Subject: (urth) A case of relativity

From: Nigel Price <nigel.aprice at virgin.net>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 17:14:11 +0000

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote...

>>That's an interesting point ... and one that
>>I find extremely difficult to understand,
>>especially in the aftermath of the Long/Short
>>books, in which over and over God/the Outsider
>>repeatedly intervenes in subtle but active and
>>difficult-to-ignore ways.

I don't think we're disagreeing at all. That's pretty well the sort of thing
I meant to say when I was maundering on late last night!

In my view, there is a shift in style and emphasis between TB/UotNS and
TBotLS, but if the level of "explicitness" rises, then it is only relative
to his other works. By the standards of most other authors, he's still
pretty indirect and subtle. Reading a lot of Wolfe, I find it easy to forget
just how utterly odd and deeply cryptic his stories are.

For example, I've just finished reading Margery Allingham's "Tiger in the
Smoke", which I heartily commend to list members who like Golden Age
detective stories and, for want of a better name, "Christian fiction".
Without giving too much away, the plot is all about the hunt for a serial
killer who is knifing his way through a post-war London in the grip of a
deep smog. It's also very much about salvation and damnation in an
explicitly Christian sense, and by the standards of the genre the religious
subtext is pretty subtle stuff. But compared with Wolfe!!

Nigel

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