welcome to long words

I can’t tell you exactly what drew me to Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. I didn’t start looking up lists of fantasy epics. I know I started from a place of loving Stephen King’s The Dark Tower and remembering how much fun I’d had reading the first four Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R.R. Martin.

Somewhere, in looking up those books online and seeing what other readers had enjoyed, I first stumbled across references to Wolfe’s travelling torturer Severian. Something in the way people talked about these four books appealed to me. Although a lot of people, even fans of the series, did warn any prospective newcomer that they weren’t easy reads. A few of reviews and articles made it very clear that you need to re-read Wolfe’s saga a few times to really see what he’d been building around you. That definitely intrigued me.

You know you’re living your best life when you step up to the bookshelf to try and pick a new book and find yourself asking ‘Elmore Leonard or P.G. Wodehouse?’. Well, maybe not your best life. But it’s a very good one. Honest. The reading is certainly good.

   I started my P.G. journey with Jeeves and Wooster, thanks to the collections released by Hutchinson back in the late 90s. I picked the first couple with a rabid desire to devour them all, only I hit a tiny, tiny snag. Just a minor one, really. And it’s a snag that I guess no self-respecting reader should ever admit to anyone. So, here goes…the TV show was too good. Yup, you heard me. Welcome to the first world problems of a forty something, white, straight, English man. Do I read my next Elmore Leonard or my next P.G. Wodehouse book? Do I keep reading a book when the TV show with Fry and Laurie in has burned itself permanently onto my brain? I know, I know. Things are tough all over, right?

There are some television shows that just arrive on your screen feeling like they were custom designed for your eyeballs. The first time I watched The League of Gentlemen, I had the eerie feeling that someone had been listening in on some of the late night conversations I used to have with my friends after a few drinks. When Futurama appeared, it was like someone had picked up on the fact a few of us had been saying we needed some new, decent sci fi comedy in our lives. And I know at least one friend of mine who’s convinced Sam Raimi had tapped his phone after watching the first episode of Ash vs Evil Dead.

   In the early days of the streaming wars, when it was more about streamers vs normal TV than streamers vs streamers or streamers vs fans or a streamer vs itself (it’s been a long and complicated war), I didn’t jump straight onboard. To be honest, looking back now, I’m not even entirely sure what made me start thinking about subscribing to Netflix. It might’ve been Better Call Saul. Or maybe that strange, slightly clunky third series of Arrested Development. That was definitely one of the first things we started watching. BoJack Horseman was already on there, I think. Sam wasn’t too bothered about giving it a go, but I was intrigued. I love to see Hollywood take a bite out of its own tail every so often. Plus, the cast list looked dependably entertaining (now there’s a review I’m betting they’re sorry they never got on a poster).

Names can be tricky things. I didn’t ask for my name, for example. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with it, although it did take me a while to adjust to my middle name. For some reason, it left my teachers convinced I couldn’t spell Joseph, even when they could see I knew how to spell Christopher. I guess I have my dad to thank for that, seeing as he pushed for the name of an Austrian jazz musician who was a particular hero of his. Whenever I’d complain about it growing up, Mum would always remind me that Dad had been campaigning for Miroslav, which would’ve caused far more conversations about spelling when it came to some of my teachers.

The other conversation my name could inspire in people back then was more to do with my initials – CJ. For a long time, my parents’ friends would hear my initials and then draw themselves up a little and, in a rather grand version of their voice, declare ‘I didn’t get where I am today…’, which would lead to a lot of adults giggling around me. Being young, and not entirely keen on being laughed at, I would always wonder what was going on. It took a while before my parents had to explain that there was a character on TV called CJ who a lot of people found very funny.

Now it's hard to describe the plot of a time travel story without tripping over spoilers, so I’ll keep this brief. Maybe one of the best ways I can sum up this book is try and imagine what would happen if P.G. Wodehouse had been commissioned to write Twelve Monkeys. You’d need to swap out a couple of things, though. That sense of doom isn’t quite there. This is a book focused on making you laugh more than questioning your own sense of fate and mortality. There’s also no virus, although a pandemic is mentioned. Instead, our time travelling historians here are being sent back in time to try and track down artefacts in order to rebuild the old, bombed out Coventry cathedral. There’s also less of that intricate Gilliam clutter. Willis’ time travellers are, like I said, historians. They’re working out of universities, selling their services to keep themselves funded, causing them to be hounded by persistent benefactors such as the dreaded Mrs Schrapnell as they cope with a constant lack of capable staff.

I have a brief confession to make. In fact, I’m fairly certain I’ve made it here before. Still, here we go again – genre makes me flinch. There, I said it. I don’t know why it exactly has that effect on me. It’s not like it even happens all the time, with every single genre story. I’m not one of those people who wouldn’t entertain the thought of a sword or a dragons unless they came bundled up with some HBO nudity or Chris Pine doing his best Guardians of the Galaxy impression.

   Sometimes, the allergy can come through the style of the prose. If you can feel someone following a painting by numbers approach to building a bigger story, then I normally recoil from it. If a first book features people saying things like ‘a war is coming’ or ‘something is coming’, I have roughly the same reaction. Other times, however, genre can feel like an incredibly comfy and welcoming chair. If the planets are in alignment, if I’m in the right frame of mind, and if the story doesn’t feel in any way like a photocopy of something grander and older and perhaps a little dustier, then I’m in.