Missing The Mystery
May. 2nd, 2007 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselMar 2007
Soldier of Sidon - Gene Wolfe - Tor Books, 2006
* * *
For me, a working memory is an absolutely essential requirement for our humanity. Without it we lose fundamental parts of our personality - our knowledge of our relationships, our personal history, our characteristic opinions. All that is left is our physical body and instinctive responses, a human shell. Alzheimers, CJD and other forms of dementia are in my opinion the worst way to die and I am deeply grateful that none of my friends or relatives has so far suffered from them. It is also why, with regret, I cannot take the idea of an afterlife seriously. The evidence that memory is a consequence solely of neuronal physical structure and chemical activity is overwhelming and grows with every new case of dementia, head trauma or stroke. I can conceive of some aspect of me continuing after death, but without memory, my shade would not, in any meaningful way, be me.
Which perhaps explains why I find Latro, the hero of the classically-set Soldier in the Mist series, the most sympathetic and tragic of Wolfe’s characters. He suffers from a head wound which has left him unable to form long-term memories, with the result that he can only remember events that have happened in the last day or so (this is medically accurate - there is a process called Long Term Potentiation that converts short-term memories into long-term ones, and which can be disrupted by damage to the brain). The texts of the books are in effect a diary that he keeps to remind himself of who he is, a task complicated by the fact that for him, gods, ghosts and demons are as real as people.
Latro is of course perfect for Wolfe’s sideways style of story-telling, allowing him to make puzzling leaps from chapter to chapter with which the reader has to keep up, and justifying the frequently skewed descriptions of major events (the busier Latro is, the less time he has to write them down or read back what he has read). Even Wolfe’s appalling female characterisation is more acceptable in the context of the classical world, where women were rarely allowed to be movers and shakers. And, of course, the fact that the other characters are aware of Latro’s disability allows all sorts of unpleasant plot developments, which Wolfe used to the full in the first two books in the series.
Wolfe himself is clearly aware of all this, which explains why, after a twenty year gap, he has brought Latro back for another adventure. In the interim, however, his style has changed considerably. The knotty ambiguous prose of the early books has been replaced by a simpler, clearer style with greater emphasis on character and less on setting narrative puzzles for readers to solve. This change was first evident in The Book of the Long Sun (where Patera Silk spends an inordinate amount of time explaining his motives to his companions) and was carried into the Wizard Knight and Book of the Short Sun series. On the whole I don’t think that this new style is an improvement. Wolfe’s characterisation is not his strongest suit, and I miss the mental scramble to keep up with the plot that was a feature of his earlier work. I feared that this new style would render Soldier of Sidon a less interesting book than its predecessors. Sadly this is largely true, although there are still flashes of the old Wolfe magic.
The story is set in Riverland (Egypt) to which Latro has journeyed with his friend Muslak, a Phoenician trader, in order to find the cause of his affliction. The satrap of Sais (Egypt was ruled by the Persians at the time that the story is set) offers them a job, which is to sail towards the source of the Nile to investigate the lands of Nubia and Nysa. He sends with them three dodgy priest-scribes who clearly all have their own obscure agendas, and Latro and Muslak acquire “river wives” from the local temple of Hathor so that Wolfe can have his obligatory passive women in the party.
The majority of the book is set on the voyage down the Nile to Nubia. En route Latro encounters various Egyptian deities and an interesting variant on a traditional monster, but nothing that significantly advances the plot. Doubtless god-games are being played but it never becomes apparent what they are. Finally they arrive in Nubia and then - hurrah! - we have one of Wolfe’s characteristic jump cuts where clearly something very dramatic has happened and the reader struggles to piece together what it was. Sadly after that things settle down again and the book ends inconclusively with Latro setting out on a quest that seems to have nothing to do with his original mission.
Clearly Wolfe has another sequel in mind, which is welcome but makes this book unsatisfactory from a dramatic point of view. A number of plots are hinted at but nothing is actually developed, and given the probable trajectory of the story it seems unlikely that the machinations of the three priests that take up so much of the text will turn out to be anything more than filler. Latro’s river-wife Myt-ser’eu is at least slightly feistier than most of Wolfe’s female characters and she is even proactive at one point, but the other characters are not especially memorable.
Nonetheless, Wolfes’ novelistic take on Jaynes’ bicameral mind theory is still refreshingly original and his classical scholarship is as impeccable as ever, resulting in an enjoyable and vivid depiction of ancient Egyptian society. And whilst I miss the enigmatic complexity of the earlier books, I still want to know what will happen to Latro next.
Soldier of Sidon - Gene Wolfe - Tor Books, 2006
* * *
For me, a working memory is an absolutely essential requirement for our humanity. Without it we lose fundamental parts of our personality - our knowledge of our relationships, our personal history, our characteristic opinions. All that is left is our physical body and instinctive responses, a human shell. Alzheimers, CJD and other forms of dementia are in my opinion the worst way to die and I am deeply grateful that none of my friends or relatives has so far suffered from them. It is also why, with regret, I cannot take the idea of an afterlife seriously. The evidence that memory is a consequence solely of neuronal physical structure and chemical activity is overwhelming and grows with every new case of dementia, head trauma or stroke. I can conceive of some aspect of me continuing after death, but without memory, my shade would not, in any meaningful way, be me.
Which perhaps explains why I find Latro, the hero of the classically-set Soldier in the Mist series, the most sympathetic and tragic of Wolfe’s characters. He suffers from a head wound which has left him unable to form long-term memories, with the result that he can only remember events that have happened in the last day or so (this is medically accurate - there is a process called Long Term Potentiation that converts short-term memories into long-term ones, and which can be disrupted by damage to the brain). The texts of the books are in effect a diary that he keeps to remind himself of who he is, a task complicated by the fact that for him, gods, ghosts and demons are as real as people.
Latro is of course perfect for Wolfe’s sideways style of story-telling, allowing him to make puzzling leaps from chapter to chapter with which the reader has to keep up, and justifying the frequently skewed descriptions of major events (the busier Latro is, the less time he has to write them down or read back what he has read). Even Wolfe’s appalling female characterisation is more acceptable in the context of the classical world, where women were rarely allowed to be movers and shakers. And, of course, the fact that the other characters are aware of Latro’s disability allows all sorts of unpleasant plot developments, which Wolfe used to the full in the first two books in the series.
Wolfe himself is clearly aware of all this, which explains why, after a twenty year gap, he has brought Latro back for another adventure. In the interim, however, his style has changed considerably. The knotty ambiguous prose of the early books has been replaced by a simpler, clearer style with greater emphasis on character and less on setting narrative puzzles for readers to solve. This change was first evident in The Book of the Long Sun (where Patera Silk spends an inordinate amount of time explaining his motives to his companions) and was carried into the Wizard Knight and Book of the Short Sun series. On the whole I don’t think that this new style is an improvement. Wolfe’s characterisation is not his strongest suit, and I miss the mental scramble to keep up with the plot that was a feature of his earlier work. I feared that this new style would render Soldier of Sidon a less interesting book than its predecessors. Sadly this is largely true, although there are still flashes of the old Wolfe magic.
The story is set in Riverland (Egypt) to which Latro has journeyed with his friend Muslak, a Phoenician trader, in order to find the cause of his affliction. The satrap of Sais (Egypt was ruled by the Persians at the time that the story is set) offers them a job, which is to sail towards the source of the Nile to investigate the lands of Nubia and Nysa. He sends with them three dodgy priest-scribes who clearly all have their own obscure agendas, and Latro and Muslak acquire “river wives” from the local temple of Hathor so that Wolfe can have his obligatory passive women in the party.
The majority of the book is set on the voyage down the Nile to Nubia. En route Latro encounters various Egyptian deities and an interesting variant on a traditional monster, but nothing that significantly advances the plot. Doubtless god-games are being played but it never becomes apparent what they are. Finally they arrive in Nubia and then - hurrah! - we have one of Wolfe’s characteristic jump cuts where clearly something very dramatic has happened and the reader struggles to piece together what it was. Sadly after that things settle down again and the book ends inconclusively with Latro setting out on a quest that seems to have nothing to do with his original mission.
Clearly Wolfe has another sequel in mind, which is welcome but makes this book unsatisfactory from a dramatic point of view. A number of plots are hinted at but nothing is actually developed, and given the probable trajectory of the story it seems unlikely that the machinations of the three priests that take up so much of the text will turn out to be anything more than filler. Latro’s river-wife Myt-ser’eu is at least slightly feistier than most of Wolfe’s female characters and she is even proactive at one point, but the other characters are not especially memorable.
Nonetheless, Wolfes’ novelistic take on Jaynes’ bicameral mind theory is still refreshingly original and his classical scholarship is as impeccable as ever, resulting in an enjoyable and vivid depiction of ancient Egyptian society. And whilst I miss the enigmatic complexity of the earlier books, I still want to know what will happen to Latro next.