obscure Wolfe

Gene Wolfe sells some of his own works by mail (autographed and everything), and among them are two I have not heard of: Letters Home and Bibliomen, both small press releases. As much as I'd like, I can't really afford to buy every Wolfe title I come across, and I was wondering if anyone here was familiar with these two books, what they're about, how they compare wtih his others works, &c. Thanks, M

Reply: Item #9662929 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00# M. Gallo, LETTERS HOME is just that--the letters Gene Wolfe wrote home while he was in Korea during the Korean War. Some wags seem to fancy it a fiction, a novel. Perhaps too gullibly I accept it at face value as non-fiction. As such it is difficult to compare with any of Wolfe's other work. BIBLIOMEN (Broken Mirrors Press) is a special collection of short character sketches, most of which have not appeared anywhere else. (Thematically: all the characters are looking for books in one way or another.) Originally published by Cheap Street, the Broken Mirrors Press edition has a few more characters added =and= it costs a lot less! Comparing it to other Wolfe collections: well, it is much shorter and yet, as I wrote above, the pieces are thematically tied together--so it is almost like a very short novel. But it isn't. I have this problem in reading a collection of Wolfe stories: I tend to gobble them up, one after another, about as fast as I can; as a result I get the equivalent of an ice cream headache after five or six stories. Point: I did not have this happen when I read BIBLIOMEN in one sitting (probably another reason why I sense it is "like a short novel"). =mantis=