Hello all! I'm excited to say that myself and David B. Busboom have been tapped to interview Gene Wolfe at Chambanacon this Saturday. It's a last minute substitution, so we're putting together interview content as best we can.
I'd like to throw it out to the wider group: does anyone have any burning questions or a particular area on which they'd like Mr. Wolfe to comment?
Be forewarned, he's notoriously cagey about his puzzles. 
:)
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Yorgos Nls Please share the interview when you have it. Thanks!
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Andrew Busam Absolutely! I'll make it available.
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Jake Gerdes Let him know his fans need at least a short story conclusion to Latro's adventures!
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Andrew Busam I'd certainly like that!
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Sergey Lenkov Andrew Busam Yes, Andrew, yes. Please ask him.
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Gregorio Montejo Is Wolfe working on another novel?
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Marc Aramini You can always ask about how his writing process has changed if at all and getting back into it after his surgery - rumor is he just finished one and submitted it.
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Marc Aramini Not a true question but I have found his late novels to be quite dependent upon extratextual allusions. How important is a shared canon of literary and historical reference to Wolfe as a writer? Strains of allusiveness have always been present, but they felt more like “Easter eggs” than central narrative conceits in the past.
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Andrew Busam That's interesting. I've picked up on the winks to other authors, myths, etc, but I've not encountered an instance I felt was a central narrative conceit. Can you give me an example?
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Marc Aramini You can’t solve sorcerer’s house without knowing the story of Apollonius and the Lamia of Corinth, who can make a house appear to suck the life force from her victims, servants and all. There is a Corinthian coin and goldwurm, who kills “ambrosius” (referring to Apollonius, of course), and many other allusions to the story, but it is never mentioned by name. If you don’t know it, you can’t solve it.
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Andrew Busam Aha, I'm tracking.
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Bruce Chrumka Thank, Marc!
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Cecilia Michel Lopez he used to advise aspiring writers to learn to write short stories first & only then try novels. You might ask him if he still advises that, since there are now so few venues to publish short stories, esp .of folks who don't have novels out or name recognition.
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Andrew Busam I'm not very familiar with the publishing markets. Can you elaborate on what's going on/what changed there that makes it hard to publish short stories?
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Marc Aramini Before Dune there were almost no non-serialized long novels - even foundation, more than human, etc were fix ups from novellas and short stories published in magazines. Even pre-new wave there was a healthy short story market. Now authors are going right into novels because magazines are drying up and the big fat epic fantasy trend is in full swing. It makes for amateurish novels, of course.
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Marc Aramini Even Dune had a shorter form and was serialized, but it led to the viability of sf books.
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Andrew Busam That is a distinct change in the path authors can take. I can see how that would be difficult. Are there any sources online that publish short stories that have any gravitas?
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António Pedro Marques It's worse, now everything has to be not even trilogies but pentalogies or more.
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Cecilia Michel Lopez Others may disagree, but what I see in the U.S. is that there are few venues for short stories, including online, and they soon come to be dominated by the same names - who are often novelists already. Big themed collections of short stories (which I often read) are also dominated by the short stories of novelists.
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David A Stockhoff It's still obviously good advice. Just not necessarily good CAREER advice. :(
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David A Stockhoff In that context, I wonder if he has an opinion on the formalized "Young Adult" market. It also did not exist 30 years ago. It actually seems somewhat friendly to newish writers; it favors short novels and does not require opuses, but does seem to require serialization. Is it overly rigid? Can it be broken into? Some of it is good fun (the Hilda series is an example), but surely there are challenges.
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Levente Borsai Hi, if you may, I have a question. Ask him that while he created (and operated) his fantasy worlds didn't he feel sometimes a strong desire to remain in these worlds? To become a part of them instead of being their external creator/inventor? To wake up in his artwork?
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Andrew Busam I like it!
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Sergey Lenkov Wil there be any continuation to Soldier of Sidon or it's last novel of this series?
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Benjamin Dyson I would like to hear him speak about what he is reading these days and does he have any books that he returns to and rereads on a regular basis
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Andrew Busam I know he's commented in previous interviews that his eyesight has deteriorated, and can't read for very long periods of time any more. I wonder if he does anything with audiobooks?
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Marc Aramini He should listen to Land Across on audio book if he hasn’t and see what he thinks ... wow that narrator does the voices so differently. I am not an audiobook person at all but I gave that one a try to see if anything else would jump out at me and was fascinated by the verbal gymnastics of the reader.
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Andrew Busam Marc Aramini Absolutely! That was a work I listen to on audiobook over the course of a few long car trips, and I was similarly impressed.
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Simon Ounsworth Marc Aramini ... but never listen to that old RNIB talking books version of 5HoC that's floating around on Youtube. Good lord 😑
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James Pepe I'd be interested to hear what he thinks of House of Leaves or The Kingkiller Cronicles.
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António Pedro Marques Now and then I meet intellectually curious young readers who read a lot and aren't afraid of large books but don't know better than 'realistic'/'literalistic' literature, because they haven't had the right exposure. I'm very much against recommending things to others, but what novel would he think such readers might benefit from?
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Andrew Busam What kind of literature should they be introduced to? I'm a little hung up on 'realistic/literalistic'. Are you recommending more fantastic, abstract, symbolic?
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António Pedro Marques By which novel I meant which novel of his. But it could be someone else's, something that would free them from the what-you-see-is-all-there-could-ever-be mindset.
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Andrew Busam Ah, gotcha.
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Lee Pretorius Who is his favourite character in the Shannara TV Series?
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Andrew Busam Hehe, really? I'm aware that he's something of a cinephile, but is he a fan of this show?
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Lee Pretorius Andrew Busam not bloody likely. I wonder if he likes GOT? Also I wish I could hear him talk about any of the past masters of SF - Herbert, Asimov, etc.?
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Rod Mcdow I’ve read in other interviews about his meticulous rewrites. I have not heard much about how he approaches the early stages of a project. It would be interesting to hear him describe how he goes from an idea to a first draft.
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Andrew Busam I've often wondered that myself.
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James Pepe Ask him, "What has Urth to do with Jerusalem?"
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Andrew Busam What's the story behind that?
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James Pepe It's a question Tertullian famously asked "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" meaning what has Greek philosophy to do with Jewish revelation or mysticism. Or to put it more broadly what does reason have to do with faith? I suggest it because I think it would probably be a question he'd never heard before and would be a question which would provide a lot of space for him to answer.
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Dexter Van Zile James Pepe Brilliant, just brilliant! Very funny. But also a darn good question.
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James Pepe Dexter Van Zile Haha thanks.
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Simon Ounsworth Is there a novel or story he tried to write and regrets giving up on? And if so, what can he tell us about it?
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James Pepe I also recently watched an interview with Jorge Luis Borges and he said that he liked C.S. Lewis so much and dislikes Tolkien so much that to compare Tolkien to Lewis was "blasphemy". That might be fun to ask him about haha
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Cecilia Michel Lopez context on that? Because I'm wondering if Borges was thinking particularly of the savage take-down of academia in "That Hideous Strength"
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James Pepe I think he was speaking generally. He said that he found Tolkien incredibly boring and that he found Lewis to be a much better theologian. I'll post the video in a minute.
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James Pepe Cecilia Michel Lopez The context was what he thought about "serious" writers writing things for children or for a more popular audience like Kipling or Chesterton and how that effects their standing within the literary arena. Here is the video, the relevant part starts at 30:02. You might need to put on the closed captioning.
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Andrew Busam That's a neat interview. Slight correction: the comparison is to Lewis Carroll.
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James Pepe Oh your right. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are so often compaired I must have assumed that's what he was talking about. That makes it even more of a wild statement.
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Allan Anderson Also interesting due to Wolfe's deep delight in Tolkien.
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António Pedro Marques It's far less surprising when the comparison is to Lewis Carroll.
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Marty Light Ask if his Plant Engineering magazine writings are collected or available anywhere? And if he would consider writing an autobiography about his wartime experience, meeting and falling in love with his wife, conversion to Catholicism, his perspective on aging.
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Andrew Busam There's a African proverb that runs something like "When an old man dies, a library burns".
It would certainly be nice to have copies of some of this collection.
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Bruce Chrumka 'Letters Home' is a rare book by GW that is a chronicle of his experiences in Korea. A wonderful collection.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston How does he think Saul Bellow and John Updike influenced his work?
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Marc Aramini ( I don’t think Wolfe has much respect or time for mainstream literary stories like that. Proust, Borges, c a smith, dickens, Chesterton, Vance .... bellow and Updike might not even be on his radar.)
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Marc Aramini Wolfe does like Hemingway ...
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Marc Aramini When asked, he specifically referenced these two as those who’ve influenced him. Many others—yes. But these as well.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston If people presume this about him... more reason to ask. Bellow and Updike were the definitive mainstream literary writers of their time.
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Bruce Chrumka Yep, he especially dislikes Borges, Chesterton and Vance! And don't get him started on Kipling! :0)
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Frater Julianus What does he think of the persistent attitude in academia that science fiction, fantasy, and other genres are not serious literature? What does he think is behind this attitude and why does it still persist?
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Yorgos Nls Good one. I feel that there is an answer (well, almost) to your question in the prologue of endangered species
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Andrew Busam Yorgos Nls I've not read that. What does he say?
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Yorgos Nls It's not a direct answer to the above mentioned question but I feel that if you ask him that he will answer similar to this prologue. He is telling why he is writing the stories and what he wants to communicate with the reader. He is saying that he doesn't write for the critic or for the academic, he writes only for the reader. It's a beautiful intro to the book really.
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Marc Aramini He emphasizes the place of the reader and the fact that the academy insists only dead writers can be good - “well, I’m not good yet!” (i think this has changed a little with the academy glomming onto sometimes objectively shitty contemporary writers for some tendentious agenda.)
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston That'll produce the answer concerning academia that apparently most of us want to hear. Academia CAN'T BE RIGHT to slight genre -- this is the only thing we want to hear. But if academia ever took to Wolfe in earnest and with respect, we'd show a decent reason FOR slighting genre, in feeling sort of outraged he was no longer simply... OURS. We can be Dr. Talos's, people who manipulate for our own profit, in trapping Wolfe by lending ourselves as those, only, who could ever really appreciate him. There might be better friends out there for him, but we don't want him to know they exist... and so deign the dumb things he has to say about academia, about critics, as wisdom and wisdom only. Connections with readers, the importance of it, is big in literary academia right now -- affect studies, post-critique critique. They are in the same super category of best readers as us now, valuing connections like therapists do their alliances with patients they care about profoundly... but I suspect, for us, this is something not for cheer, but actually an inconvenience. We can't grant Wolfe his right -- whether he's eager to exercise it or not -- to permeate wherever he could actually be received. Harlan Ellision wanted this for him. So too Le Guin. Have wings! We should hope for this too, but try instead to make it so even though admittedly he has only ever found himself amongst US, there's actually no reason to roam, for we're the best of all audiences already for him. Wolfe will go down with us as his ever-loyal friends, and even though he'll only have had one or two scholars thoroughly study his works -- making him about the only great author with this misfortune -- they'd have nailed him so good there was no loss here. Another first for mankind.
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Marc Aramini I would be stoked if Wolfe were given the recognition he deserved . I’ve loved him since I was a child and force him on every class I teach. Next week my 400 level mythology class is reading Soldier in the Mist. I’m a fringe pseudo-academic though, meaning I’ve spent more time in other jobs than in front of the classroom. I’m also pretty traditional in my approach to teaching and consider myself a fan and teacher more than a true academic. And we are the best of audiences for him ;)
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Marc Aramini Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Stephenson... are being accepted by the younger generation of literary critics as in no way different than your Atwoods or Ishiguros -- that is, no different than those who don't define themselves as genre but only dip into it once in a while. This is a change, a wonderful, welcome one, because previously if you didn't do that bit where you make clear you're not actually usually genre when you ostensibly are doing genre, it risked ruining reception of your book and tarnishing your reputation overall. In a sense, what I'm arguing is that amongst the younger gen. of critics I see writing in top notch literary journals like "Novel: forum on fiction," we're seeing some who are in a sense in line with Wolfe when he admirably and believably said he didn't care if he got relegated to the racks... that reputation didn't matter over-much to him, for he cared too much for the importance of writing, period. It's a great time for Wolfe to get that better introduction, for they don't know of him; I never hear him referenced. My sense of the way in is writing about how Wolfe addresses what pain and shame does to you... Severian, the torturer, is incredibly admirable in how honest he can with himself in how if someone spurns/shames him, he can want to see them beat up and destroyed -- by his own hands, preferably. This is not something he sees as commending himself, but clearly to be addressed -- the shamers he considers, are women. He fits in well, this torturer, in our current era where being able to acknowledge there's a beast in you, a beast that arises not only due to something universal... men just being men, women just being women, but because you yourself were abused and neglected/traumatized, is seen as hugely heroic. He does other courageous and very helpful things as well, by so often showing how often he has thought about the people he has engaged with in his life. They are never just into his life and forgotten --though sometimes you get baited into thinking this -- never just swords to be thrown away like filth. With Eata, he even has the courage to admit that if there had been only the slightest change of circumstance, his own journey would have been Eata's -- HE would have been the star of show, and his own... maybe Eata's.
There's a blurb of Urth of the New Sun which reads, "forges what amounts to a new kind of science fiction. Wolfe's principal purpose is to explore the relationships between morals, feelings and actions..." If this is his purpose, what best describes what he is doing, he fits very well in with what many contemporary writers are up to as part of this "sincerity" movement, a movement that includes maybe some of the writers you don't value highly but who are overall hugely respected -- Franzen, David Foster Wallace. Again, I think it could be time for him to be rediscovered, if introduced with respect for the legit values and interests of our audience.
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Marc Aramini I value David Foster Wallace greatly; Infinite Jest is SF. Franzen on the other hand ... it is his mind I don’t respect. Everything, from my point of view, winds up banal In his hands as with no other literary figure I can name. Here’s a family of jerks; let’s have a family dinner to maybe correct it. Or not. (If I ever become successful I will never “punch down” on individual artists in that way and will probably stop saying negative things in general about public figures trying to make a living. George RR Martin implying my book on Wolfe must not be good if Tor didn’t want to publish it was the equivalent of nuking that Sennalese island for no reason.)
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston In my sense, valuing your own contributions, Marc, will be easier when study of Wolfe gets broadened and dispersed, even if this means to people within academia you might not respect much... those with, quote-unquote, agendas. It's not fair to you this current sense of your being his primary acolyte... it's too easy to read you as the village that worships but that might eventually eat and destroy Severian when he's Apu Punchau. I have to fight this sense of you off when reading your work to justly see the you that has applied a fine mind very deeply into Wolfe's works. George RR Martin has been welcomed into the land of the literarri -- Atwood gushes over his work. My sense of him is that this has more value to him, this acknowledgement, than it should (Severian has a bit of a problem with this too, by the by... it's always important that he, when slighted, eventually gets noticed... by someone of more discerning judgment than the original slighter), and that he might be motivated now to perform himself almost as if he was not a creature of genre but a literary star... hyping the reputation of established presses, talking of people's efforts as trash in slush piles, etc. Have faith with what I said I see happening with some of the younger generation of critics... I think that if what you have done is of considerable value, an audience will be there eventually that is emotionally evolved enough to receive it, regardless of if an older generation, desperate for their own claim on genteel status, has made every effort to keep TOR in its new "cleaned up" form as a venerable publishing company, in part by talking the same ol' cruel and dismissive literary talk to those that still carry their old taint of longing and isolation and need.
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David A Stockhoff What does he think of the beef between Nicki Minaj and Cardi B?
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Bruce Chrumka There was a question posed a while ago about the witches, and how they were affiliated with the Seekers of Truth and Penitence, if at all, what their order was about, etc.
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Dexter Van Zile What does Gene Wolfe think of Severian as a writer?
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Frater Julianus How about another Holly Hollander book?
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James Pepe You could ask him what he thought of the alzabo in the Annihilation movie.
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Ronald Pelle ha! my thought exactly when I saw the movie....
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Stuart Howard Ronald Pelle I thought of that as well.
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Charles Gillingham If he's ever read any Pynchon.
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Marc Aramini In my long correspondence with him he seemed to be very well read in short stories and not that well read in contemporary long novels - or even the Russian beasts of the 19th century. His sensibilities are so innately pre-modern it’s hard for me to imagine him plopping down Gravity’s Rainbow and reading about cropophagia and musical ditties with octopi and V-2 missiles guided by erections. I wonder if I ever asked him that- I should read through our correspondence again someday. He loved Tristram Shandy, as do I.
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Lee Pretorius Marc Aramini maybe we should ask him about Steve Coogan’s hot chestnut scene in ‘A Cock and Bull Story’?
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James Pepe His writing is very existential though, don't you think?
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James Pepe Well I guess I should say what I've read of it is existential
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Marc Aramini Wolfe existential? Well ... I think the attempts of his characters to create their own meaning is doomed because that meaning must accord with universal principles and structures. Certainly there are existential themes in his work but I have always thought of them as slightly critical of those subjective assignations of meaning when we ourselves are shaped via pre-existing forces, whether they be symbolic or cultural or divine.
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Charles Gillingham I only ask because Free Live Free is compared to Pynchon.
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Charles Gillingham Also the back of Exodus compares it to GR.
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James Pepe Severian goes on an existential journey. He basically starts out as Dostoevsky's Underground Man and works his way through his existential problems over the course of the five books of the series. Number Five is basically a Nietzsche in bad need of a pharmakon like Kierkegaard or The Brothers Karamazov. In a broad sense, any work that addresses the question of personal identity can be describes as existential. I agree that Wolfe is critical of the potency preceding act idea of (most) existentialism, especially that of Sartre. But one doesn't have to subscribe to nonsense like that to make existentialist investigations in ones writing. Discovering the truth of oneself and ones position in the world is an existentialist project.
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António Pedro Marques That's a much too broad definition of existentialism imo.
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James Pepe What is?
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Nathan Carson Congrats on this gig! He's marvelous to talk to as long as you don't try to get him to explain his stories.
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Jenny Lovern I'd like to know what movies made a particular impression on him in his childhood.
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Bruce Chrumka Cagey about his puzzles? I once asked him if he considered 'The Fifth Head of Cerberus' a novel or a novella collection. Still trying to parse his answer!
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James Pepe You should ask him a bunch of questions as if you were on a first date with him and didn't know anything about him.
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James Pepe The more I think about this the awesomer I think it would be.
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Stuart Howard I'd like to know if (as I suspect) he is an admirer of Le Guin. Also, please get him talking about Jack Vance.
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James Pepe He and Le Guin were good friends.
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Stuart Howard James Pepe Ah! Thank you.
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Sergey Lenkov Stuart Howard But he wasn't admirer - he critisized her untopical novels as Always Coming Home.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Sergey Lenkov Too strong!... he listed LeGuin as one of the writers who influenced him. So a genuine admirer, with qualifications... which would be her own take on him.
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