{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/3",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3,
    "subject": "Gene Wolfe's style",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": null,
    "last": null
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v5-20-4@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Teri Pettit at Xerox",
        "address": "pettit at parc-maxc"
      },
      "date": null,
      "subject": "Gene Wolfe's style",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I think McClure at SRI's assessment of Gene Wolfe as \"the sort of\nwriter who's desperately trying to produce SF worthy of literary\ncriticism\" is unfair.  While he does produce a type of fiction which\nhas much in common with works noticed by literary critics, there is\nabsolutely no reason to suppose that he does it for the purpose of\ngaining that notice, or that he is particularly desperate about\nanything.\n\nI imagine Wolfe, like most authors, writes, insofar as he can, in the\nstyle he most enjoys reading.  For him, this is a highly recursive\nstyle in which his creation and the process of creating it is as much\nits own subject as is the apparent story it tells.  All his works are\nessentially about layers of reality, and shifting between those\nlayers.  Those layers usually include that of the purported writer as\nwriter, and Wolfe as writer, as well as the purported writer as\nprotagonist in some events.\n\nLiterary critics write essays about writing.  Naturally they tend to\nmost enjoy fiction which is in some sense art about writing.  But an\nSF writer is always inviting readers into an alternate reality, and\nthus SF writers too often enjoy artistic recursion.  If Wolfe were\ndesperate for literary acclaim, he'd write stories like Fowles or\nPreust or Nabakov in which the surface story, which weaves through the\nstory about stories, was set in \"our world\".  He has the talent for\nit.  Instead he sticks to fantasy worlds which, however intrinsically\nsuited to themes of layered realities, are anathema to the world of\n\"serious literature\".  This to me is sufficient evidence that he\nwrites 'em that way simply because he LIKES 'em that way.\n\n        -- Teri"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}