Gene Wolfe and His Importance To American Literature (WA#8)

The Science fiction writing of Gene Wolfe has a style that is very different from other writers of his time, and uses unique dense powerful language, along with creative writing along with very subtle yet important political messages. Upon first researching Gene Wolfe a few questions popped into mind. If he has won many awards for his science fiction writing, why does he have such small recognition in the American writing scene? My answer to this question cumulated over my reading of three of his works, including two prize winning novels, along with a book of short stories.
An award winning writer Michael Swanwick has said: "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."[3] Among praise from critics, Gene Wolfe’s writing has a wealth of literary criticism, which examines his books and the details and significance of his complicated plot devices.
Wolfe’s books did not catch on with the general population, as did science fiction writing from his contemporaries such as Orson Scott Card, or Kurt Vonnegut. This is because his writing has such a level of detail and complexity that the average reader would feel unaccustomed to the subtleness of his plot devices. Literary critic
Larry McCaffery described gene Wolfe’s writing stories as “placed within landscapes so rigorously drawn and rich in evocative details that they seem to rival reality itself in their diversity and vitality”.
The gap between a small reader population, and wide literary praise is an apparent paradox that I would like to explore in my essay. His work as a mechanical engineer may have influenced the way that he seems to engineer his writing, much like one would design and calculate every spring and gear in a mechanical system. In my essay I will first substantiate the quality of his work by citing details in his writing that the reader must piece together in order to truly understand the work.
In his novel the Shadow of the Torturer, the main character is an executioner who grows up in a society where everyone lives in Guilds which train each person as an apprentice. The main character goes on a journey, and along the way gene Wolfe gives a beautiful sensory description of the different environments. This however is not what makes him stick out from other science fiction writers of his time. The reason why there is a gap between Gene Wolfe’s obvious significance due to the mass of attention from literary critics, and his lack of quantity of readers is due to the way in which Wolfe crafts his plot details. Gene Wolfe revolutionized science fiction writing in the significance of seemingly insignificant details among dense complicated novels.