the elephant in the room

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 27 Jun 2007, 18:49 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 11:49:26 -0700
Subject: (urth) the elephant in the room
In-Reply-To: <57675.49628.qm at web32414.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <57675.49628.qm at web32414.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <1f7617370706271149s13cb71eche57e2077e9aa1091 at mail.gmail.com>

Don,

Some personal thinks on "Soldier of Sidon."

1. I find the "Soldier" books the hardest to read of all Wolfe's
work. I don't know why this should be. Part of it, I suspect,
is that the artificiality of it is right on the surface; the conceit
of Latro's memory loss, while poignant and meaningful, also
creates a surface reason for Wolfe's usual lacunae, making
it harder to look for meaning in them (Latro isn't suppressing
unpleasant facts, he just doesn't know a lot of them), while
at the same time almost forcing a degree of repetition that is
totally un-Lupine. Because of this, the first two are my least
reread Wolfe novels, and I chose to reread them prior to
reading "Sidon," and so only got to "Sidon" this past month.

2. There was some discussion of "Sidon" after it came
out. I've saved it unread, and will get around to reading
it soon. Maybe I'll respond to some of it.

3. In many ways, I found "Sidon" an easier read than its
predecessors. Still quite difficult (something about Latro's
style just does *not* fit well into my parser) but easier:
possibly because I know Egyptian culture/history better
than Greek and had less trouble understanding what was
going on.

4. But I just don't find a great deal of meaning in these books.
Partly, I'm sure, because I struggle just to read them, and
because I've reread them so little; but partly because so
much *is* on the surface. There seems to be very little
"hidden stuff" going on, other than whatever is going on
with the gods of various lands bickering with each other.
But once you take them as literally existing beings, well,
that's what gods of that sort *do*.

On 6/27/07, don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com> wrote:
> So . . .
>
> Why has there not been any full blooded conversation
> about Soldier of Sidon on the list? It's a "bigger"
> book than Wizard Knight in terms of anticipation, but
> it just sort of fizzled on the list. For myself, I
> just don't have the time anymore to do the digging I
> need to do to even create a fringe theory about it.
> But what about everyone else? Did you hate it? Did it
> seem too straightforward to talk about? Or is it just
> blah? I'm just curious, and no answer I suppose is an
> answer too. My biggest criticism is that I have
> absolutely no idea what happened to Latro to get him
> imprisoned in Nubia and really no clue as to what is
> going on during that entire sequence. To the point
> that I didn't care to find out. Other than that, I
> really enjoyed it.
>
> Don
>
> The Evangelists: a Lesser Apocrypha                                                                        http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=178109961
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-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com
Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations,
inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire
salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards
reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.

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