Wolfe: Misogynist or Realist?

Jack Redelfs · 17 Oct 2006, 20:32 · from 2006-October.txt.gz

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From: jackredelfs at gmail.com (Jack Redelfs)
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 14:32:57 -0600
Subject: (urth) Wolfe: Misogynist or Realist?
Message-ID: <19ee41770610171332h3c56cd21h91172dd9465fb362 at mail.gmail.com>

Vis-a-vis "The Death of Doctor Island," webster.com gives one
definition of offensive thusly: "giving painful or unpleasant sensations."
So, it appears that a work can be deemed offensive without any
question of the authors personal motivations or opinions.

>It's just that Wolfe seems to be really fond of including misogynist
>characters and situations in his stories.

I think that's simply his brutal realism. I never read an author who was
less interested in easy escapes and happy endings. His characters
suffer, and they suffer a lot. Look at history and the world around you.
Is misogyny the exception or the rule in human relations? The bad
guys do very bad things to women, and they usually get away with it.

This view of the world is cognizant with Wolfe's catholicism. The
devil rules the world of flesh, and God rules the world of spirit.
It makes his stories more gripping and his more characters more
real. When I read about characters that float through life as though
in a cloud, without any pain, I wonder "why should I care?"
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