Subject: Some Gene Wolfe Trivia

From: donn <donn at sdchema.uucp>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1984 09:25:17 +0000

Re Borges and Wolfe (Bruce Smith, UNC-Chapel Hill):  Here is what Wolfe
has to say about Borges:

	Like the undines, Baldanders is a giant who is still growing.
	I took his name from Jorge Luis Borges's THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY
	BEINGS.  It isn't one of Borges's best books, but that has
	never stopped me from stealing from it disgracefully.  (Anyway,
	second-rate Borges is still very good.) In his article on
	Baldanders, Borges credits the name to one Hans Sachs
	(1494-1576) of Nuremberg, then states, 'Some ninety years after
	Sachs's death, Baldanders makes a new appearance in the last
	book of the picaresque-fantastic novel by Grimmelshausen, THE
	ADVENTURESOME SIMPLICISSIMUS (1699).'  Were Sachs and
	Grimmelshausen real?  Is there actually a such a book as THE
	ADVENTURESOME SIMPLICISSIMUS?  I have no idea.  Borges is
	capable of making up much better books and authors than anyone
	can find in libraries; for examples, read 'The Approach to Al
	Mu'tasim' and 'Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote,' both of
	which are to be found in his FICCIONES.  (If you do not get a
	copy of that book, if you fail to read those stories, you will
	never be sure that I am not making up Borges, a literary effort
	worthy of the Nobel Prize.)  [From THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER,
	pp. 46-47]

Wolfe's final parenthetical remark is of course trying to imply that
Borges should get the Nobel Prize for inventing Pierre Menard...  I
have in fact heard of Grimmelshausen -- readers of John Le Carre may
recall that the book which poor George Smiley forgets at the club at
the start of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is an old edition of
Grimmelshausen.

Re THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN (Jeff Duntemann at Xerox, Wombat at UI):
The latest word I have on Wolfe comes from the January LOCUS.  The
article says that (a) Wolfe has finally quit his job as an editor of
PLANT ENGINEERING MAGAZINE and is going to be a full-time writer, (b)
he has spent the last year or so writing a new novel entitled FREE LIVE
FREE which has not yet been sold to a publisher, and (c) '... I've got
the fifth book of the New Sun in first draft, but I haven't done
anything on it for months.  I plan to pull it out eventually and do the
final draft.  Comparatively little of the book takes place in the Urth
of the Commonwealth.  A lot of it takes place in space...  The
temptation is... to get away from [writing about Urth], because I know
the place pretty well and it's time to go and explore a new place.'

Isn't LOCUS wonderful?

On the home front, I gave my younger brother a full set of THE BOOK OF
THE NEW SUN in paperback for Christmas, hoping he might like it but
without much optimism, and to my surprise when I stayed at his
apartment in DC during the Uniforum conference last week, I found that
he was well into THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR and apparently enjoying it.
When I left he was working on SotL on the couch while his friend was
attempting THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER on a chair.  Will wonders never
cease?

Reviews for THE MAN IN THE TREE by Damon Knight, COURTSHIP RITE by
Donald Kingsbury, SOMERSET DREAMS by Kate Wilhelm, FEVRE DREAM by
George Railroad Martin, RIDDLEY WALKER by Russell Hoban, NO ENEMY BUT
TIME by Michael Bishop, and others in a later posting.