The author as executioner

There is a lot that is remarkable about Gene Wolf’s Book Of The New Sun tetralogy, but surely one of the most arresting bits (for me at least) comes in the conclusion of the first book where the narrator, a torturer by trade, compares his new-found role as author to the job of executioner which is his in real life. For him, the author is like an executioner. The crowd at a public beheading is like a book’s audience — each member wanting a spectacle. The urge to write, on the other hand, is like the judge: satisfied not by the show but simply completion of the act. The people who bribe the executioner to make the beheading quick and painless — or sloppy and excruciating — are the literary forms and genres that stand at the back of the author, informing and shaping the nature of his performance. And the executioner?

It is not enough for him to earn praise from all. It is not enough, even, for him to perform his function in a way he knows to be entrely creditable and in keeping with the teaching of his master and the ancient traditions. In addition to all this, if he is to feel full satisfaction at the moment when Time lifts his own severed head by the hair, he must add to the execution some feature however small that is entirely own and that he will never repeat. Only thus can he feel himself a free artist.