Subject: (urth) Wolfe in decline?

From: Kieran Mullen <kieran at nhn.ou.edu>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:06:29 +0000

Sorry to omit previous discussions....

    I don't think Wolfe jumped the shark with Pirate Freedom.   I  
thought that it was an interesting story as well as an exploration of  
good and evil in a much more violent world.   The narrator is  
unreliable, of course as most are in Wolfe.    It seems silly to state  
that involving time travel immediately implies a poorIy written  
story.  I  even liked the Wizard-Knight series.   I found "The FIfth  
Head of Cerberus" to be unenjoyable - the story too thin and the  
narrative layers too complex.

     As for "An Evil Guest,"  I didn't like it because it wandered all  
over the genre map, so that it seemed incoherent.   The Lovecraftian  
elements were pulled out in the end without enough foreshadowing, and  
I could not find a character with whom I could empathize.   However, I  
think I need to reread it based on some insights brought up by this  
mailing list.   It's a bit like seeing "Rosencrantz and Guilderstern  
are Dead"  without any knowledge of Shakespeare.   You can admire  
parts of it, but it seems a bit incoherent.   I am still looking for  
some key understanding that will make AEG make more sense.

Kieran Mullen

---

From: Jonathan Goodwin <joncgoodwin at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:31:58 +0000

That would be silly about the time-travel, I agree, so I'm glad not to
have suggested it. What I did write was that time-travel aspect of PF
seemed a particularly 'Wolfean' addition to the book, one conditioned
by the expectations of his earlier work and not integral to the
narrative. In particular, I wrote in my post that it seems to
introduce (lazily) potential ambiguities for readers inclined to spot
them that would thereby increase the apparent moral and narrative
complexity of an undeveloped work.

I also mentioned in my post the nagging suspicion I had that the
entire pirate story was a fantasy transformation of a youth spent in
more prosaic and chronologically suitable crime. Did anyone else see
it this way? I also then thought that I would never even have
considered such a baroque interpretation in a work by another writer
(and would have indeed set the book down long before finishing it).
That kind of reaction, if shared by anyone here at all, is what I'm
particularly interested in hearing about.

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 12:06 PM, Kieran Mullen <kieran at nhn.ou.edu> wrote:
>
> ? Sorry to omit previous discussions....
>
> ? I don't think Wolfe jumped the shark with Pirate Freedom. — I thought that
> it was an interesting story as well as an exploration of good and evil in a
> much more violent world. — The narrator is unreliable, of course as most are
> in Wolfe. ? ?It seems silly to state that involving time travel immediately
> implies a poorIy written story. ?I ?even liked the Wizard-Knight series. — I
> found "The FIfth Head of Cerberus" to be unenjoyable - the story too thin
> and the narrative layers too complex.
>
> ? ?As for "An Evil Guest," ?I didn't like it because it wandered all over
> the genre map, so that it seemed incoherent. — The Lovecraftian elements
> were pulled out in the end without enough foreshadowing, and I could not
> find a character with whom I could empathize. — However, I think I need to
> reread it based on some insights brought up by this mailing list. — It's a
> bit like seeing "Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead" ?without any
> knowledge of Shakespeare. — You can admire parts of it, but it seems a bit
> incoherent. — I am still looking for some key understanding that will make
> AEG make more sense.
>
> Kieran Mullen
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>

---

From: Mo Holkar / UKG <lists at ukg.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:53:11 +0000

At 18:31 14/04/2009, Jonathan Goodwin wrote:
>I also then thought that I would never even have

I had this reaction with AEG: the feeling "But this is Wolfe! Surely 
there must be more to it than this!" Particularly as it had been 
billed on Lovecraftian-horror elements which didn't really appear to 
be present in any significant way.

There are quite a few of the earlier works that I didn't fully 'get' 
at the first time of reading, so that bred in me the suspicion that 
if I didn't make much of a work, there probably was something clever 
going on that I hadn't picked up on. But those are recognizable by 
the "ah, of course" sensation when you do eventually spot it, or see 
it explained by someone else. I have had no such sensation yet with AEG.

best wishes,

Mo

# ~ # ~ #

WolfeWiki:
http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/

---

From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:22:41 +0000

Although I question it sometimes, I am mostly still going with the theory
that Gene has deliberately written a book which appears on the surface to
be a bad pulp story but has more going on beneath the surface.

In the beginning of Chapter Seven, Gideon is soliliquizing about how much
he loves Cassie and how important she is to him, and how he will always
love her. This is all, in the light of how he behaves later, total
bullshit.

So what is going on here? Gideon is doing magick: he is programming
himself to believe certain things which he does not actually believe, but
which he must appear to believe to that the daemon that he has evoked so
that that daemon will behave in the ways he wants her to behave.

.

---

From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:26:29 +0000

> that that daemon will behave in the ways he wants her to behave.

s/to believe to that the/to believe to the/

a bit of overediting, sorry.

.