SRD on obscurity

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 09 Jun 2006, 21:36 · from 2006-June.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 14:36:02 -0700
Subject: (urth) SRD on obscurity
Message-ID: <1f7617370606091436r75c733f3x7de5dcd18332ae51 at mail.gmail.com>

No ... I don't mean Samuel R. Delany, but a writer many on
this list probably disdain, Stephen R. Donaldson. He said,
about a year ago, something that resonates for me with
some things Wolfe has said about some of the "puzzles" in
his work -- specifically, his attitude that the "answers"
should be obvious:

"As a narrative artist, I face an incessant dilemma which
(I believe) plagues all artists in one form or another: I
suffer from a natural and understandable (and perhaps
inevitable) impulse to *leave out* anything that seems
perfectly obvious to me. At the same time, I expound
endlessly on anything that I find obscure or difficult. But
guess what? The things that are obvious to me are
seldom obvious to the reader. At the same time, readers
are quicker on the up-take than I am (because they read
so much more quickly than I write)."

For what that's worth.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant

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