Subject: (urth) some comments

From: John Regehr <jdr8d at cs.virginia.edu>
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 22:01:07 +0000

Hi all,

About a week ago I ran across the archive for the Urth list.  Four
somewhat daunting megabytes later, I've finished reading it, and I'm
impressed.  You people have picked up on a lot of things that I missed
(and I recently completed my third reading of TBotNS).

For several years I've recommended TBotNS to friends and
acquaintances, in the same way that I evangelize the rest of my
favorite books.  Although several people have read it, none have
become what I'd call Wolfe fans.  This seems odd, since these have
been intelligent and literate people who generally enjoy the same
sorts of books that I do.  So why would Wolfe appeal to such a narrow
audience - is it just because he places so many demands on the reader?

Many Wolfean books have been discussed, but let me throw out a few
less obvious ones that haven't:

Paul Auster's _New York Trilogy_ contains three haunting and surreal
novels about alienation, confusion of identity, and the inadequacy of
words.  They're gripping enough that I read each in a single sitting.

Cormac McCarthy's _Blood Meridian_ is a violent story about a band of
bounty hunters on the Texas/Mexico border during the 1850s.  McCarthy
is an amazing writer, and this book is more than a Western in much
that same way that TBotNS is more than SF.

Richard Powers's _The Gold Bug Variations_ is about a librarian who
gets involved with an ABD art history student who works with a man who
was a promising researcher in genetics 30 years earlier; their story
and his are told alternately.  Calling TGBV Wolfean is a bit more of a
stretch than the other two; I do so based on its focus on puzzles and
ciphers, its intricate plot, and because of the slight twist at the
end that changes how we look at the book.

Finally, I feel compelled to add to the recent thread about good comic
books.  Besides the previously mentioned works of Moore, Miller,
Spiegelman, and Gaiman, I would highly recommend DeMatteis's
_Moonshadow_, Matt Wagner's _Mage_ and _Grendel_, and the Hernandez
brothers' _Love and Rockets_.  Although I'm a huge fan of L&R, I
picture the others as being more to Wolfe fans' tastes.

John

--
John Regehr | regehr at virginia.edu | http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~jdr8d/
grad student | Department of Computer Science | University of Virginia 

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

---

From: CRCulver <crculver at aol.com>
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 02:27:26 +0000

jdr8d at cs.virginia.edu (John Regehr) said:
<About a week ago I ran across the archive for the Urth list.  Four
somewhat daunting megabytes later, I've finished reading it, and I'm
impressed.  You people have picked up on a lot of things that I missed>

Welcome to the list! Thanks for your praise of our close reading, though I
should warn you that our conclusions are by no means truth. <g>

<and I recently completed my third reading of TBotNS>

Was it truly different than the first two times? It wasn't until the third
reading that I understood the events in the stone town with Apu-Punchau and
Severian.

<This seems odd, since these have
been intelligent and literate people who generally enjoy the same sorts of
books that I do.>

I know what you mean, I've tried recommending the Book of the New Sun to a
friend of mine really into fantasy, but it didn't catch. I guess that reading
any book by Wolfe is quite a heavy task, and it is only a fluke that a few of
us can muster the effort to tackle it. Because Wolfe doesn't write crap, this
is true of all his books, and it is hard to find an accessible one.

Christopher R. Culver <crculver at aol.com>
http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html

---

From: John Regehr <jdr8d at cs.virginia.edu>
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 00:00:11 +0000

> reading that I understood the events in the stone town with Apu-Punchau and

The third reading was definitely different!  The first time around was my
first encounter with Wolfe, so I had no idea what I was getting into.  I
read it in escapist fantasy mode - quickly, that is - and by the end I
knew that I had read something great, but only understood the work at the
most literal level.  Unfortunately my second reading took a long time
because real life intruded, and I didn't get much out of it.  My most
recent reading was the first time I read carefully, so I finally picked up
the Sev1/Sev2 distinction, the full Apu-Panchau story, and several other
things.  I still couldn't figure out who the beautiful woman in the House
Absolute is, who Severian encounters just before raising the assassin. 

I'd have undoubtedly gotten more out of my second or third reading had I
previously read _The Castle of the Otter_, interviews with Wolfe, Clute's
reviews, _Lexicon Urthus_, and this list.  However, I'm somewhat
uncomfortable with the idea of using external sources to help understand
literature.  It feels like cheating, especially when the material comes
from the author. 

Has the lit crit community come to any meaningful conclusions about what
it means when the author offers an interpretation or an explanation about
a book?  Didn't Tolkien explicitly say that in TLotR an orc is just an
orc, and don't some people still insist that the war of the ring is a
metaphor for one of the world wars?  Although I wish Mr. Wolfe nothing but
the best of health in the future, it seems like things are more tractable
academically when an author is no longer able to offer new
interpretations, or to contradict existing ones. 

Also, I'm slightly wary about over-analyzing books.  It's possible that
this is just bad attitude left over from bad english classes, though,
since I've never ruined a book by thinking about it too much.  I guess my
position is that one's choice about whether to use external materials or
not, or to spend a lot of time analyzing subtle points or not, should be
made in order to maximize one's enjoyment of the work.  That's what it
boils down to, right?  The lit crit people probably don't get to say this,
since they could put themselves out of a job :). 

John