Subject: (whorl) Stuff

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 13:22:46 +0000

[Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Dear Mr. Driussi,

	1. I like your book. I think you may be wrong in a couple of places, but I
need to see your updates (which I shall order). (Well, we all KNOW that you
HAVE to be wrong in a few places, but thanks for taking the risk!) I like
the pun in your publisher name also.

	2. Since obviously Foundation #66 is a volume we students of Lupinicity
need to have, I wonder if you can supply an address, preferably in the US. 

	3. I don't want to get into an "I like this" versus "I don't" battle here
either, but I do think that if people can write specifics about what they
like or don't like, it helps with interpretation. For instance, I can see
that women might consider Wolfe a misogynist from some things he has
written, if they have only read certain books. (He's not, of course.)
Questions like that might be worth exploring as general background to our
more focussed discussion, if Raton allow it. 

	4. And there is some crummy stuff out there. My paperback of "Fifth Head,"
which was my first Lupine encounter (and yes, I fell in love!), has a poor
essay in the back by Sandra Miesel (?). She thinks the book is deliberately
ambiguous about who the immurred character in the third part is. Nonsense.
There is abundant evidence that he is the shapeshifter. Which raises the
question (which perhaps you can answer) of who the real author of the
second part of the book is. 

	5. And that leads to my next point: Understanding how Wolfe does things in
some other books may help us with the Long Sun Quartet. (Maybe I'm using
"quartet" wrongly, but I hate "tetralogy.") For instance, Wolfe has said
that the family name of the Antichrist-Clones in "Fifth Head" is
"obviously" the name "Wolfe." Well, that's one I did not get, and I still
don't know how to get it. (Any thoughts?) 

	6. An example: There has been discussion of whether Silk's enlightenment
is really from the Christian God (the Outsider) or not. This is supposed to
be a "deliberate ambiguity." Well, I'm not sure that it is. "Fifth Head" is
not deliberately ambiguous, while "Castleview" is all about perception and
thus is full of a kind of ambiguity (various characters perceiving the same
phenomena in various ways). But we can get a clue about Silk from
"Westwind," where the Ruler (God) tells the boy-westwind that He does not
like to act openly, but rather through His spies. For Wolfe, God is the
Major Player in history, but He prefers to act behind the scenes for the
most part. And, He works through created means. From this perspective,
whatever may have been the immediate or "secondary" cause (that's
theological terminology) for Silk's experience, the "primary cause" is the
intervention of the Outsider, who is certainly not in Mainframe. (Indeed,
Pas had sought to suppress the original Outsider religion -- Roman
Catholicism -- with his overlay of idolatry.)
	Perhaps one of the other titles Horne rejected for the story of Silk is
"The Outsider's Revenge."

	7. Well, these are just some thoughts for you and Alga and anyone else.
There are several stories by Wolfe that I'd love some "help" with. Maybe if
we ought not to do it here, we could do it elsewhere. Maybe another
discussion list for more general matters. How about it, Raton? A "Lupine"
discussion list parallel to the "Whorl" list? Or is there already such a
thing?

	8. BTW, I do intend to edit and perfect the interview with Wolfe that is
on Duggan's page. I have a couple of letters from Gene with questions and
answers that I need to add, and obviously I need to clean up some other
matters. I've just been busy....

JBJordan

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