{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1867", "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": 1867, "subject": "Positive thoughts, negative thoughts", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1999-10-27T09:56:47+00:00", "last": "1999-10-27T13:08:29+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1999-10-27T09:56:47+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Positive thoughts, negative thoughts", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Nutria wrote:\n Wolfe's writing may be so complex, and so dependent on the tropes of SF,\nthat he will never make it into a \"canon.\" It is hard to imagine non-SF\npeople reading it and thinking much of it, save that it is \"weird and\nwell-written, but what on earth is he talking about?\"\n Anybody have anything more positive to put out against such a negative\nthought?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Cheer up, Nutria! I gave Fifth Head to my Dad, who's read plenty of SF but only of the Asimov\\Clarke\\Heinlein\nvariety, and he was wowed.\n\nI gave TBOTNS to my better half, Emma, who has read no SF at all, and she was blown away.\n\nI myself first read TBOTNS when I was a spotty, callow teenager who'd read one Vance book, no Borges and an awful lot\nof the sort of SF that Wolfe's writing -isn't- based on. I was hooked for life.\n\nThe message is, you don't need to be well-read in SF, or any genre before you can appreciate Wolfe. You just need an\nopen mind, and to know good writing when you see it. That's why I believe that if we could only force mainstream\ncritics to actually read a little Wolfe, at gunpoint, they might come around to our viewpoint. The only people who\nwill never come over to our side are the ones who are already reading SF.\n\nI still treasure a quote from Wendy Bradley's review of Castleview in, sadly, Interzone. The gist of it was: \"this\nbook made me feel stupid, and I don't like feeling stupid.\"" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "1999-10-27T13:08:29+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Positive thoughts, negative thoughts", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. Of the friends I've convinced (forced at gunpoint if necessary) to read\nBOTNS, I've had three reactions: one, very well-read in Heinlein/Asimov/Clarke\n(and, though he hates to admit it, Piers Anthony) was impressed but irritated\nby Severian, who he felt was too cold and distant. Another, also well-read\n(and more literarily inclined) became an instant Wolfe fan and is happily,\nwhen MIT gives him five minutes to breathe, plowing his way through the rest\nof Wolfe as fast as he can. And the English major who is heading to grad\nschool in Theology, with no real science-fiction background (other than having\nread ENDER'S GAME, which seems to be true for every person interested in math\nand science who's near my age), was blown away by BOTNS and is amazed Wolfe\ndoesn't get more critical notice. I think Tony's right that the hardest\npeople to convert may be the people who think they know what science-fiction\nshould be, and \"this isn't it.\" The CASTLEVIEW review is the kind of reaction\nthat's hardest to overcome (although, to be honest, if CASTLEVIEW was the only\nthing Wolfe had written, I'd gladly toss him to the wolves). The people who\n\"don't read science-ficton\" might pull the same trick they pulled with\nBradbury and LeGuin, or when somebody like John Updike writes what is clearly\na science-fiction novel: \"Oh, that's not science-fiction, despite the rocket\nships and such--after all, it's good.\"\n\n...\n\nThe Clute article in SF ENCYC. is good, as is the article in the ENCYCLOPEDIA \nOF FANTASY. The OXFORD GUIDE TO 20TH CENTURY ENGLISH LIT. has a generally\nuninformative article that does boast a very succinct characterization of the\nworldview expressed in Wolfe's books: \"eccentrically conservative, \nhierarchical, and grave.\"\n\n...\n\nAnother thing, while we're on a critical roll, is to point out that Wolfe is,\non the one hand, a definitively Catholic writer--all of his books and most of\nhis stories are essentially Christian in their moral and metaphysical \nunderpinnings, and specifically Catholic in their approach to theology. On\nthe other hand, though, he does not belong in any sense to the main tradition \nof 20th cent. Catholic novelists. Muriel Spark, Evelyn Waugh, Walker Percy,\nGraham Greene, and even Flannery O'Connor are largely concerned with our\npresent foibles--they all have a strong streak of satire and black humor,\naimed at things that are very contemporary (Spark's \"abbess Nixon\" novel,\nWaugh's rich young things, Percy's amoral scientists, Greene's evil Americans,\netc.) and through these things they allow their religious concerns to show. \nWolfe is a lot more catholic than this--except in some minor short stories\n(\"Paul's Treehouse\") and in parts of FREE LIVE FREE, Wolfe seems singularly\nuninterested in scourging the follies of our day--he's after much more cosmic\ngame than that. O'Connor has some of this panoramic view (as in \"Revelation\")\nand can, in the midst of gothic Southern weirdness, evoke it in a less somber\nway than Wolfe, but the others generally avoid the directly visionary. Even \nin something like \"Forlesen,\" Wolfe seems to be only accidentally satirizing\ncontemporary business practices--the idiotic routines and pointless games are\nKafkaesque masks for reality, abstract bureaucratic obstacles to perception.\nSome of this is a result of writing science-fiction and fantasy, which lend\nthemselves to the archetypal and universal, but Wolfe's contemporary fantasies\nsuch as PEACE and THERE ARE DOORS are about things such as identity, story-\ntelling, time, reality, and a man and the goddess.\n\n\n\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce" } ] } ] }