why have you not read Gene Wolfe yet, /lit/?

>>9602989
I'm rereading Malazan.

>>9602989
Because I'm reading something else.

>>9602989
If I'm not much of a genre fiction reader, is Gene Wolfe worth reading for me? I'm open to it but I'm not sure if I'd get much from it.

>>9603056
Book of the New Sun is unironically the richest piece of genre-fiction ever written. If you can't get anything from it it's a failure on your part. And Wolfe is just fantastic all over. If the sci-fi concept and huge page-count (don't let idiots tell you it's four books, it's one) you don't need to start with Book of the New Sun. 'Peace' and 'The Fifth Head of Cerberus' are far shorter but also beautifully intricate and clever stories that serve as a great introduction to his style. Or you could even pick any piece of his short fiction, he's fantastic at that too.

>>9603073
Thanks, anon, that's pretty reassuring. Been meaning to try out The Book of the New Sun and The Fifth Head of Cerberus for a while but I wasn't getting much of a clear response from some people in these kinds of threads. Will certainly look into them.

Don't really like sci-fi.

File: 1491904184057.jpg (102KB, 446x385px) Image search: [Google]

102KB, 446x385px

>>9603073
>If you can't get anything from it it's a failure on your part
I've only read the first volume of botns but I so far I've only enjoyed the story at a surface level. One question I'd like to ask though;
>The first is its practical meaning, what the book calls, ‘the thing the plowman sees.’ The cow has taken a mouthful of grass, and it is real grass, and a real cow—that meaning is as important and as true as either of the others.
>Dorcas nodded. I could see the glimmer of her pale hair in the moonlight. “It seems to me that what you call the third meaning is very clear. But the second meaning is harder to find, and the first, which ought to be the easiest, is impossible.”
Does Dorcas mean the way we see our own reality is figurative? As in we assign metaphors, tropes, rhetorical figures to understand our reality and they've become so ingrained we don't know what has practical meaning and what doesn't?

I'm trying my hardest here, at least I can tell its very well written and I enjoy how wolfe lets the reader fill in the blanks, especially in the ambiguity of severians recollections.
I'm not very insightful, I don't think notes would help either or pausing after each chapter.

>tfw have a hard-on for dying earth genre
>tfw overhyped by /lit/ for Gene Wolfe's work
>tfw read Shadow and enjoyed it
>tfw level of English too low to fully understand and appreciate his genius

It really hurts

>>9603236
Wolfe in a number of places discusses the importance of symbols, as with the coin with the face of the Autarch and through the story itself- the Claw has no power that Severian himself does not already possess as he is the New Sun, but it drives him forward, because humans cling to symbols as sources of meaning and purpose [/spoilers]. Due to the nature of the narrative it is hard to talk about it partially as everything plays a part in the greater scheme of the novel.

>>9603250
Worry not, fellow ESL, for Gene Wolfe was made for multiple read-throughs.