PF review

David Duffy · 05 Dec 2007, 21:38 · from 2007-December.txt.gz

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From: David.Duffy at qimr.edu.au (David Duffy)
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2007 07:38:57 +1000 (EST)
Subject: (urth) PF review
In-Reply-To: <d716a1c40712051156u78ace484s7da4176bd991aaae at mail.gmail.com>
References: <20071201122621.7E0FCDA820 at mailserver8.hushmail.com>
	<d716a1c40712051156u78ace484s7da4176bd991aaae at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0712060712030.9574 at orpheus.qimr.edu.au>

On Wed, 5 Dec 2007, Michael Straight wrote:

> Paul, that's a great review.  Thanks for sharing.
>
> And yet one of the commenters at your website offers one of best
> perspectives for reading Wolfe that I have yet seen:
>
> "I suppose Wolfe makes of the reader a priest, and puts him on the
> receiving end in the confessional, and shows him at its most squirmy
> how tough it is to love (and forgive!) thy neighbor, harder far than
> loving God and yet its essential corollary. And thus we can safely
> assume that Wolfe shares our repugnance while simultaneously putting
> it aside in favor of compassion for his character, so essential to a
> believable ? let alone a soulful ? portrayal of him?"
>

Two things I thought about after reading this comment were: C. is 
unrepentant, and comments that he cannot offer absolution to others who 
are in that state (_Peace_ anyone?); the other is a la _the Power and the 
Glory_ etc, that even a bad priest is still efficacious.

I'm not completely happy with the central event in the story, the 
time-slips.  We have no hints about its nature, whether supernatural or 
technological.  I have no problem with supernatural/fantastical 
displacements providing they don't have disturbing effects on overall 
causality ;) ie unhappy young man yearns to slip back in time to the 
romantic age of pirates, mysteriously it happens, and today comes back to 
tell his story and mourn his lost love.  And I don't mind a _By his 
Bootstraps_ or even a _New Sun_.  But in the latter, I want some kind of a 
rationale for my closed timelike curves eg meddling superintelligences ;)

David Duffy.

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