Indescribable

A cou­ple years ago, I had an epiphany while read­ing Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, when the nar­ra­tor Sev­er­ian point­ed out that

It is always a temp­ta­tion to say that such feel­ings are inde­scrib­able, though they sel­dom are.

Today, though… Today I was fin­ish­ing Wolfe’s superb 1988 nov­el There Are Doors, and I hap­pened upon this on page 294:

Which is it, Mr. Wolfe? Which is it?

I must admit, though, it’s nice that, imme­di­ate­ly after he calls the sound inde­scrib­able, he pro­ceeds to describe it with delight­ful econ­o­my. Wolfe may be fond of unre­li­able nar­ra­tors, but his prose is reli­ably amazing.

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