PEACE

and other secondary considerations - the novel by Gene Wolfe

“All great books teach you how to read them, while you read them.”
- Brandon Budda

I wanted so much to understand Gene Wolfe’s Peace when I reread it recently—after my first time five years ago, I was completely baffled. 

I’m not sure where I was mentally back then (not an inconsiderable question) but now it feels like a completely different book; it was so strange, so difficult and inscrutable the first time around, I simply didn’t acquire any memorable images or tropes. I remembered there was a barn, but the barn I read about this time was a completely different barn than I remembered.

On the surface, Peace is the narrated memoir of Alden Dennis Weer, an elderly Midwesterner in a small town. None other than Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods, Sandman and Coraline, admits he first read Peace as a “gentle Midwestern memoir” and only later realized how complex it was, and how ungentle. He praises it now, apparently, but I take some comfort in knowing one of the experts of MasterClass also had no clue initially what to make of it.

And I’m pretty sure I read some article or other that compared Wolfe, and Peace specifically, to Joyce and Ulysses. Please do NOT take this as an invitation to enumerate all the ways in which this comparison is laughable—I didn’t make it, and IDGAF.

But as I said, I wanted to understand Peace in part because I looked up an article five years ago and skimming the highlights, realized I had completely missed most of it. This time, I found an entire podcast devoted to this single novel by quite an amazing group of SFF/Speculative Fiction enthusiasts at Claytemple Media, which you can find HERE.

Do I recommend listening to it? Hmmm. Do I recommend reading Peace, having now gone through about half of OVER 25 HOURS of the podcast and generally starting to get the gist with the help of charming hosts Brandon Budda and Glenn McDorman? Double hmmm. (*UPDATE: I’ve abandoned my listening to the podcast, it’s too much.)

Now, I like these two guys very much: they are incredibly articulate and have a command of facts on a wide range of subjects from medieval history to dead languages. Most importantly, they both have a deep curiosity and willingness to research questions and references just for the fun of it. And how utterly refreshing, nowadays, to find two people who really mean it when they AGREE to DISAGREE.

Honestly I’ve enjoyed the podcast more than the book because these two affable scholars discussing their takes on Peace are clearly having a great time, and their enthusiasm is infectious. The Gene Wolfe Literary Podcast isn’t even the meat and potatoes of their work at Claytemple Media—they run at least five different podcasts on various subjects.

But here’s the thing: I really don’t care for Brandon’s assertion—

“All great books teach you how to read them, while you read them.” 

He says it more than once, and I get it, I kinda understand what he means—there are a large number of fairy tales and stories interjected throughout the text that he thinks serve as parables or guides for understanding what is going on in the main narrative. I would love to know which other books he considers also fall into this category, and more specifically how each of those illustrate this assertion (Ulysses is almost certainly one of them.)

So anyway, here’s the thing: it’s not the breadcrumbs approach, leaving clues within the text itself, I take issue with, it’s assigning the qualitative word “great” even to some works of art universally recognized as such, much less to work of a more obscure reputation within which a small number of earnest enthusiasts have immersed themselves, puzzling out an author’s meaning and intentions. 

Write it, read it, scrutinize it, podcast about it to your heart’s delight; every wrinkle and detour of art is worthwhile, and adds texture and depth to the human experience.

From an appraisal standpoint, though—what is great or what is common; what is literary versus what is commercial—I can’t help but roll my eyes at accolades heaped on art which requires knowledge, study and machinations so complex the average person cannot hope to make sense of it without the scholarship and guidance of others in order to access or understand it (i.e., “reading by committee.")

“My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.”
― Gene Wolfe

Maybe this is a personal problem, but also: on a global scale, there are real obstacles to the kind of “education” Gene Wolfe thought was the foundational viewpoint of his target audience.

Perhaps my quibble, then, is really more about authors’ intentions when they write something really difficult. Why are they doing it? For fun (like Gene Wolfe, presumably) or for other considerations? Power, propaganda, an elitest streak, some personal aggrandizement more intent on obscuring than revealing truth?

In literature, anyway, I’d just really love for us to get past this crazy indulgence where some man somewhere says to himself—

*puke

—and then gets held up as a paragon of intellectual virtue, forever coloring our collective understanding of what a quality experience of art and literature (or life itself, or “genius”) should be. There, I said it. 

NEWSFLASH: You’re still dead, James Joyce! Dead, dead, dead.

Peace (once you realize the central conceit which you will almost certainly never figure out on your own) was based on Wolfe’s decision to represent the main character’s point of view in an intentionally jumbled, kaleidoscopic way—he set out to write a labyrinth. Being entirely a work of speculative fiction, it might just as easily have been presented in any number of other more accessible formats.

Yes, it would have been a different book; yes, it would have deprived its fans of a “great” mystery and lots of fun; no, I’m not saying “Don’t write like that.” All I’m suggesting is that maybe we examine the urge to throw the word “great” around—I, for one, am almost always suspicious of the label.

You say “GREAT!”—I say “Says who?”

Read Peace; don’t read Peace—coffee, tea or Tang—it all really is entirely up to you, and you’ll be just fine either way.

If you do read it, though, you’re gonna need a podcast.