Wolfe being clear on 5HoC

b sharp · 06 Sep 2006, 12:50 · from 2006-September.txt.gz

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From: bsharporflat at hotmail.com (b sharp)
Date: Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:50:21 -0400
Subject: (urth) Wolfe being clear on 5HoC
Message-ID: <BAY103-F766446FB1C7FC20656FADD7310 at phx.gbl>

Sorry, this is a terrible post-  off topic and redundant on a tired subject. 
  But in a perusal of Wolfe interviews I just found this excerpt from one 
with Larry McCaffrey in which Gene Wolfe is almost unbelieveably clear and 
open about a point of previous contention in here.  I couldn't resist 
posting it now rather than risk me forgetting about it:

>LM: All this "showing" in "V.R.T." is made intriguingly ambiguous by the 
>confusion about >who "Marsch" really is.

>Wolfe: In the end, of course, it's important that the reader not be 
>confused about this, although >part of the fun is supposed to be figuring 
>out what's happened. I leave a number of clues as to >who the narrator 
>actually is. For example, both V.R.T. and the narrator are shown to be very 
>poor >shots, whereas Marsch is a very good shot, and there's other hints 
>like that. If you hire a shape >changer as a guide, there's a definite 
>possibility that he's going to change into your shape at some >point. Which 
>is what happens.

To me this says Wolfe generally means for his puzzles to be solvable.

-bsharp

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