Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

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But hey ho, it's Christmas, so let's leave the last word on this topic to you-know-who [the jester in all of us] - and yes, his roots are Rabelasian!

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The Book of the New Sun

Gene Wolfe

Illustrated by Sam Weber

Introduced by Neil Gaiman

Limited to 750 hand-numbered set

 

The tetralogy The Book of the New Sun is one of the greatest works of speculative fiction. In 1998, Locus Magazine ranked it third in a list of 36 all-time best fantasy novels before 1990, based on a poll of subscribers. [It was behind only The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but is nothing like either, though Wolfe and Tolkein corresponded.] He was often considered to be not only one of the greatest science fiction authors, but one of the best American writers regardless of genre.

 

Michael Swanwick:

"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, Meliville 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."

 

Harlan Ellison:

"Gene Wolfe is engaged in the holy chore of writing every other author under the table. He is no less than one of the finest, most original writers in the world today. His work is singular, hypnotizing, startlingly above comparison. The Shadow of the Torturer breaks new ground in American literature and, as the first novel of a tetralogy, casts a fierce light on what will certainly be a lodestone landmark, his most stunning work to date. It is often said, but never more surely than this time: This book is not to be missed at peril of one's intellectual enrichment."

 

George R. R. Martin:

''The books are chests full of wonders; full of images like jewels, of words a reader can get drunk on, of people and incidents that will linger long in memory.''

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by Flex Mentallo

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“. . .Consciousness came and went.

Consciousness went and came like the errant winds of spring, and I, who so often have had difficulty in falling asleep among the besieging shades of memory, now fought to stay awake as a child struggles to lift a faltering kite by the string.”
 

 

“And it came to me that these trees had been hardly smaller when I was yet unborn, and had stood as they stood now when I was a child playing among the cypresses and peaceful tombs of our necropolis, and that they would stand yet, drinking in the last light of the dying sun, even as now, when I had been dead as long as those who rested there.”
 

― Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun

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The Folio Society Limited Edition was published soon after Wolfe's death, though he did sign the limitation labels shortly before he died.

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The edition sold out within two weeks of publication.

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“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.”

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One may best summaries the tetralogy as a bildungsroman, that is, a story that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, in which character change is a key factor. If this seems familiar to afficionados of comic books, it should!

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It was a decision to replace a lifetime's worth of sci fi and fantasy paperbacks with hardcover editions that sparked my current focus on book collecting, not realizing how challenging many editions would be to find [let alone to afford, in certain cases]. While it's very satisfying to obtain a pristine limited edition of a set of books like Wolfe's - and incidentally, already selling on the secondary market for $2000 or thereabouts - the real thrill of book collecting for me is and always will be the discovery of something previously unknown.

 

Raymond Ching. The Bird Paintings Water colours and pencil drawings/ 1969- 1975

 

 

Edited December 24, 2019 by Flex Mentallo

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I've had a lifelong interest in nature painting - especially those produced in the nineteenth century by the likes of Edward Lear and John Gould - but only recently began to look at contemporary artists in this field and seek out books on them.Ray Ching was born in Wellington, New Zealand and has been called an ‘artist’s artist’ and among bird painters is a draughtsman without peer. A renowned artist of life-like portraits, Ching paints obsessively to push the boundaries of bird painting from its more familiar tradition, to break entirely new ground.

Obtained from a German book dealer on Abebooks relatively cheaply, I was surprised by its enormous size - it is 19" tall [yet still not the largest book found this year!] And the production values are amazing.

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Given his almost supernatural ability to bring birds to life, he does not consider himself a wildlife artist, which, although he admires many exponents of this genre, has never been his raison d'etre. His love of the look of birds and his desire to depict them, especially in flight, is his continuing passion. There is a lightness of touch, an interest in birds in motion, of rendering qualities of light even at the expense of anatomical and surface detail that perhaps distinguishes him most.

 

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