{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/60",
    "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'"
  },
  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 60,
    "subject": "\"Free Live Free\" by Gene Wolfe",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1987-01-07T18:05:04+00:00",
    "last": "1987-01-07T18:05:04+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v12-10-9@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Bruce Holloway",
        "address": "drivax!holloway at rutgers.rutgers.edu"
      },
      "date": "1987-01-07T18:05:04+00:00",
      "subject": "\"Free Live Free\" by Gene Wolfe",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Okay, so it finally came out in paperback, and I had this gift\ncertificate to Waldenbooks....\n\n\"Free Live Free\" is actually three stories in one book, all\nintermingled.  Wolfe could have written a book from any of them. In\nfact, I'd rather. The book opens as four destitute people... a Gypsy\nwitch, a salesman, a private detective (with a badge), and a fat\nhooker - these titles describe them completely - try to save the\nhome of Benjamin Free from destruction to make way for a new freeway\noverpass. They live free - no rent - as long as they do whatever\nthey can to keep that building standing.\n\nBen Free hints that there is a ticket to his home - the \"High\nCountry\", hidden in the walls somewhere. The witch takes this in a\nfigurative sense... that Free is some sort of supernatural being who\nhas taken on the mantel of mortality for a time, and has left his\n\"crown\" somewhere about.\n\nIn any event, Free passes out hints to everyone about the \"crown\",\nthen the house is partially destroyed and Free disappears. Okay,\nthat ends the first part of the book. Before I bought it, I thought\nthat's all there was.\n\nBut it continues for several hundred more pages. It's not the\nwriting I have issue with; Gene Wolfe is a fantastic writer. But as\nall the characters scurry about trying to find Free and his \"crown\"\nor \"ticket\", it begins to read a little like a John Irving novel,\nbut without the characterizations.\n\nBecause about a third of the way through the book, I realized that\nevery character was a stereotype - each character acted exactly as\nyou'd expect.  Not only the four main characters, but a reporter\nfrom a pair of supermarket rags, employees at a mental asylum (where\neveryone is automatically assumed to either be a patient, or very\nmuch deserving to be), the fanatical cop, nosey neighbor (who talks\nentirely in fractured cliches), etc.\n\nSo after a couple of hundred pages of these unrealistic characters\nshuffling from one screwball encounter to another, the last part of\nthe book zips in to gather up the loose threads and tie them\ntogether in one incredibly convoluted knot. I won't spoil this --\nit'd take away any reason for reading the book.\n\nMy recomendation: Read the book if you can get it without paying for\nit.  Or if given to you, then read the first part of the book, then\nskip directly to the last part -- the middle isn't really necessary\nto the ending.\n\nAlso, the American paperback edition includes a timeline of Ben\nFree's life in the back. A note explains that the American publisher\nasked for this, and it does not appear on foreign editions, or any\nhardback edition.\n\nAnd then go read Glen Cook's \"A Matter of Time\"."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}