American Author proposal (WA#6)

Gene Wolfe is the American author that I am most interested in studying, and analyzing for the upcoming American author project. Science Fiction is a very important genre, and Gene Wolfe has an interesting and unique role to play in the science fiction realm. Many people see science fiction as tasteless entertainment that does not have to do with the real world. This is not true for the literature I am familiar with, and I am confident that the books that I will encounter in this project will be just as intellectually stimulating.
Many of Gene Wolfe’s books are based in the future and are somewhat of a political commentary on modern events. One example of this is the shadow and claw series where thousands of years in the future the earth’s sand is made up of finely chopped and degraded plastic, with a primitive medieval society that has regressed technologically, with the vestiges of civilization remaining. This seems to be challenging the existence of our civilization in the future, and also lamenting the problems with the use of plastics, and non-renewable resources. The political nature is intertwined into the stories of adventure, and keeps the readers attention while bringing up political problems.
Wolfe’s style of writing is very unique, in that the reader is surrounded with so many details, in such a realistic fashion that the plot, is complicated and difficult to understand except in hindsight, or with re-reading. The main character takes a journey that is due to specific events, and does not have an evident logical reason. The vague fluidity of the plot will be a challenging but interesting and influential read that will make me grapple with complexity.
I have recently found out that Gene Wolfe was an industrial engineer for Pringles who designed packaging machines. Upon hearing this, I was not surprised, because many of the descriptions in the book look at objects in such a precise way. Gene Wolfe was born in 1931 and became a writer in the 1970’s. He is still writing books today, and came out with two in the past few years that I have read: The Wizard, and The Knight. Gene Wolfe has won many Nebula awards for best science fiction, among other awards, and is considered by his contemporaries as the best living author. Award-winning science fiction author Michael Swanwick has been quoted: "Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning.” Gene Wolfe has been known to say, "Real people really are unreliable narrators all the time, even if they try to be reliable narrators." This quote really describes his writing style, which is really unlike any other authors; in it’s complexity, and sense of confusion.
Although Gene Wolfe is not particularly famous to the general population as say J. K. Rowling, he has a large, innovative body of work that is complex, and would challenge me as a reader and a thinker. There is a wide body of literary criticism of Gene Wolfe, and there a whole book of over two hundred pages that interprets theme, plot, and character development and generally critiques his work from a fellow science fiction writer. I plan on reading one of his novels, possibly the claw of the conciliator, a collection of short stories; stories from the old hotel, and The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories. I will also read a book that gives literary criticism of The Book of the New Sun; Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice, and the Reader: Peter Wright. Gene Wolfe will be challenging to analyze and write about, but I will show that Wolfe has a very distinct style, that is influenced by past authors like Tolken, but will influence many science fiction authors to come.