More on Borges and Wolfe's literary bullying

CRCulver · 29 Aug 1998, 10:50 · from urth-v0018.mbox · original

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From: CRCulver at aol.com
Subject: Re:  (urth) More on Borges and Wolfe's literary bullying
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 06:50:29 EDT
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Dan Parmenter wrote:
<Interestingly enough, Wolfe calls [the Book of Imaginary Beings] "second-r=
ate
Borges" and it is, though it's got some dazzling parts.>

The BoIB is not an example of Borges in his prime. Because he was blind by =
the
time of its writing (like Ultan) he was forced to write it with an assistant
who, IMHO, added too much to it. However, the book is wonderful as a non-
fiction device. Recently, I was playing a computer game with a animal in it
called "Kalja." One glance at the BoIB entry told me all I needed.

And Dan continued:
<One thing I've been thinking about a lot in the midst of my
Borges/Wolfe-reading phase is that when I read Borges, I feel smart. When I
read Wolfe, I often feel stupid>

I imagine that is because Borges writes his stories in third-person
omniscient, and so the reader is told almost everything. Wolfe, OTOH, tends=
 to
use first-person a lot, and the narrator doesn't always know what is happen=
ing
(like Severian in most of the UotNS).

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

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