In the psychohistorian Lloyd deMause’s biographical account of Ronald Reagan, he describes how Reagan, who feared his alcoholic father, who used to kick him with his boot, and unconsciously wished him dead, was terrified at playing a movie role where he would lose his legs because this came too close to his own fear that he deserved to be…[Read more]

In one of the afterwards to a story in Best of, Wolfe writes that though kids have moved on to high-tech, his remembrance was of his own low-tech toys, the puppets and marionettes he used to play with. As he lists these, we note they’re all versions of ones we saw in battle in War Beneath the Tree, that is, mostly soldiers of various kinds, or…[Read more]

“Auk shook his head, and found that it no longer ached. “I’ve never had no god bossing me, Jugs, or wanted to either. That’s lily. I never even knew about Kypris, but you were a lot different when you were Scylla.”

“Some of that was me, I think. Hold me tighter, won’t you? I’m really cold.”

Excerpt From: Gene Wolfe. “Epiphany of the Long…[Read more]

There is a dangerous beast that has come to your door. He has along with him someone he is “carrying” to the door, another personality, who sometimes means well, or more-or-less well, for the home he is visiting, for it is his obligation to do so, but is simultaneously the source of the scare that has people in that home fretful and scurrying.…[Read more]

In Return to the Whorl, Horn discovers that Silk’s wife, Hyacinth, has cheated on him by finding her way into Generalismo Saba’s bed. After delivering the news, he pro-offers Silk a needler, a gun, so he might kill his wife over her infidelity. Silk replies that his wife wasn’t cheating on him, she was helping him, or was trying to at least, if…[Read more]

If Gene Wolfe’s texts could be imagined as places where Wolfe goes in which to situate experiences in his own life which plague him, but not so much only to pour out his experiences, as one of Wolfe’s heroes Thomas Wolfe did, but to refigure them, so that when he exists this “fictional” world he’s created he might find his own way of understanding…[Read more]

When Severian leaves the city of Thrax up into the mountains, he finds himself at the door of a household that is his ideal, not some perfectly ordered place, but one in-sync with the wild around it, full of imperfections, that for Severian is “perfection’s” categorical imperative; that must be true. It’s the home of those “pioneering peasants who…[Read more]

In New Sun, Severian wonders what drew Becan to bring his family to such a remote and dangerous place. He takes a guess that it was a regressive need to lose manhood and become a child again. In conversation with Becan’s son, also named Severian, we hear:

“That was because you wanted to put down the burden of being a boy, at least for a time. S…[Read more]

Many of Wolfe’s works engage with a main protagonist involved in some action that results in his or her feeling guilty. Severian, for example, feels at some need to try and atone for his playing a part in Thecla’s death, by saving someone else who’s been sentenced to be executed by torturers, Cyriaca. By saving her, a person who reminded him of…[Read more]

At the Gene Wolfe Appreciation site on facebook, David Henkel-Wallace, concerning Wolfe, remarked:

“Is he really making it problematic to judge, or is he saying that it is incumbent upon each of us to look beyond the surface “game” to find out which is morally correct? The willing nazi guard had to know, deep down, that what they were doing was…[Read more]

Metia Macnair’s recent facebook post of her painting of little Severian just before he is eviscerated, at the Gene Wolfe Appreciation site (private, so no link), reminded me of a number of other scenes in Gene Wolfe’s books. I thought of Seawrack, for instance, for she was always intent to find shiny pieces of jewelry in which to return to Mother,…[Read more]

In the Kress’ interview posted by Kissane (link at bottom), Wolfe argues that while the person executed might view his executioner as a “monster,” that the exectioner could view himself as a “hero representative of society, perhaps.”

Wolfe also discusses people’s self-percption in his interview with James McCaffery. He argues:

“And I was…[Read more]

There are a couple of discussions I’ve found on the web, one on Martin Crookall’s webpage and another on a reddit post done by skepticalpanda that discuss amongst other things, the quandary as to why Latro suddenly turns very depressed and suicidal near the end of Soldier of Arete (both discussions are very interesting, btw). In the Reddit…[Read more]