The Sorcerer's House

Gwern Branwen · 19 Mar 2010, 21:27 · from 2010-March.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:27:35 -0400
Subject: (urth) The Sorcerer's House
In-Reply-To: <C7C4347E.B5F8%ishmael at drizzle.com>
References: <43960c851003151459u3c498829jd31ae3bb3983d571 at mail.gmail.com> 
	<C7C4347E.B5F8%ishmael at drizzle.com>
Message-ID: <cbf55b101003191427t66e71f29u669d4d38e0ae897a at mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 11:01 PM, James Crossley <ishmael at drizzle.com> wrote:
> On 3/15/10 1:59 PM, "Russell Wodell" <wrustle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As in Castleview?and parts of Free Live Free, there is such a plethora of
> weird incidents, conveyed at really breakneck speed by a typically laconic
> and unemotional Wolfe narrator, that I find the necessary suspension of
> disbelief very difficult.
>
> Wolfe is very much smarter than I am, so he must anticipate something of
> this reaction. The story seems to demand being read straight; yet there are,
> for another example, no less than three sets of identical twins at large,
> plus an evil dwarf bent on rape (who is explicitly identified with a Dickens
> character I will not name here).
>
> Does he want us to laugh? I add that Wolfe's few explicit attempts at
> humour, such as his Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe parodies, have always
> struck me as leaden failures.
>
>
> Russell Wodell
>
> I?m about two-thirds of the way through Sorcerer?s House and find myself in
> agreement with much of what you?ve said. ?I can?t really imagine how this
> stuff reads to anyone not very familiar with Wolfe?s work. ?The characters
> seem inconsistently buffoonish and brilliant, and major events are glossed
> while inconsequential conversations take up paragraphs?to all appearances.
>
>
> As with other late-period Wolfe, the surface reading is off-putting not
> because of baroque vocabulary or complexity, but for opposite reasons.
> ?Everything is played so straight and so (apparently) simplistically that
> there?s next to no pleasure to be had for anyone not racking his brains to
> keep up with the subtext. ?Now, I love the puzzling subtext and think the
> book is worth reading just for that, but what I always really enjoyed about
> the greatest Wolfean works was the richness available on all levels.
>
> Does anyone on the list really find these late volumes?I?m thinking of Evil
> Guest and Pirate Freedom, and even Memorare?enjoyable as anything other than
> puzzleboxes?
>
> James

I'm not sure. I just set it down, and while it's more readable than
_Fifth Head of Cerberus_ or _Peace_ or _An Evil Guest_, I don't know
whether I enjoyed it or not. I kept waiting for some sort of payoff or
complicated plot denouement, and all I got was Lupine fighting Bax by
the river and losing.

The esoteric story goes quite by me. I mean, obviously Baxter & George
dueled at the end and George died - the last letter is extremely
transparent in that respect, especially compared to how subtle the
murder & replacement was in _Fifth Head of Cerberus_. But that doesn't
seem like enough. Wolfe's little endnote all but tells you that some
of the letters are out of order and unreliable, yet I don't see any
interesting possibilities arising from it.

In that regard, I feel like after reading _An Evil Guest_: like I
don't have even a clue what the subtext is about. Like in AEG which
hinted at clones and time travel, TSH mentions various possibilities -
the rival sorcerer Goldwurm off yonder, the far-reaching and
paradoxical powers of the triannulus and longlight - but never seems
to use them.

-- 
gwern

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