Across the penumbra

or, I dunno, I just like "penumbra"

Aug 31, 2023

Hello amazing reader,

It’s been quite the week. I’m still in a state of awe following Substack Reads featuring SLAKE at the weekend. Since then, the days have been laced with appropriate stabs of that most special of feelings, ye olde f(r)iend imposter syndrome. But I have found moments of repose to reflect, embrace and be deeply grateful.

This all means there are a fair few eyes that are new, so I want to say a hearty thank you for trusting in a Subscribe button. Welcome!

Each week, things rotate through fiction and, err, other stuff. My hope is that over time this weekly post brings with it the anticipation of something unexpected yet familiar.

*The long shadow of imposter. Image credit: Midjourney.*

My original plan for this post was to write and share another fragment of Precipice1. I’ve written and edited two new chapters and was toying with which to post, but at the 11th hour2 I’ve decided to change tack3.

Before I engage that sail and locate the wayward wind, I’m going to linger a moment on the story’s edge.

I love dialogue. I love strong dialogue that’s believable and raw. I also love internal states and thoughts that only the reader and the point-of-view character are privy to. One of the upcoming chapters leans into both those aspects (well, I hope they all do), whilst the other features Jisa entirely on her own in more of a … I want to say action … sequence—a style that I’m far less comfortable in writing.

Anyway, waffle waffle. Here’s a snippet of the former, deep into the scene. Jisa is sitting with her friend Zinn and she is hiding from him the truths of her time with Cloud, whose presence refuses to leave her mind. She's poured herself a drink, crushed in some substance known only to her.

I take my own first sip, feeling it flood across my tongue, holding it there for a second before swallowing. My lips tingle. I run my tongue over them, along my gums, licking at the taste of
//Cloud, lying there, my lips on his//
residue.
I blink.
The prash, I can feel it, already
//the glass, so cool. Skin against my back//
warm, cradling my mind. It ignites, rushing through me.
A fraction later, the initial hit dims, subsiding into a beautiful, subtle something, and I would exist like this, if only I could. It would be manageable. Tranquil, even. An edge off of my reality.

In isolation, perhaps that comes off as jarring4. Those interjections of an altered mind state—induced by whatever prash is in her world—are meant to work both with and without the lines enclosed in // breaks, which in turn should also function on their own.

I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Gene Wolfe and the art of rereading

This week I finished book 1 of Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun. It has forever been on my pile but I finally got to it, obviously making it there decades late, the party long departed, the Sun fractionally dimmer.

It is exquisite. The most delectable of reads. The style, the prose, the constant holding back on exposition, the mystery, the world, the questions. Thecla.

I just want to talk about it.

I’m likely incapable of talking about it.

*The Folio Society’s version of The Book of the New Sun vol. 1. Of course I would like to own this version. Just look at it: https://www.foliosociety.com/au/the-book-of-the-new-sun-2-volume.html*

The story follows Severian, a torturer’s apprentice. If like me you missed the party and haven’t read the books, then I don’t want to spoil anything, but I think it’s non-spoilery to say that Severian has been exiled from his guild for [OMG-reason] and the book follows him on his journey, both physical and metaphorical. It’s dreamlike at times, but also nuanced and detailed, depicting and describing a fascinating land and world.

And the whole tale is written from Severian’s point of view, narratively framed to come across that he is writing an account of his own life, for he has a perfect memory of events (or so he claims). I do not yet know the where or from when he is writing, though there has been the occasional suggestion.

But then! But then! At the end of the book, there is a page titled “A Note on the Translation” and signed G.W. It reads as though Gene (assuming G.W. is Gene and this isn't some further ruse!) has translated this book from something he has found. It begins: “In rendering this book—originally composed in a tongue that has not yet achieved existence—into English, I might easily have saved myself a great deal of labor by having recourse to invented terms; in no case have I done so.”

If you have been here a while, you may understand my sheer glee at reading such.

Anyway, I’m well aware that a reread would unearth (unUrth …) far more meaning. Even flipping back through pages and looking at my marginalia, I notice things in the light of a new Sun. But I’ll save that proper reread for when I’ve finished. I don't usually reread books, but this book has made me reconsider why that is. I'm already finding myself excited for a second read.

Here’s a few pieces of Gene’s writing that will give you a flavour. Too many to pluck from, so I have plucked at random.

Perhaps it was her great violet eyes, with their lids shaded with blue, and the black hair that, forming a V far down her forehead, suggested the hood of a cloak. Whatever the reason, I loved her at once—loved her, at least, insofar as a stupid boy can love. But being only a stupid boy, I did not know it.
…
Turrets and minarets bristled; lanterns, domes, and rotundas soothed; flights of steps as steep as ladders ascended sheer walls; and balconies wrapped facades and sheltered them in the parterre privacies of citrons and pomegranates.
…
I gestured toward the Wall, which now rose in the distance as the walls of a common fortress must rise before a mouse. They were black as thunderheads, and held certain clouds captive at their summit.

Beautiful.

Have you read the books?

Let me know below. Or drop in merely to say a hello, talk about shadows and phases of the moon, accounts of fake poetry. Whatever you wish.

SLAKE

Across the penumbra

or, I dunno, I just like "penumbra"

Gene Wolfe and the art of rereading

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