Subject: "Free Live Free" by Gene Wolfe

From: Bruce Holloway <drivax!holloway at rutgers.rutgers.edu>
Date: Wed, 07 Jan 1987 18:05:04 +0000

Okay, so it finally came out in paperback, and I had this gift
certificate to Waldenbooks....

"Free Live Free" is actually three stories in one book, all
intermingled.  Wolfe could have written a book from any of them. In
fact, I'd rather. The book opens as four destitute people... a Gypsy
witch, a salesman, a private detective (with a badge), and a fat
hooker - these titles describe them completely - try to save the
home of Benjamin Free from destruction to make way for a new freeway
overpass. They live free - no rent - as long as they do whatever
they can to keep that building standing.

Ben Free hints that there is a ticket to his home - the "High
Country", hidden in the walls somewhere. The witch takes this in a
figurative sense... that Free is some sort of supernatural being who
has taken on the mantel of mortality for a time, and has left his
"crown" somewhere about.

In any event, Free passes out hints to everyone about the "crown",
then the house is partially destroyed and Free disappears. Okay,
that ends the first part of the book. Before I bought it, I thought
that's all there was.

But it continues for several hundred more pages. It's not the
writing I have issue with; Gene Wolfe is a fantastic writer. But as
all the characters scurry about trying to find Free and his "crown"
or "ticket", it begins to read a little like a John Irving novel,
but without the characterizations.

Because about a third of the way through the book, I realized that
every character was a stereotype - each character acted exactly as
you'd expect.  Not only the four main characters, but a reporter
from a pair of supermarket rags, employees at a mental asylum (where
everyone is automatically assumed to either be a patient, or very
much deserving to be), the fanatical cop, nosey neighbor (who talks
entirely in fractured cliches), etc.

So after a couple of hundred pages of these unrealistic characters
shuffling from one screwball encounter to another, the last part of
the book zips in to gather up the loose threads and tie them
together in one incredibly convoluted knot. I won't spoil this --
it'd take away any reason for reading the book.

My recomendation: Read the book if you can get it without paying for
it.  Or if given to you, then read the first part of the book, then
skip directly to the last part -- the middle isn't really necessary
to the ending.

Also, the American paperback edition includes a timeline of Ben
Free's life in the back. A note explains that the American publisher
asked for this, and it does not appear on foreign editions, or any
hardback edition.

And then go read Glen Cook's "A Matter of Time".