# Digest urth.v028.n150 *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 08 Feb 2000* > 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. --- ### Alice Turner *08 Feb 2000, 10:44* Wm Ansley noted that: > "Jeremy W. Crampton" wrote: >> Publishers Weekly >> (December 20, 1999; 0-312-87227-5) > [...] >> Opening with "Bluesberry Jam," Wolfe (The Book of the >> Long Sun series, etc.) creates an intriguing speculative >> future in which an entire culture arises from people who have >> been stuck in a traffic jam for decades. This conceit is >> ultimately negated, however, by the most tired of clichs in >> the closing story, "Ain't You 'Most Done," which is set in the >> same world. Does anyone else remember the Jean-Luc Godard movie "Weekend," about a massive traffic jam that stopped cars leaving Paris? It was visually arresting and quite funny. Much more sophisticated in tone than the Wolfe story (which I found annoyingly sentimental and corny--I dislike nearly all his "modern" material," though I'll make a provisory exception for "The Ziggurat"), but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the original impetus. > I have to agree with the last review that Jeremy W. Crampton was kind > enough to provide for us. My feeling on reaching the end of "Ain't You > 'Most Done" was, "Oh, no! Not again!". > > Wolfe has so many characters in this kind of predicament that I think the > primary thing you should keep in mind when reading him is not "Find the > wolf" (which doesn't strike me as being particularly helpful, even in the > case of "The Ziggurat") but "When did the main character die and does he > know it yet?". Ted Klein, the original editor of the Twilight Zone magazine, long dead now (the mag, not Ted), once published a hilarious list of the hoariest cliches found in the slush pile. "Hey, I'm really dead!" was near the top of the list. -alga ---