Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers

Jeff Wilson · 15 Aug 2010, 19:50 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 14:50:53 -0500
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers
In-Reply-To: <97E73DA3D69A41E2B03E9CE9CF304B61@jill>
References: <SNT123-W3357051532538312747CC7CF990 at phx.gbl>
	<97E73DA3D69A41E2B03E9CE9CF304B61@jill>
Message-ID: <4C68451D.2010902 at io.com>

On 8/15/2010 5:03 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> I think that we cannot, just because Wolfe is the author, assume that
> some elements of a story are not merely 'colour'. It would be very
> restrictive for Wolfe. Every time a character booked a hotel room, Wolfe
> would be constrained from saying "he was given the key to room 167", for
> fear that readers would waste time searching for some numerological clue.

This can be a valid complaint, but as far as I can tell, Wolfe *likes* 
this sort of restriction, and takes it as a challenge. How many of his 
characters does he go leave visibly anonymous? And then there's the 
whole doctor/death/island exercise.

Conversely, the specifics he does use almost always *are* important 
clues, like every proper name in every story he's ever written. The 
strings of digits are essentially the name for that storage area, and 
there's no reason that this one among all the other storage area numbers 
not given in the story shouldn't have the a special meaning the way that 
666 Saltimbanque has a special meaning despite the zillions of other 
addresses not given in that story.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

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