{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/usenet/36",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "usenet",
  "thread": {
    "id": 36,
    "subject": "Gene Wolfe",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1986-02-14T20:14:55+00:00",
    "last": "1986-02-14T22:25:30+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<6915@duke.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Charlie Martin",
        "address": "crm at duke.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1986-02-14T20:14:55+00:00",
      "subject": "Gene Wolfe",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "As some of you may have noticed, I've been careful not to say anything \nabout Gene Wolfe's writing in the couple of notes I've posted under \nthis general heading.  This is for the reasonable reason that I simply \nhaven't read anything much of GW's writing.  Specifically, I tried \n_Peace_ some time ago after having met Wolfe at a con and liked him \npersonally.  \n\nAnd I didn't like Peace at all.  I tried a couple other things.  \nDidn't like them much either.  So I simply figured that I didn't like \nhis style (as I don't like Herman Melville's) not because Wolfe can't \nwrite, but simply because for one reason or another it didn't strike \nthe required chord in me.  \n\nAnd I wasn't going to respond in particular to Davis's note to Rick \nHeli.  Not because I had trouble reading it -- contrary to what I may \nhave suggested in the little \"paragraphs\" note I posted -- but because \nI agreed almost completely with it.  I tell you, my argumentative \nnature is really confused when I go agreeing with my best debating \nopponents.  \n\nBut it happens that someone lent my wife a copy of Shadow of the \nTorturer recently, and she has been reading it for the last week or \nso.  And sitting at the other end of the couch saying things like \n\"Gee, can he write.\"  Spontaneously, while reading the book.  \n\nWell, that piqued my interest.  So I took the book when she wasn't\nlooking, and read the first ten or so pages.  (If you must know, I\nstopped there because she came back from the kitchen and grabbed it\nfrom my hands, saying something to the effect of \"*I'm* not finished\nwith it yet!\")\n\nI wanted to drop this in because I found it just as compelling as \nDavis apparently did.  After a few years of trying hard to learn to \nwrite, I find that I am more conscious than I used to be of the \nmechanics of writing: this makes it harder for me to become engrossed \nin a story in the first pages.  SotT did this in a matter of a couple \nof paragraphs -- grabbed me, dragged me into the other world through a \n6x9 inch page.  And at 6'2\" and 220 lbs, this is no small trick in \nitself.\n\nAnd I didn't find it all that inaccessible, honest.  It is a bit\ndifferent style, but then I didn't like Double Star when I first read\nit -- it was too different from what I had learned to expect.  It\njust  takes some adjustment.  But it's nothing compared to Stephen\nDonaldson, who picks out words for nice sound and then uses them in\nways that show he didn't understand them at all.  That's hard to\naccept -- this is simply hard to read.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nBut I did want to respond a little bit in terms of an \"author's \nresponsibility.\"  Those of you who seem to believe that net.sf-lovers \nis not a forum for writing about writing (science fiction and fantasy) \nshould n-key here.  \n\nI do think the author has a couple of responsibilities: the first one\nis to turn in a text which can be interpreted as a series of words\nwith some kind of sense.  I'm making this as loose as possible to\ninclude people like the Surrealist and Dadaist poets, James Joyce and\nWilliam S Burroughs.  Whether or not the text produces an imaginary\nexperience of another reality (oh, all right, a vivid dream) may\nmatter to it *as fiction* -- at least in my mind -- but whether or not\nyou accept that idea in terms of fiction, I think it is at least\nnecessary to communicate some intelligence in the technical sense,\nsome intimation that there is a non-randomness to the selection of\nwords.  But turning in something in a new language, with a new script,\nand without something to lead one into the new language, is out of\nbounds.  (And it won't sell very well, either.)\n\n((One of the wonderful things about human language processing is that\nwe  can have that sensation from certain kinds of limited randomness,\nlike  that produced by poetry-writing programs -- we go out and make\nup  meaning subconsciously if we don't track what's going on.))\n\nThe other responsibility of a fiction or fictive writer is to his/her\n*characters*.  You are responsible to them to tell their story as they\ntell it to you, and to understand them as they are.  Then you write it\ndown.  It's that easy.  (Hah!)\n\nBut Davis is right about a \"responsibility\" to one's readers: \nbooshwah.  If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.  But I \n(and all writers) have a higher responsibility than to anyone who \nsimply reads it.  \n\n(Oh, by the way -- about \"you don't have to read it.\"  I would make \none exception: once something of mine gets published, *that* you have \nto read!  Even you, Davis.  Hell, I'll throw in an adjective, just for \nyou.)"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<668@rti-sel.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "wfi",
        "address": "wfi at rti-sel.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1986-02-14T22:25:30+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: Gene Wolfe",
      "in_reply_to": "<6915@duke.UUCP>",
      "reply_link": "header",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In article <6915 at duke.UUCP> crm at duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) writes:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I do think the author has a couple of responsibilities: the first one\nis to turn in a text which can be interpreted as a series of words\nwith some kind of sense.  I'm making this as loose as possible to\ninclude people like the Surrealist and Dadaist poets, James Joyce and\nWilliam S Burroughs.  "
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In a sense, the act of turning in a text which is constructed so it \ncan't be interpreted as a series of words is itself making a kind of\nsense. A year or two ago the New York Times Book Review had a review\nof a book by a European called \"The [something] Codex,\" which\nconsisted of a series of woodcuts with accompanying 'texts.' The \n'texts' were not in any known language or character set, and the\nexample shown was VERY disturbing as were the descriptions of the\nother illustrations and texts in the book. The effect the author/artist\nseemed to be striving for was the discovery of a mysterious Codex from\nan unknown civilization whose illustrations tell something of the\ncivilization's history/arts/sciences/magics. But the texts were of\ncourse undecipherable. I felt looking at the illustration and\naccompanying text something akin to what I felt the first time I\nexamined Max Ernst's \"La Semaine de Bonte,\" disorientation and\nrecognition at the same time. So I suppose something that doesn't make\nsense on one level can make a sort of meta-sense on another ... if\nTHAT makes any sense. :-)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "...  But turning in something in a new language, with a new script,\nand without something to lead one into the new language, is out of\nbounds.  (And it won't sell very well, either.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This was something I felt when reading Russell Hoban's \"Riddley\nWalker.\" I thought he was making us work very hard to get at a rather\nrun-of-the-mill SF story without giving us something unusual in return\n(I don't mind working if the reward matches the effort, I guess).\n \n                           -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}