Monday, April 15, 2019

When You Said

That the story doesn't exist without the reader
That every story you wrote was for me
That because I had sought and not found, you wrote "The Map"
That because, though I am not a child, there is a child alive in me, you wrote "War Beneath the Tree"
That because I have loved and lost, you wrote "The Cabin on the Coast"

When you said you were a practicing religious man, which tells me both more and less about your writing than I think
When you told me without ever saying it that the hero of your latest novel was dead and in the afterlife although he didn't know it
When you started to write in a way that conveyed more and more with fewer and simpler words
When I understood, really understood, that you would never fully, completely explain anything that happens in your books and I would never be able to trust your narrators and I shouldn't pick up your books unless I was prepared to accept the challenge--

well,
that's when I fell in love.


Gene Wolfe
1931 - 2019

One of the last of the true giants



Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

No comments: