Introduction

This is just a brain dump of my thoughts on "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" by Gene Wolfe. As anyone who has browsed here surely knows, it is a three-novella volume of interconnected stories. Each is told in a different voice and literary presentation.

I. The Fifth Head of Cerberus

II. "A Story" by John V Marsch

III. VRT

Ursula Le Guin called it "the uncertainty principle embodied in brilliant fiction". Greater minds than mine have taken wrestled with these stories. They've helped me a lot. Unfortunately, they've almost always left me unsatisfied. Probably, just as this diary will for others. 

The fact that careful readers, some whose approach to Wolfe's stories carefully parallel my own, have come to conclusions that strike me as untenable, or rejected readings I have come to see as almost obvious, is humbling. I warns me not to assert my readings to strenuously -- despite being right.