If Borges wrote full-length novels he would have written something like BOTNS.
>>7783369
thank god he didn't and solidified his immortality then.
>>7783373
>>7783369
Gene Wolfe wrote short stories and they sure as hell are nowhere near Borges's.
>>7783796
I disagree. And they are pretty different anyway.
>>7783796
borges is shit anyway. so fucking overrated.
>>7783369
I'll give you 10 minutes to explain this in detail.
>>7784187
BotNS makes heavy use of, among other things, the various tropes and tenets of magical realism. I've got heavy eye strain, so I'm not going to list off too many examples, but the whole world is littered with magical realist stuff.
More importantly, though, Wolfe's appeal, much like Borges', rests on subtly and slightly warping logic and reality then dealing with the often implications it has. Borges confined himself to short stories, and they end up as clever puzzles without a definite answer. Conversely, Wolfe stretches his logical and physical bizarreness over the whole world, and deals with its implications for human history, the Catholic faith, and evolution. There's still no definite answer to Wolfe's 'puzzle,' but he poses his questions in a totally masterful way.
so yeah, if Borges wrote a full-length, I doubt he would have relied on pulp aesthetics so much, and he would have possibly targeted it at different parts of the human experience, but thematically and compositionally, it would have been similar to Book of the New Sun.
>>7784232
so, what you're saying is, that it's exactly the same but totally different.
>>7784239
different imagery and the same tools to arrive at a largely similar conclusion.
I feel like you haven't read borges or wolfe desu.
>>7784252
>i rely on my feelings to come to conclusions
hence why you associate Borges with Wolfe.
>>7784252
I'll agree on the same tools, especially on the 5th head of cerberus triptych, but no more
>>7784261
Everyone who has read both associates them
>>7784261
I was considering writing "based on the evidence you've presented in your posts, I feel like you haven't read Borges or Wolfe" but I figured the first part was implied.
>>7784274
BotNS is like one part magical realism, one part sf, and one part its own bizarre hallucinatory dreamworld in terms of imagery as well. And yeah, if you stretched the scope of a Borges story over the entire earth, you'd have something resembling Book of the New Sun.
Be that as it may, I cannot remain silent when the glory of Gene Wolfe is besmirched! Anyone whom both Neal Gaiman and I both like must be doing something right.
>>7784293
Gaiman actually has a pretty good taste from what I've seen, even if his own writing isn't really something I'd read any more of.
>>7784284
No, if you stretched the scope of a Borges story over the entire earth you'd have Tlön,U,OT. Over the entire universe? The library. Wolfe's greater lengths do not proceed from his eyes being set any wider
>>7784318
So you recognize they are similar?
>>7784318
>Tlön,U,OT. Over the entire universe? The library
those stories still only deal in one aspect. they're fleeting, and aren't given enough time to explore their themes in any greater way than presentation of the puzzle.
Also how the fuck does the library deal with the entire universe?
>>7784372
>Maybe you should read it again and pay attention to the cheeky opening
Saying "the entire universe" at the start doesn't immediately concern your story with the entire universe. It's still only concerned with a few very limited aspects.
Not saying it isn't brilliant, but it's a short story and that somewhat limits thematic scope.
you're a cool anon though.
Why do Wolfe-tards keep using that fuck awful cover?
>>7784392
We don't.
>>7784412
I have no fucking idea, this one is disgusting and I'm unsure who they were targeting and did they even read the book.
>>7784552
Yeah but what else can you do? Read them? Don't be ridiculous.
>>7784552
If Wolfe's prose is so good, as the quoters keep insisting, why are his book covers so terrible? I've seen the Short Sun covers. They are not so good.
>>7784893
And by that, I mean that the quality of art should have attracted artists worthy to reflect the quality of the writing.
I admit that's a shaky correlation, as Sanderson's prose is arse, yet his cover arts, especially the French ones, are pretty good quality.
This is now a judge a book by its cover thread
>>7784926
i'd read that.
>>7784949
For sure. I love pulpy slasher fiction.
>>7784893
This other one seems unique from most fantasy covers to me.
>>7783369
right
>>7785196
I love this cover. It was the cover that caught my interest, actually.
>>7784912
AMANO
M
A
N
O
Just finished Long Sun last night
>that epilogue
suddenly the whole thing just got retroactively spooky
>>7785861
Hello Combiner
>>7785912
H-how did you know?
>>7785923
Because I just saw on gr that you finished it.
And how many people just finished it here?
>>7783369
1. If Borges wrote full-length novels it would be like Eco.
2. Wolfe's writing reminds me more of Nabokov. He isn't as philosophically rigorous as Borges but he likes to write stories that hide its elements under the prose.
>>7786146
Wolfe is quite philosophical, or rather theological. Maybe less so than Borges (I wouldn't say that, but I never really got into him deeply so it's based more on an impression), but certainly more than Nabokov.
>>7786237
The recent spate of Wolfe threads have clearly been started by newfags all using the same image.
>>7786261
Oh yeah, that might also explain why they're 80% shit
I don't think Wolfe uses magical realist techniques all that much. I would define magical realism as a style or genre where magical things happen but they're treated obliquely, as everyday events, rather than incidences of the supernatural, example, the old woman ascending to heaven in 100 Years of Solitude.
t's true that BotNS has a bit of apparently miraculous stuff going on, but the characters react to it as miraculous, not as expected. Moreover, as an engineer, Wolfe designed Urth with a great deal of rigor which is foreign to magical realist fantasy. Think of the loving description of Terminus Est's mercury core, how the undines are unable to survive on land because of their mass, the magicians who capture Sev and Little Sev who are actually con artists, even the witches with their non-obscurantist philosophy ("There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.") All the engineering stuff in BotNS is superbly well worked out and things almost always happen for good reasons. It's just that the reasons are sometimes hundreds of pages away. One of the reasons rereading Wolfe is so rewarding is that he's so careful to drop hints and explanations with bigger and bigger ramifications so mysteries ARE explained. Unlike magical realist fiction where supernatural events happen 'cause Latin America.
Incidentally, in an interview I read somewhere, Wolfe speaks dismissively of the term, saying, iirc, "Magical realism is a term for fantasy written in Spanish."
>>7786585
I agree with this. There's already very little distinguishing magical realism from say surrealism.
Wolfe just writes really good sci-fi that dosent spell everything out, it goes at its own pace and rewards you for keeping up.
>>7786135
Huh, dont even remembering marking as read or rating it. Finished it pretty late at night.Then had dreams about being Silk.
>>7786585
>Incidentally, in an interview I read somewhere, Wolfe speaks dismissively of the term, saying, iirc, "Magical realism is a term for fantasy written in Spanish."
B A S E D
