Interview Tidbit

Roy C. Lackey · 28 Nov 2008, 23:17 · from 2008-November.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:17:52 -0600
Subject: (urth) Interview Tidbit
References: <W421921528144511227742855@webmail1><9d6d9c7e0811261742k1fffcb1ep566dc847032e03ef at mail.gmail.com><1F210C46-4713-4986-9649-9142A77CC3DB at butcherbaker.org><9d6d9c7e0811261931h50381a08g631a4afcfcc51e7b at mail.gmail.com>
	<118690.87447.qm at web37606.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <002101c951af$8d806b60$37d24a0c@rclackey>

Craig Brewer wrote:
> I'm reading through Wright's collection of interviews, and I stumbled on
this:
>
> "What do [I] dislike most about [my] own writing...? That so often it
doesn't work -- that I can say X, flatly and in so many words, and later
have editors, reviewers, and readers say 'But you never told me X.' I point
out that I did, at the top of page twenty-two, or whatever, and they say,
'Well, it doesn't come through.' Obviously it doesn't, and I don't know how
to make it." (78, interview with Elliott Swanson)
>
> I don't get the sense that Wolfe is being coy here, but honestly worrying
that at times he doesn't communicate what he wants to. And what strikes me
about this little bit is that it suggests that so much of Wolfe's "puzzle"
style of writing may not be intentional. How much of it is just how he
communicates?<<
--------------------------------------

Oh, I think he does write that way deliberately. When there is a failure to
communicate, part of the fault is his and part of it is the reader's. He
doesn't tell stories in a linear fashion. He omits a lot and fills in some
of the skeletal details needed to understand him in a casual manner,
scattering often innocent-looking lines in the text that are actually
critical plot points.

Somewhere, he said something to the effect that, as a reader, he needed to
be told only once that a given character is left-handed. He expects his
readers to be equally attentive. When a certain tree falls in PEACE, or
flowers are observed outside a kitchen door in FLF, for example, Wolfe is
giving the reader important pieces if information, but he does it on the
sly. If the clues are too oblique for some readers, is that his fault?

>> The downside is that, as we all know and have seen on the list, it can
send people looking for puzzles where there aren't any, which leads to some
very creative readings of what's going on in a Wolfe story.<<

Agreed. It doesn't matter if Severian has a hairy chest or not. But the
picture in Ouen's locket does. Separating the wheat from the chaff is the
problem.

>> But it also suggests that the image I think many of us have of Wolfe as a
puppet master over the details of his own stories may not always be the
case.<<

I think that Wolfe thinks he is pulling the right strings, or he wouldn't
keep writing that way.

But I do take issue with all the crap lately about ignoring the details and
just looking at the Big Picture. Each piece of the mozaic is important,
particularly when the Big Picture has been broken and the pieces are
scattered all over the landscape.

-Roy

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