Some Gene Wolfe Trivia

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From: hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Some Gene Wolfe Trivia
Date: 23 Jan 84 1:25:17-PST (Mon)
Message-ID: <sflovers-v9-20-4 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V9 #20
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-09

Re Borges and Wolfe (Bruce Smith, UNC-Chapel Hill): Here is what
Wolfe has to say about Borges:

        Like the undines, Baldanders is a giant who is still
        growing.  I took his name from Jorge Luis Borges's THE BOOK
        OF IMAGINARY BEINGS.  It isn't one of Borges's best books,
        but that has never stopped me from stealing from it
        disgracefully.  (Anyway, second-rate Borges is still very
        good.) In his article on Baldanders, Borges credits the name
        to one Hans Sachs (1494-1576) of Nuremberg, then states,
        'Some ninety years after Sachs's death, Baldanders makes a
        new appearance in the last book of the picaresque-fantastic
        novel by Grimmelshausen, THE ADVENTURESOME SIMPLICISSIMUS
        (1699).'  Were Sachs and Grimmelshausen real?  Is there
        actually a such a book as THE ADVENTURESOME SIMPLICISSIMUS?
        I have no idea.  Borges is capable of making up much better
        books and authors than anyone can find in libraries; for
        examples, read 'The Approach to Al Mu'tasim' and 'Pierre
        Menard, Author of Don Quixote,' both of which are to be
        found in his FICCIONES.  (If you do not get a copy of that
        book, if you fail to read those stories, you will never be
        sure that I am not making up Borges, a literary effort
        worthy of the Nobel Prize.)  [From THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER,
        pp. 46-47]

Wolfe's final parenthetical remark is of course trying to imply that
Borges should get the Nobel Prize for inventing Pierre Menard...  I
have in fact heard of Grimmelshausen -- readers of John Le Carre may
recall that the book which poor George Smiley forgets at the club at
the start of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is an old edition of
Grimmelshausen.

Re THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN (Jeff Duntemann at Xerox, Wombat at UI):
The latest word I have on Wolfe comes from the January LOCUS.  The
article says that (a) Wolfe has finally quit his job as an editor of
PLANT ENGINEERING MAGAZINE and is going to be a full-time writer,
(b) he has spent the last year or so writing a new novel entitled
FREE LIVE FREE which has not yet been sold to a publisher, and (c)
'... I've got the fifth book of the New Sun in first draft, but I
haven't done anything on it for months.  I plan to pull it out
eventually and do the final draft.  Comparatively little of the book
takes place in the Urth of the Commonwealth.  A lot of it takes
place in space...  The temptation is... to get away from [writing
about Urth], because I know the place pretty well and it's time to
go and explore a new place.'

Isn't LOCUS wonderful?

On the home front, I gave my younger brother a full set of THE BOOK
OF THE NEW SUN in paperback for Christmas, hoping he might like it
but without much optimism, and to my surprise when I stayed at his
apartment in DC during the Uniforum conference last week, I found
that he was well into THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR and apparently
enjoying it.  When I left he was working on SotL on the couch while
his friend was attempting THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER on a chair.
Will wonders never cease?

Reviews for THE MAN IN THE TREE by Damon Knight, COURTSHIP RITE by
Donald Kingsbury, SOMERSET DREAMS by Kate Wilhelm, FEVRE DREAM by
George Railroad Martin, RIDDLEY WALKER by Russell Hoban, NO ENEMY BUT
TIME by Michael Bishop, and others in a later posting.

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