mist".
His style, as indicated above, is literary, and seems almost stately. However, he is never completely trustworthy, and this is due perhaps precisely to his encyclopedic nature. Wolfe has read so widely and has so many literary precursors to draw upon that he seems to be more than just a compendium of styles. He frequently jars our perception by introducing inconsistencies that seem to escape notice because we are seduced by the action and the intoxicating prose, but are there nonetheless. He makes me think of what Jorge Luis Borges might have become if he had chosen to write longer works of fiction, rather than the short stories for which he is known.
In this case, I didn't quite know what to expect. Perhaps I was hoping for something along the lines of "Mythago Wood" by Robert Holdstock, where we had a window into the archetypal layers of the human mind. Or maybe I was hoping for something along the lines of "The Wizard Knight", a recent fantasy that he published a few years ago, detailing the growth and development of an apprentice warrior who assumes mythical qualities.
When I think about it, there always seems to be a mythical quality to all his protagonists. They are heroes, in the Greek sense, figures who are better than ordinary humans but who have frailties as well. They don't quite realize their special status, and they fail at times, but they have a greater destiny and they always seems to find a series of challenges and encounters that are quite metaphorical, as they echoe the mileposts of the hero's journey. The hero is always reluctant, but grows into his role.
In this case, we have an ex-con by the name of Bax who comes into possession of a mysterious house located in a small town in the midwest. The provenance of this house if very mysterious, and there is a lore associated with it. The community seems to think it is haunted, and Bax will begin to have mysterious encounters of his own.
It turns out, this house serves as a portal to the land of fairie. However, excursions to this place do not figure prominantly in this novel. Instead, the adventures take place in the mundane world, one in which the protagonist has to struggle with obtaining money to sustain himself, while coming to terms with the growing list of characters he encounters. That he never seems to question his sanity is perhaps a little perturbing. It would be easy to think that this novel represents the reflections of a character who has become unhinged, but despite all the fantastic elements, he proceeds as normal in a novel that takes the form of epistolary exchanges.
The hero is, as always, appealing, and there is always an air of innocence to him. The same can be said of Severian from the Urth of the New Sun series, or Latro of the historical fantasies, or the protagonist of the Wizard Knight. He is earnest, however it may be that he also has a deep wellspring of knowledge and a deep philosophical grounding. Such is the case with Bax, who is always discovering something about himself.
The element of danger comes into play in the threatened encounter with a werewolf, one who goes by the name of Lupine (Wolfe, as in the author's name), and a creature that has attacked and killed several people in the town. I almost suspected Lupine to be an externalized materialization of the character Bax, but it is, indeed, a cartoonish, deadly femme fatale. We have encountered them several times in his fiction. they wish to seduce the protagonist, but there is no love that is offered by them. It is to be a type of conquest.
Bax resists, and he finds new family members. The motif of identical twins is reproduced several times, which only serves to emphasize the idea that we have a character who is splitting off from himself. Bax has a twin brother named George who despises him, and they in turn have a different set of identical brothers who live in fairy. The mom is also an identical twin. This twin motif is redolent of some deeper meaning, of a psyche that is budding off in some form of fractal movement, curling and reproducing the same structure over and over.
Yes, the novel does incorporate some trite stereotypes that seem at time jarring, but only if we fail to appreciate that Wolfe's protagonists have a certain juvenile quality. Such were the ideas of youth, and such were the exciting yearnings and sexual fantasies of juvenile males, those that have been continually acknowledge by fantasy writers, and took the form of voluptuous, scantily-clad females in pulp novels. (Think of Frank Frazetta artwork.)
The ending seems muddled. It concludes rather hastily, and it seems to be characterized not by a logical, satisfying tying of all the loose ends, but by a precipitated encounter. It belies the pace that we have come to associate with Wolfe novels.
I found this novel enjoyable at times, but ultimately, disappointing. I will, however, continue to read his works. They form a common thread that links my teenage self with the person I have become now. I can certainly share in this sense of innocence, even if, more and more, I seem to be obsessed with retracing my steps.
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
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