by Gene Wolfe
I made my choice and sent a party of slaves into Thrax to fetch their young master, who was perturbed, as you may imagine. “Where is my darling, my dearest girl?” and so on and so forth.
“My dear young man,” I told him, “if you had seen the company she kept, you would not have loved her quite so much.”
Melito: On a certain farm there lived a cock, a hog, and a frog who became fast friends. Observing that parties of human friends often went out to hunt together, they decided to do so as well, and one sunny day left with good heart, the cock standing on the hog’s back while the frog squatted between its ears.
They had not gone far when they met a fierce lion, who licked his chops at the thought of a meal of pork with an appetizer of chicken and a dessert of frog’s legs. But before he could leap roaring upon them to kill them, his curiosity got the better of him and he asked them, “What is it you three fools do in my forest?”
“Hunting!” crowed the cock.
“Hunting!” grunted the hog.
“Hunting!” croaked the frog.
At this the lion laughed until the tears rolled down his tawny cheeks. “I’ve been a hunter all my life,” he told them, “and the Increate himself could not so arrange it that the three of you, acting in concert, should each have his prey.”
It so happened that an angel overheard him, and smiling to himself, this angel caused a great oak to fall near where the four stood talking.
At once the cock, who was quick of wit, flew to the place where the roots of the oak had heaved up the soil and exposed a great many fat, delicious worms.
Seeing him, the hog, who was not much slower than he, shook off the frog and rushed to the boughs, where a thousand delicious acorns were now within easy reach.
“Well, my scrumptious little green hors d’oeuvre,” said the lion, “it appears your friends have proven me wrong and so saved themselves, for I would not wish to molest those favored by the powers above. Now if you will just tell me how a froggie can eat an oak tree, I’ll let you go too.”
“Sieur,” said the frog, “just wait until you see the flies I’ll have when those acorns have gone through that pig.”
Hallvard: Upon the isle in the south where I was born, we tell a great many stories, but few jokes. Instead of a joke, I will tell you a true story. It happened to me, and I have always thought it amusing.
In winter the sun does not shine upon our isle at all. For a time the sky grows light, and then we know it is about noon; but the sun himself does not appear. That is the time when we mend our boats and our nets, and carve furniture and tableware from the driftwood we have gathered, and tell so many long stories before our fires.
At last the sun appears, and it is the season of celebration. The winter work is done, or should be. The spring work has not yet begun. Then each family on the island invites all the rest—unless there should be some quarrel—and there is music, and the houses so full that only one can dance at a time.
So things go until each family has played host. Then it is the last night, the night for the men’s party and the women’s party. The men meet in the house where the men meet to talk, and the women in the house where the women meet to talk, and everyone brings the best of what food remains, for there will be new food soon. What the women do and say, I do not know. It would be bad luck even to ask. In the house where the men meet, it is the time of great lies. Through the long winter days, the man who makes the best harpoons has made the best harpoon he can. Its head is of the best steel, which comes from the black stones that fall from the sky. Its shaft is of the best wood, light and yet so strong it will bend like a bow. This harpoon will be given to him who tells the greatest lie.
For fear of being mocked, not everyone attempts these lies. The younger men in particular—such as I was then—only sit and listen and laugh. In spring, in the boats or in the fields, they will repeat the lies to each other, learning how such lies are made and told.
Now there was a certain man who had won the harpoon three times. The lie he told was always the same, but each year he varied the details, and he told it better than any of the rest told theirs, making his own voice the voices of various speakers, and the sound of the waves, and so forth. This lie of his always ended with a lie about a talking walrus who crawled into his boat with him and told a lie of its own, its voice thick with the shellfish the walruses scrape from the sea-bottom and crackling with their shells. This man spoke last, because it is the custom that he who won in the previous year shall speak last this year, that being the best place.
Another man was there who had told good lies each year, different each year, and yet had never won, because the man who told about the walrus won. In listening so long and so bitterly, this man had learned to do the walrus-voice almost as well as he who told the lie, and he was determined, in the year I speak of, to win. He had concealed a walrus’s skin and tusks near the door of the house where the men meet to talk, and when he had told his own lie he excused himself as if to answer a call of nature. Then he waited outside listening for the walrus-voice, for he was resolved to ruin the climax of the other’s lie.
In time, the moment came when the walrus in the lie heaved itself from the sea and clambered into the liar’s boat. There was a knock at the door.
I was one of the youngest present, and so I was seated near the door, which is the least warm place. I opened it, and saw outside in the dark and the snow the figure of a huge walrus standing upright.
It spoke to me, and in terror I slammed the door in its face. Turning to the assembled men, I yelled, “There is a walrus outside! It wants to come in!”
That is how I won my first harpoon.
Foila: In my land there was once a certain armiger who had a columbary full of doves. They were white and very beautiful, and each day they went flying over the countryside to gather their food, and each night they returned to their nests. The wingward who cared for these doves was an old peon who had become very wise, for it is well known that in flying birds trace letters and symbols in the air, and he who reads them may learn many things. The wingward had been reading them for fifty years. Each day he counted the doves as they left, and counted them again when they returned.
One day he noticed that a dove was missing, and that certain other doves had their white wings spotted with scarlet. He wondered at this.
On the next day, he noticed another dove gone, and also that the wings of certain doves were spattered with green, at which he wondered yet more.
On the third day, yet another dove failed to return; but some of those that did return had wings dotted with blue.
On the fourth day, he took a dove’s feather in his teeth, with arms outspread turned seven times against the course of the sun, and moaned three times like a dove. Whereupon he became a dove, as small as they and as white, and with them he flew out of the columbary and across the pampas and the rivers. And with his wings he wrote in the sky justice.
At last the wheeling flock reached a certain village, and a certain house in that village, and behind that house corn was spread upon the ground. Here they fell from the sky like snowdrops and began to eat the corn.
But the wingward did not eat the corn. Instead he looked around him and saw on every side the tubs and herbs used in dyeing. For it was the house of a dyer, such as we have in my land, who turn leather to rose and yellow and other such unnatural colors.
The wingward was so busy looking at all this, and fixing in his mind the location of the village, that he did not see the dyer himself creeping up behind him with a round net on a long pole. Before he knew what had happened, he was caught, and all the other doves went flying up, the wings of some spotted with cerise. Then the poor wingward was carried into the kitchen, where a pigeon pie was all prepared, save for the meat that must go in it.
It seemed a horrid place to him, for to his eyes the knives were much larger than swords. But he kept his wits about him; and just as he could moan like a dove when he was a man, so he could sp
eak like a man though he was a dove. And he said, “Harken, fellow! I am a magical dove. Set me free, and you shall have three wishes.”
For he could not change himself into a man again while he was held captive without losing all his power forever.
“What!” said the dyer. “Three wishes?”
“It is the ancient law of magical doves,” said the wingward, who knew he was as good as loose. “If someone catches us and frees us, we must grant him wishes three, which we do.”
“What about four?” said the dyer, who was a hard bargainer.
“I can’t do that,” the wingward told him—still in the form of a dove. “But remember, if you catch me again you’ll have three more wishes, making six.”
“Agreed then,” said the dyer. He shut all the doors and windows of his house and stuffed a bundle of mottled saffian up the chimney. Then he took the net off the dove-wingward and said, “Behold! You are free!”
The wingward turned himself into a man again at once and seized the dyer. “You’ve been killing the doves of my master the armiger,” he said. “I place you under arrest.”
The dyer struggled, but though the wingward’s hair was white as a dove’s wing, his arms were strong as steel. “You promised me three wishes,” whimpered the dyer.
“Ask away,” said the wingward.
“Set me free!”
“Granted within the month,” said the wingward. “For once a man is free of the chains of life, no power of mine can hold him.”
“Don’t let the armiger kill me,” groaned the poor dyer.
“Granted also,” said the wingward. “He won’t soil his swordblade on you. The seneschal will strangle you with a bowstring.”
“I don’t want to die!”
“Trust me,” said the wingward. “Thy bolt is at an end, thy mordant prepared, and thy lake crossed. Thou shalt never dye again.”
Master Ash: Once a man such as I, a man who walks the corridors of time, was approached by a rich woman. “I wish to see the end of the world,” she said. “Show it to me, and I will double your fortune.”
“Doubled, my fortune would remain but small,” said the scholar.
“Tripled, if you like,” said the woman.
“It is forbidden to use such powers as mine to satisfy idle curiosity,” said the scholar.
Then the rich woman told him all her riches should do to him and his children if he did not obey her.
“Very well then,” said the scholar. “Would you see the time when the sun swells and Urth falls thereto like a cinder in a grate?”
“No,” said the rich woman. “That is only a larger fire, and I have seen many fires.”
“Then would you see the Grand Gnab, when the universe shall fall into itself?”
“No,” said the rich woman. “For that is not the end of anything, but the beginning of a new universe.”
“Then tell me what I must show you,” said the scholar.
The rich woman took thought with herself, and at last she said, “Show me the end of Life. I would see the last agonies of the last creature to live upon Urth.”
“Very well,” said the scholar; and they stood upon a plain of ice, with the red sun no brighter than the moon.
“Where is the last creature?” said the woman. “That is what I wish to see. Here everything is already dead.” A cold wind scoured the plain, and she drew her furs more tightly around her.
“Why no,” the scholar told her. “You live, and so do I.” Handing her a mirror, he vanished down the corridors of time.
Answer to Eata’s riddle: “Please, Master, you’re hurting my arm!”
The Rewards of Authorship
Q: Why have you chosen a question and answer format for this essay?
A: Because I’m going to try to answer the questions I’ve been asked by readers, and those that I think readers and beginning writers might like to ask or should ask. This seems to be the most straightforward way to do it.
Q: How do you write a book?
A: You write a lot. When the pile of manuscript threatens to fall over, that’s a book. I realize this sounds flip, but that’s the way it’s done. If the manuscript is one long story, you’ve written a novel. If it’s a lot of short stories, you’ve written a collection. If it’s about your day-to-day doings, you’ve written a diary; for an example, read About the New Yorker and Me, by E. J. Kahn, Jr., which is a good one.
Q: Which is easiest?
A: No one can tell you that. It depends on your temperament.
Q: The diary sounds easy.
A: How interesting is your life?
Q: I’m supposed to ask the questions. What’s the difference between a novel and a short story?
A: Back to Jack Woodford. He said, “A novel is a story that is long, and a short story is a story that is short.” He was right.
Q: I took a course in college, and the professor said the novel was the simultaneous expression of literary themes through a multileveled narrative— A: Stop right there. That kind of thing is intended for future academics, so they’ll look good in common-room arguments. It is of no interest or value to novelists, and in fact has nothing to do with them.
Q: He also said that each volume in a trilogy should be a finished story in itself, the various parts being interconnected by a progression in time and overlapping characters. You don’t do that in The Book of the New Sun. Shouldn’t you have? It’s sort of all one book, with breaks in between.
A: That’s right. Did you enjoy the books?
Q: Yes, but it still seems wrong.
A: Because your professor said so. Did he enjoy them?
Q: I don’t think he read them.
A: I don’t think so either. Did you like The Lord of the Rings?
Q: I loved it!
A: That’s “sort of all one book, with breaks in between” isn’t it?
Q: I never thought of that. I wish I had mentioned it to my professor.
A: It wouldn’t have done any good – he wouldn’t have read that either. I just wanted to point out that Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. Did your professor like Dickens?
Q: No, he hated Dickens.
A: Figures. How about Thackeray?
Q: Yeah, he loved Thackeray.
A: Then he must have known that Thackeray’s books were originally published in parts.
Q: That’s what I’m getting at. You should have published The Book of the New Sun as one big book.
A: I’m the author, not the publisher.
Q: All right. Shouldn’t the publisher have published it as one big book?
A: No.
Q: Why not? I’d of liked it like that.
A: No you wouldn’t—you wouldn’t have read it. As a hardcover book it would have cost about $30.
Q: Now I’ve got you. The Shadow of the Torturer costs $11.95; The Claw of the Conciliator costs $12.95; The Sword of the Lictor is $15.50, and you can bet the rent that The Citadel of the Autarch will be $15.95. That’s $56.35 for all four books. It would have been much cheaper for the consumer if the publisher had put out one book for $30. Besides, it wouldn’t have put me in this uncomfortable opposition to my professor.
A: But it would have put Simon & Schuster in the uncomfortable position of having red ink on their books. Very few people would have bought the $30 book and saved that $26.35.
Q: Doesn’t the publisher care about anything but money?
A: Money means nothing to you? I thought you were hot to save $26.35.
Q: Maybe I should say right here that I bought the paperbacks. I still think publishers should bring out the best possible books for the lowest possible price.
A: Publishers would tell you that competition pretty much forces them to do that now, but the lowest possible price has to include a good profit. If Simon & Schuster doesn’t make money for Gulf + Western, G + W will sell S&S or fold it. To make that profit, S&S has to offer its books in forms people will buy, not in the form dictated by some professor. Or the au
thor, for that matter.
Q: Shouldn’t publishers be subsidized by the government?
A: Hundreds of them are. They’re called university presses. Some are subsidized by the Federal Government. Most are subsidized by the governments of the states. They print tons of bad criticism nobody wants to read, and a few good books that are read by a couple of hundred people apiece. I can only think of one book published by a university press within the last 10 years that thousands of people liked—A Confederacy of Dunces. They only published that because a novelist, Walker Percy, made them do it.
Q: You seem to be down on colleges. I’ve been thinking of taking a creative writing course. Should I? Will it help me become a professional writer?
A: Who’s teaching the course?
Q: I don’t know.
A: You should. Find out who he is and what he’s written and who published it. If he’s written at least one good book or a dozen short stories that have been published outside the little magazines, fine. For a while Nabokov taught at Cornell; if you’d been going to Cornell then, you’d have been crazy not to take his course. But most teachers aren’t Nabokov or anything close to him.
Q: I’ll bet nobody went.
A: No. He was very popular.
Q: It still seems to me that even if the teacher weren’t a successful writer himself, he might be able to help me.
A: Would you take Differential Equations 301 from somebody who couldn’t set up and solve differential equations?
Q: If these people can’t write, what gives them the right to teach writing courses?
A: They have PhDs.
Q: Sounds like a bad system.
A: The PhDs like it.
Q: Don’t colleges get real writers to teach courses sometimes? Like Nabokov?
A: Yes, that’s why I said you should find out who’s teaching the course.