Weer's Death, and J.L. Borges

CRCulver · 25 Aug 1998, 06:34 · from urth-v0018.mbox · original

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From: CRCulver at aol.com
Subject: (urth) Re:  Weer's Death, and J.L. Borges
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 02:34:17 EDT
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William Ansley said:
<I read the book three times before I realized that Weer was dead.>

That's common with Wolfe's books. I read the BotNS three times before I came
to grasp basic plot structure. I'm sure most of the people on the list can
testify to similar occurences. <g>

And he continued:
<Another thing that adds to my interest in _Peace_, after reading much of
Wolfe's other work, is how many germs of ideas that appear in many of his
novels and short stories can be found in _Peace_ (or so it seems to me).>

Peace includes a great deal of Jorge Luis Borges' influence, and seeing it
here can illuminate how it was later used in the Book of the New Sun.
One Borgian influence I think is particularly strong is the labyrithine
symbolism of Weer's house (which I'm assuming is part of his postmortem
imagination and doesn't actually exist).
Mr. Gold's writing of books that don't exist reminds me of Borges' tendency=
 to
make up books and authors to validate the claims of some of his characters.
The story that comes immediately to mind is "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius."

Christopher R. Culver <crculver at aol.com>
http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html
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