There Are Doors, by Gene Wolfe

Jeremy Crampton · 27 Sep 1989, 13:34 · from sf-lovers.1989.mbox

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From: ELE at psuvm.bitnet (Jeremy Crampton)
Subject: Re: There Are Doors, by Gene Wolfe
Date: 27 Sep 89 13:34:31 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v14-309-14 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V14 #309
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-14

chuq at Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) says:
>>[Peter Da Silva says]:
>>Has anyone else read this one (probably, by now... it's out in paper)? Is
>>this a reprint of an early Wolfe, or what? It's very '50s in many of its
>>attitudes, yet it's got what seems to be a commentary on AIDS. It's not a
>>bad book, but it's got more the feel of an early Philip Jose Farmer than
>>a current Wolfe.
>
>No, it's a new book, first publishing in hardcover last year. It seems to
>be another one of Gene's experiments, similar to Free, Live Free. I
>couldn't get into it at all, even though I like his writing. Others I know
>loved it.  A few hated it.

Indeed.  It was published as a paperback either this month or last month by
Tor (it was their lead item) and originally published in 1988 in hardback
as Chuq says.  In the next _Foundation_ (46) Gwyneth Jones is going to
write a long review on it.

In 1985, three years before it was published, Wolfe said about it:

***SPOILERS***

"I have difficulty doing people who are well below my intellectual level.
I've set myself this... if I can go and talk about current work, I'm trying
to write a novel called _There_are_Doors_.  The hero or central character
of this novel is a mentally ill department store clerk.  He doesn't read.
He isn't intellectual.  He watches television.  He's not very well
socialised, and he's not entirely different from me.  But he's different
from me in certain ways.  And I try to handle him because it's a good
exercise for me to try and handle him...He's hard to do.  And I'm trying to
do it, and it may well flop.  But if you're not willing to take chances of
failing then you can't push back the borders.

"In my story this man is not sub-normal.  He's normal, and that's what's
wrong with him."

Jeremy

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