The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe

don doggett · 04 Jun 2007, 18:21 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: kingwukong at yahoo.com (don doggett)
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 11:21:07 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <d716a1c40706041103q765d10bas19ac5947d6dbbc1d at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <240081.24607.qm at web32411.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- Michael Straight <mfstraight at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sheesh.  Do we really have to pretend that liking
> Wolfe proves that
> we're super-smart and that people who don't are just
> lazy, not willing
> to do the "hard work" that we're willing to do?
> 
> Reading Wolfe requires a different kind of attention
> than reading some
> other books, but I wouldn't call it work.  I enjoy
> that kind of
> reading.  If I didn't, I wouldn't do it.  It doesn't
> make me morally
> superior to someone who doesn't enjoy that kind of
> reading.
> 
> I don't enjoy skateboarding or skeet shooting, but
> it's not because
> I'm too lazy to do the "work" (practice) it would
> take for me to do
> those things well.  I'm just not interested

I agree. It's more that we're suffering from an
embarassment of riches. Increasing literacy is
probably the one thing our public schools have done
right. And even if the only books a person has read
are from primary school up through college, that's
still a third of a person's life spent reading. Not to
mention email, web pages, comics (many of which are
highly sophisticated- GW's a comics fan I believe.)
and the crap ton of magazines that come out every year
that ought to be online instead of in the landfill.
The sky hasn't fallen yet, I think.

Don

The Evangelists: a Lesser Apocrypha                                                                        http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=178109961

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