The Politics Of Gene Wolfe

Jerry Friedman · 19 Mar 2009, 19:15 · from 2009-March.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:15:05 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) The Politics Of Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <8974.67.142.130.34.1237464256.squirrel at brunians.org>
Message-ID: <957682.511.qm at web50706.mail.re2.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 3/19/09, brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org> wrote:
> There's another aspect of Gene Wolfe's politics
> which is mentioned
> prominently in many of his stories, and that is his intense
> distrust of government.
...

> I'd like to solicit a discussion of this particular
> aspect of his work.
...

I haven't seen any mention yet of "The Best Introduction to
the Mountains", where Wolfe says the code of conduct he
learned in his childhood included, "Legitimate authority
was to be obeyed without shirking and without question.
Mere strength (the corrupt coercion Washington calls
/power/ and Chicago /clout/) was to be defied."  So maybe
another way of saying he distrusts government would be that
he thinks most government is mere strength, but he thinks
good government can exist and he'd be happy to trust an
example of it.

http://home.clara.net/andywrobertson/wolfemountains.html

Jerry Friedman

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