# Wolfe's humor *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 24 Oct 1997* > 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. --- ### adam louis stephanides *24 Oct 1997, 14:34* > On Fri, 24 Oct 1997 urth-errors at lists.best.com wrote: > From: "Tony Ellis" > Subject: Re: The Quiet Urth > Yes, Wolfe is a Catholic, but he is > also a polymath, and a terrible punster, and I find plenty of double > meanings and conceits in his stories that have nothing to do > with Christian themes. This reminds me of a topic that I've long been intending to bring up: Wolfe's humor. Most of Wolfe's work strikes me as utterly solemn (though there are undoubtedly things I'm missing); and his overtly humorous stories have, in my opinion, a lower proportion of successes than most of the other stuff he tries his hand at. But I do like the humorous short stories "Car Sinister" (though I suspect I may be a minority in this) and "An Article about Hunting." And "For- lesen," one of my favorites too, is full of dark humor of the sort that Kafka was so good at. Anybody have any other favorites? --Adam --- ### Michael Straight *24 Oct 1997, 15:59 · follows adam louis stephanides* > On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, adam louis stephanides wrote: > This reminds me of a topic that I've long been intending to bring up: > Wolfe's humor. Most of Wolfe's work strikes me as utterly solemn > (though there are undoubtedly things I'm missing); and his overtly > humorous stories have, in my opinion, a lower proportion of successes > than most of the other stuff he tries his hand at. But I do like > the humorous short stories "Car Sinister" (though I suspect I > may be a minority in this) and "An Article about Hunting." And "For- > lesen," one of my favorites too, is full of dark humor of the sort > that Kafka was so good at. Anybody have any other favorites? If found FREE LIVE FREE very humorous, but it's been too long to single out a particular passage. I thought THERE ARE DOORS has some funny bits too (particularly G. Gordon Liddy). -Rostrum ---