Gene Wolfe: Castleview

Geoff Alexander Cohen · 02 Jul 1990, 01:39 · from sf-lovers.1990.mbox

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From: GACOHEN at pucc.princeton.edu (Geoff Alexander Cohen)
Subject: Gene Wolfe: Castleview
Date: 2 Jul 90 01:39:03 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v15-259-11 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V15 #259
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-15b

I just finished Gene Wolfe's latest, _Castleview_, which concerns a
family moving from Chicago to an old-fashioned town called Castleview, in
which it is possible to glimpse a castle off in the distance. (Thus the
name!)  It started off pretty well, and I enjoyed Wolfe's first dealings
with modern reality in novel form, and there are some pretty surprisingly
enjoyable and yet mainstream-type characters (surprising in the
mainstream-ness, not enjoyable.)

   Now don't get me wrong, I'm a very big Wolfe fan, and would recommend
him almost without reservation as the best science-fiction author today.
However, I DIDN"T GET IT!!!!! :(.  Yes, I'm used to him being pretty
opaque, for example Fifth Head of Cerberus, as I saw in a recent post.  But
after a re-reading, I think I got a lot (not all) of what he meant in that.
_There Are Doors_ is a little harder, but still excellent, and I was left
with a sense of completion, if not closure.

   But _Castleview_ left me cold, confused, and angry.  Could someone out
there give some advice as to what happened?  In the words of Orson Scott
Card himself, "Altogether, one of the most disappointing books I've ever
read."  It seems he was as confused as I.  Card says in another essay, "I
wish Gene Wolfe would take pity on his not so smart readers and EXPLAIN
WHAT HAPPENED!"  Amen!

Geoff Cohen
Center for Energy and Environmental Studies
Princeton University

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