{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1209",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1209,
    "subject": "Whorl post re:Heresy and Wolfe's Audience",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-02-21T08:51:28+00:00",
    "last": "2001-02-21T08:51:28+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0319@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "James Jordan",
        "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-21T08:51:28+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (whorl) Fw: Whorl post re:Heresy and Wolfe's Audience",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "At 03:52 PM 2/20/2001 -0600, you wrote:\nAt 11:34 AM -0500 2/19/01, BMeyer7 at aol.com wrote:\n\n >Has Wolfe crossed the line from not giving all the answers\n >to creating texts that must be pored over by talmudic scholars rather\n >than actual readers of novels? Is Wolfe writing for a smaller, and\nsmaller audience of expert Wolfe-interpreters? Discuss."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "         Wolfe has written this way, often, since his career began. His \nearly short story \"The Changeling\" is about as confusing as anything he's \never written since. We discussed it at length on the Urth list a couple of \nyears ago, but I'm still confused!\n         I do think that Wolfe shoots himself in the foot a bit by piling \nup too many complications. He seems genuinely frustrated when people don't \n\"get\" what he's writing about, such as seeing Severian as a kind of \nantichrist instead of seeing him as a \"Christian figure\" slowly climbing \nout of a horrible background. I imagine he'd be frustrated at those of us \nwho don't understand that at the end of BoSS it's All Horn, or All Silk, or \nStill Both -- whichever it is. But, he's really got no one to blame but \nhimself.\n         But, hey, it's a fact of the modern era that there is a wide \nseparation between folk art and fine art. In Bach's day, the common man and \nthe educated man could both delight in the same fine art music. But by the \n20th century, most people aren't going to groove to the music of Messiaen, \nShostakovich, Webern, or Frank Martin. But I do, being a musician and all.\n         Traditional SF lies on the folk/popular side of things, but not \nWolfe. He's definitely on the fine art side.\n         So, consider how you approach fine art. You don't have to \nunderstand everything to enjoy it. You can really enjoy Beethoven's Fifth \nSymphony, even if you don't realize that every movement uses the same \nda-da-da-DAAA musical motif, and that virtually every other melody in the \nwhole piece is a transformation one way or another of that motif. You don't \nhave to understand a Bach fugue to enjoy hearing it, for your ear will \ncarry you. Similarly, even with modern art music, if your ear likes the \nambience of the music of, say, Messiaen, you can enjoy it at that level \nwithout studying out all the complexities.\n         The same is true of Wolfe. If you enjoy the writing, the \ncharacters, etc. -- enjoy the trip as it were -- you don't have to figure \nout everything. Still in all, however, I do think Wolfe frustrates his \nreaders more than he needs to -- and I say this because, as I wrote above, \nhe himself seems frustrated when they don't \"get it.\"\n         FWIW.\n\nPatera Nutria\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}