Subject: (urth) Urth Digest, Vol 67, Issue 10

From: Kieran Mullen <kieran at nhn.ou.edu>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:40:45 +0000

On Mar 10, 2010, at 4:11 PM, urth-request at lists.urth.net wrote:

>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:28:40 -0600
> From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
> To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Subject: (urth) Lawrence Person Sort of Reviews The Sorcerer's House
>
> http://www.lawrenceperson.com/?p=941
>
> He also has a picture of Wolfe at ReaderCon last year:
> http://www.lawrenceperson.com/?tag=science-fiction
>

FWIW, Locus review Paul Witcover panned "The Sorcerer's House"  
"hermetic"  and "like exquisite but finicky puzzle boxes that deny  
entrance and pleasure to all but a few aficionados who are adept in  
the strategies necessary to solve them."

How about putting that on the back of a book cover as a blurb....(!)

Kieran

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:43:04 +0000

> FWIW, Locus review Paul Witcover panned "The Sorcerer's House" "hermetic"
> ?and "like exquisite but finicky puzzle boxes that deny entrance and
> pleasure to all but a few aficionados who are adept in the strategies
> necessary to solve them."

This is probably true for all Wolfe's novels going back to Fifth Head,
so I'm not sure I understand Witcover's beef. Even AEG was like The
Book of the New Sun in that on the first read, I thought I generally
understood what was going on.

Sometimes Wolfe's novels are more like the puzzle box in Hellraiser.

J.

---

From: Fernando Gouvea <fqgouvea at colby.edu>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:52:36 +0000

Reading past that first sentence it becomes clear that Witcover's beef 
is at least partly political. I'm afraid I didn't read past the second 
sentence.

Fernando

On 3/11/2010 11:43 AM, James Wynn wrote:
>>   and "like exquisite but finicky puzzle boxes that deny entrance and
> _______________________________________________
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>
>    

-- 
=============================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea
Carter Professor of Mathematics
Colby College                     Editor, MAA FOCUS
5836 Mayflower Hill               Editor, MAA Reviews
Waterville, ME 04901              http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/
http://www.colby.edu/~fqgouvea

Man: "What's this, then?"

Mr. Brown: "A liver donor's card."

Man: "Need we say more?"...

Mr. Brown: "Listen! I can't give it to you now. It says, 'In the event of death.' Uh. Oh! Ah. Ah. Eh."

Man: "No one who has ever had their liver taken out by us has survived."

   -- Monty Pithon's "The Meaning of Life"