Long Sun Laughs

John Watkins · 09 Jan 2009, 21:04 · from 2009-January.txt.gz

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From: john.watkins04 at gmail.com (John Watkins)
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 16:04:27 -0500
Subject: (urth) Long Sun Laughs
In-Reply-To: <4967B7C0.5080108 at gmail.com>
References: <93d4039f0901091130l2ad8e29fg3258e685fc96241e at mail.gmail.com>
	<4967B7C0.5080108 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <93d4039f0901091304j72143f4saeb73ba12e6cb550 at mail.gmail.com>

Yes I have, but as Son of Witz is on this thread (and now rkenneth as
well) I didn't want to get into discussion of the next two books,
which are also excellent.

But yes, I did pick up on the Father Brown/Flambeau thing (I'm proud
to say that I have read every Father Brown mystery), but that wasn't
as glorious for me.  Wolfe is a metaphysical Catholic writer, so I
expect to find Chesterton in his work, just like I expect to find
Borges and Kafka for other reasons.

The stuff that blows my mind is the pulpy stuff that sneaks up on you.
 "Lake of the Long Sun ends when Silk and Dr. Crane are interrogated
by a super-strong android with the consciousness of a dead dictator in
it."  "The Shadow of the Tortuter ends with Severian travelling with a
cyborg, his resurrected grandmother, a variation on Frankenstein's
monster with his own android physician who's sort of a Doctor
Frankenstein/Igor character, and a scientifically created sex
goddess."  There's a glorious one in Short Sun too that I don't want
to spoil.

On 1/9/09, Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com> wrote:
> John Watkins wrote:
> > I loved the ending of Lake, too--it's when I moved from liking the
> > books to LOVING them.  Just, right in the middle of this sort of
> > religious mystery story, a full on BOND VILLAIN appears and is
> > simultaneously scary and kind of funny and awesome.  And then I
> > realized what others have pointed out, which is that the first book is
> > a crime story and the second book is a spy story and Gene is taking
> > genres apart to show he can.
> >
> >
> I liked "Nightside" too, with Silk as Father Brown and Auk as his Flambeau.
> Have you seen the article "Five Steps Towards Briah", which continues to
> track the genres of the next two books
> (http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/jlaidlow/ultan/briah.htm/poti)?
> The next two books (for me) are a political thriller and a war story. The
> article has a slightly different take.
>
>
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