Subject: Re: shadow of the torturer and thomas co - (nf)

From: cfv <cfv at packet.uucp>
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 1983 21:14:58 +0000

I seem to have had a similar response to SotT.  It took me about  3  months
to  finish  the book, but the first quarter of the book took all but 4 days
of it.  It was not that I didn't like the book, but it is an  involved  and
thought  provoking book and you have to be in the proper frame of mind.  If
you don't feel like involving yourself in the book, it just  doesn't  work.
I  have  a  similar response to movies: some days I feel like Fellini, some
days I feel like the Marx Brothers.

One thing that I noticed (someone out there want to back me  up  on  this?)
when  reading  it  was that the feel of the New Sun books was very close to
the works of Kafka.  As it turned out, I was reading some of Kafka's  short
works  about  the time I read SotT, so it might just be a reaction to that,
but it almost felt  like  he  was  using  a  work  like  The  Castle  as  a
philosphical base.  There is also a lot of classical literature entertwined
into the fabric of the story, especially the Greek and Roman mythologies.

I haven't read the Covenant yet. Maybe I should... Is it really a good work?

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From: marick <marick at ccvaxa.uucp>
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 1983 08:52:54 +0000

There will be another book by Wolfe set in Urth.
It will, I believe, be a group of short stories.  One Urth
story will appear in the World Fantasy Convention program book.

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From: bvi <bvi at hpda.uucp>
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 1983 06:34:29 +0000

Hmmm... No, the only correlation between Donaldson and Wolfe that I share
is that they're both hard to get into.  However, whereas I *forced* myself
to finish the 1st Donaldson book, and had absolutely *no* interest in 
reading any more in the sequence, I found I couldn't put Shadow of the
Torturer down once I got about 1/4 of the way into it.  It does take a 
bit of getting used to, because Wolfe writes in a deliberately obscure
manner that forces you to use more imagination than most other SF books.
I found that Severian and the whole culture portrayed in the book 
fascinating; I finished SoT in one sitting and ran out the next day to
buy the other three books, which I finished post haste.  I only wish
there were more!

Beatriz Infante

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From: fantods <fantods at ucbvax.uucp>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1983 20:17:22 +0000

Donaldson I can't read, Wolfe I can.  Donaldson uses language to
obscure and deflate everything--Wolfe seems to somehow make everything
more complex and resonant, ecstatically precise.  I admit that I
couldn't really identify with Severian very much, but I was carried
along by other things.

Anything I read by Poul Anderson seems to be a pastiche of greatness,
but never quite achieves greatness.  Please send me examples of his
"great" stuff.  I probably missed it while I was plowing through
one or another of his titles picked out at random.  He has a lot of them!

Richard