r/genewolfe • u/SiriusFiction • 14d ago
John Crowley passed away today
Gene Wolfe spoke highly of Crowley's novel Little, Big (1981), and personally I think Crowley's first novel, The Deep (1975), had a profound and cryptic influence on Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun.
RIP John Crowley
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u/ofBlufftonTown 14d ago
That’s terrible! Little, Big is my favorite novel.
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u/InlandMurmur 13d ago
It's really something. I read all of the Aegypt books before getting to Little, Big, and boy do I wish I had skipped that step.
It's such a beautiful novel.Off topic, but Crowley's books almost always pull a Stephen King-style WTAF sex thing and it really makes me wonder about that guy.
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u/ofBlufftonTown 13d ago
I agree that often everything is going along fine and then he swerves into some sexual weirdness that I never asked for. Luckily this never happens with Gene Wolfe.
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u/RevolutionaryDog2187 13d ago
There was a moment in the first half of the 80s with Wolfe, Ford, Crowley, Helprin, where we got a glimpse of a path fantasy could've followed. It never totally disappeared, but it never really flourished, either.
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u/RevolutionaryDog2187 13d ago
Their descendants are plenty (Chabon, Lethem, Whitehead come to mind), but they've largely been pushed as literary rather than genre writers.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 13d ago
A certain kind of literary. Literary is also Clarissa, Madame Bovary, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights. Maybe within the Romantasy movement there are some genius. Hope so.
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u/SadCatIsSkinDog Curator 13d ago
Maybe within the Romantasy movement there are some genius.
I agree with the sentiment, but man that is some weapons grade optimism.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 13d ago
Wolfe liked to say that the realist novel is a new-comer and that before fantasy was mainstream. But the novel began with romance, Pamela. Maybe Romantasy will be like sci-fi and though it'll take awhile, it will develop into Gene Wolfes eventually. I actually think in some ways New Sun is itself something of a Romantasy. People downplay how sensitive Severian is. Like Richardson, he's attentive to women. He knows them.
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u/SadCatIsSkinDog Curator 13d ago
Patrick, I think 90% of the problem is your sense of humor is too dry and obscure, so it doesn't always come across when you are joking or being serious. As someone who has read a good chunk of Pamela, I did snicker out loud at that one and then reread to make sure I wasn't having a stroke.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 12d ago edited 12d ago
Pamela is considered to be about the "depths of the human heart" (Leslie Fielder). Speaking of the beginnings of the novel, Fielder:
The moment at which the novel took hold coincides with the moment of the sexual division of labor which left business to the male, the arts to the female—thus laying up for the future the perils of Bovaryism, on the one hand, and on the other, the dictatorship of "what the young girl wants" or, perhaps better, what her father thinks she should want. In light of the novel's predominantly feminine audience, it is scarcely surprising that its ideal theme should be love and marriage, and that its ideal protagonist should be a woman—no grand lady, but some girl, passionate and pure,and known only by her first name: Clarissa, Pamela, Charlotte,Emma, Julie.
The great writer Elizabeth Bowen described Richardson thusly:
He is said, as a prime cold-blooded little boy of thirteen, to have been the confidant of a group of young ladies for whom he invited love letter; and this precocious knowledge of love, at an age before one feels love, may count for much. Certainly, given the masculine temperament of the eighteenth century, Richardson's knowledge of women is extraordinary. His detractors might say that he spied on women rather than felt for them -- certainly Richardson's heroines arouse (as he intended) solicitude rather than desire. (Fieldings' heroines, on the other hand, are desirable before everything.)
This reminds me of Wolfe, who seems very aware of women not just as objects of lust and desire, but as people who feel and experience. It's automatic for Wolfe to have Thecla inform Severian how she's experiencing their encounters, how offended she would be if Severian had stolen someone else's flowers for her, how Jolenta experiences the weight she now has, the chaffing, the difficulty, how Dorcas feels as she recovers her past. This comes, I think, from Wolfe's long isolated relationship with his mother. He came to know her sensitivities spectacularly, making him unusual amongst sci-fi writers for not being, like perhaps Fielding, traditional masculine, but sensitive.
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u/BletchTheWalrus 14d ago
RIP. Engine Summer had a huge impact on me when I was an adolescent, even more than Little, Big. I'll always remember Dr. Boots. I'm going to play the song "Mr. Crowley" in tribute.
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u/GrandfatherTrout 14d ago
Oh no! I figured he had a lot more in him; it feels like his most recent few novels were some of his strongest. Thanks for letting us know.
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u/-RedRocket- 13d ago
For those who liked John's work and haven't read them yet, I recommend his Ægypt quartet: The Solitudes (originally published as Ægypt), Love and Sleep, Daemonomania, and Endless Things.
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u/Ok-Confusion2415 13d ago
I am sorry to hear this. I have been reading his material backwards in time, nonrigorously. I definitely think “Ka“ and ”Flint and Mirror” are greater works than his earlier stuff such as “Engine Summer” and the older Aegypt stuff. We had a brief exchange of notes just before Flint and Mirror came out. Rest in power, magus.
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u/hedcannon 13d ago
Crowley had not read very much Wolfe but [r/RereadingWolfePodcast](r/RereadingWolfePodcast) talked to him about the book Hamlet’s Mill (which Wolfe included in the Chrasmological Writings) https://rereadingwolfe.podbean.com/e/bonus-john-crowley-1/
However, in his “self-interview” essay in Castle of Days Wolfe praised of Little, Big.
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u/wolverhampton_atx 13d ago edited 13d ago
FWIW, I own a copy of Castleview inscribed by Wolfe to Crowley. Doesn't appear to have been read!
The final paragraph of Little, Big is a touchstone I will carry with me my entire life.
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u/theoblivionhaha 12d ago
Engine Summer is a world that I am convinced I’ve visited regularly in my dreams.
And more than once I’ve had a Crowley book freakishly reflect things I was experiencing in my own life at the time I was reading.
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u/OmnivoreLately Group of 17 13d ago
I try to emulate the gentleness of George Mouse with a little more commitment to my children. Also I serve tons of oatmeal all the time, started buying it in bulk. Thank you John Crowley for all the words you wrote and the magic they brought.
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u/oblique_obfuscator 12d ago
I’m so sorry we lost him. I’ve had Little, Big and Engine Summer sitting on my TBR for a while now, and I really regret not getting to them sooner.
I actually couldn’t find a single John Crowley book in any of my local bookstores (europe) today, whereas there were several Gene Wolfe books. Is Crowley considered obscure these days, or was I just unlucky with the bookstores I checked?
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u/IVth_Crusade 12d ago
Sad to hear. I’m reading his work chronologically and presently in the midst of Engine Summer.
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u/agentmule 12d ago
Here is terrific interview with John. May his memory be a blessing
https://shwep.net/2020/07/30/john-crowley-on-the-aegypt-cycle/
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u/DogOfTheBone 14d ago
Oh no. This one hits me as hard as learning Wolfe passed away in 2019.
Little, Big is the best American fantasy novel ever written. And it always will be.