{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1666",
    "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": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1666,
    "subject": "Thoughts on Wolfe's Style",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-06-03T13:39:40+00:00",
    "last": "1999-06-03T13:39:40+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0027-0061@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Straight",
        "address": "straight at email.unc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1999-06-03T13:39:40+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Thoughts on Wolfe's Style",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Ian A. York recently posted some insightful thoughts about Wolfe's writing\nin TBOTNS to the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup.  There are three posts you\ncan find here:\n\nhttp://x35.deja.com/getdoc.xp?ANH2785527&CONTEXT’8430758.1223557179&hitnum=0\nhttp://x23.deja.com/getdoc.xp?ANH2810122&CONTEXT’8430888.1255079962&hitnum=1\nhttp://x23.deja.com/getdoc.xp?ANH2858787&CONTEXT’8430888.1255079962&hitnum=2\n\nHere's a few excerpts:\n\n I suspect that a lot of people get turned off the Sevarian series because\n of the way Wolfe sets up expectations, and then smashes them.  The books\n start with a series of the cliches of ACTION, ADVENTURE!!! fantasy.\n Here's an orphan, given weapons training from infancy, in a secret order,\n he's got a big honking sword, goes wandering about in a magical ... he\n even wears a cape, for God's sake!\n\n...\n\n Personally, I find Sevarian an interesting and often sympathetic\n character.  I find the writing elegant, subtle, and often understatedly\n humorous.  The narrative style is deliberately designed to blur the\n distinction between ostensibly earthshaking events and the routine--a\n backhanded look at \"making new things familiar, and familiar things new\". \n\n You have to realize, I think, that Sevarian is unshockable.  He takes his\n world for granted; as, of course, he should.  Too many writers have\n characters doing the equivalent of turning on a lightbulb accompanied by\n narrative tympani; it's good, maybe, to point out ta reader how amazing\n these \"light bulbs\" are, but the character shouldn't be surprised.\n Sevarian isn't, and so it's easy to miss, at first, the magic of his\n world.  \n\n...\n\n White Noise is the flip side of New Sun, in a way.  In White Noise, the\n narrator also levels out the importance of things, as does Sevarian; but\n Jack whatisname in WN does it by increasing the importance of trivia,\n while Sevarian does it by flattening out the nominally important... \n\n A major reason people's memories are inaccurate is that they edit after\n the fact.  They put themselves into the center.  In hindsight, they tell\n themselves they spotted the clues.  They squeeze memories into the box of\n narration, so that their memories make a story; if things don't fit the\n story, those get shunted aside--if something that didn't happen is\n necessary for the story, that gets added.  (See a lot of the research on\n memory; these are all well-known phenomena.)\n \n Sevarian doesn't--can't--do that.  Where someone else would remember that\n he was in the center of a scene, Sevarian remembers, accurately, that he\n was on the sidelines.  Where someone else would have added, after the\n fact, the critical clue to a later scene, Sevarian remembers accurately\n that he didn't know about it.\n\n...\n\n-Rostrum"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}