First Book: Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe

I pigheadedly hold that Gene Wolfe is the best living American writer. There is no over-wrought, too-cute-by-half novel by any of the literary-darlings-of-the-month that compares. This is a minority view, but at least this one (unlike most of my minority opinions) is shared by writers and readers a hell of a lot smarter than I am.

But, I was reluctant to pick up Pirate Freedom when I first saw it. Books about pirates aren’t my thing, and as a stout Hornblower man for two decades, and I wasn’t sure that even Wolfe could write in the genre. When I did cave, it wasn’t because of faith in Gene Wolfe, but because heading into the six month of being unemployed, I was desperate for something memorably good. I did have precedent: I didn’t read Wolfe’s Soldier of Arete because I didn’t believe that Wolfe could write a novel set in Clssical Greece that I’d enjoy (a degree in Ancient Greek can ruin a lot of good things). When I did read it, it quickly vaulted over every Mary Renault; it’s certainly one of the best written novels about Greece that I’ve ever read.

I should not have doubted. Pirate Freedom won me over halfway down the first page. Wolfe’s signature characteristics are there: a spare spare style that hints at a narrator disconnected from his environment, an unreliable memory and even fundamental questions about identity all come into play with just a few lines of dialogue. Eighty pages later, I’m convinced that the promise of that first page is going to be kept — hard to imagine this won’t be the best 2007 novel that I’ve read yet.

Wolfe is a master of the first person narrative; grammar, word choice, even memories, all artfully convey character — anyone tempted to write in first person should study how Wolfe does it. For the reader, it makes his books challenging — his characters are generally misinformed, tricked or ignorant of what’s going on, some suffer from fallible memory and others lie. But it also makes his books well worth re-reading — once you know the ending, the nature of the narrative — what the narrator knows and doesn’t, what he chooses to reveal and what he doesn’t — adds a new layer to the story.

Here is an excerpt from early in the book; it’s typical of the way Wolfe handles the first person narrative:

One of the things I did on larboard watch was be lookout. That was the same as starboard watch, but I had never gotten to do it on starboard watch. After I had been on larboard watch for a couple of days and my eyes were not so swollen I got tagged for it. It meant I climbed up the foremast and stood on the topsail yard, holding on to the masthead. It was a job nobody wanted, because it meant you had to stand or squat there for hours, and the roll was a lot worse at the top of the mast.

One of the great thing about my life has been that every so often I have really enjoyed something everybody else hated, and that was one of them. First off, I was all alone up there with nobdy to hassle me. Another was that I could look up at the sky and way, way out to the horizon as much as I wanted. It was what I supposed to be doing. That night there was no chop at all, just a greasy swell, and a million stars looked down at me. I saw the Angel of Death one time. (Maybe I will tell about all that later.) His robe is black, just like they say. But it is spangled all over with real stars, and when I saw it I knew that dying is really not as bad as everybody thinks. I still did not want to die, but I knew that if I did it would not the worst thing that ever happened to me, and that afterward I would not have to worry about it anymore, ever again.

About the blog title

I originally intended to start this blog a year ago. I was about the turn 40, I had a stupid job, so I thought I’d read ??Zorba the Greek?? (some men at 40 have affairs with co-eds, I read a book; go find their blogs), which has had a grip on me ever since I found Kazantzakis’ tomb on Crete: “I want nothing. I fear nothing. I am a free man”. Turning 40, I feared much, wanted more — I was (and remain) far from the Zorbic ideal. But the title “Chasing Zorba” seemed appropriate.

Of course, I never read ??Zorba the Greek?? (though it’s still on the to-be-read stack), and I never even made an initial post to the blog.

But, ever since, a blog about the books I’m reading stuck with me, so, here it is.

Honestly, I doubt that it will be very interesting.