Subject: (urth)

From: David Wells <adw at ovum.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 1998 10:25:11 +0000

>Eco's point in *Name* is that the world CAN be understood, something
Baskerville's
>disciple fails to learn, 
[even more off topic, but briefly] I sometimes think that Michael
Moorcock's "The War Hound and The World's Pain" is a kind of
"anti-Name-of-the-Rose". There are (to my perhaps peculiar way of
thinking) plot similarities in that both describe the
not-completely-witting attempts of "philosopher" protagonists to end the
Age of Unreason (a topic much more explicit in Moorcock's book).
As a result, at the end of both books the world has "changed" in a
subtle(ish) way. But, in keeping with Moorcock's status as the
"anti-Wolfe"(*), von Bek is a semi-sociopathic atheist warrior who falls
in with angels and demons, whereas Baskerville is a monk who falls in
with matters of the material world. (Hmmm... I'm almost beginning to
convince myself here).
Anyway, I would recommend "Warhound" as a light contrast to Wolfe (with
the caveat that Moorcock writes it with such lucidity that some of my
friends have dismissed it as a "juvenile"), and the sequel "The City and
the Autumn Stars", which is much more intricate and baroque. Both were
recently (ish: 1995/7) republished in the UK in collected form as "Von
Bek".
newt
(*) Moorcock is erudite, heavily-influenced, and writes often
elliptical/baffling books about philosophical/theological topics. But...
he's a proselytising atheist who writes in a lucid way about complex
topics - the Anti-Wolfe!
>Nutria (James B. Jordan)

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/