Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

Marc Aramini · 14 Dec 2011, 13:21 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: marcaramini at yahoo.com (Marc Aramini)
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:21:38 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?
In-Reply-To: <CAGB0RZ6f-0Wh7gdfWrwO3z++zZrt2gfHSdcdZM53-RxqkR50nw at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1323868898.49319.YahooMailClassic at web161805.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>

--- On Wed, 12/14/11, Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2011, 4:57 AM

Ah, well, here we do get into interesting reader-specific territory.? I did indeed read Fifth Head after the solar cycle, so I can't say for sure how I would have perceived it if I'd read it before that.? Still, I suspect it would have been a very good starting-point for me in the GW realm for these reader-specific reasons:? 
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1) I generally like traditional SF settings more than heroic fantasy settings (i.e. the futuristic planetary romance of FHoC?vs. the?prima facie?sword and sorcery of BotNS).
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2) I was hooked by FHoC first and foremost for the (to me) gorgeous writing *style*, the exquisitely crafted?syntax and prose itself.? It stands out starkly?in a sea of 'good-but-not-great-ness'.
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3) All I need is wonderful storytelling and setting and complexity of themes and I'm deeply happy without needing to 'solve' various material 'riddles' the text throws up - the more philosophical or thematic questions of identity and alienness and cultural anthropology that the book explores (sometimes even by its very *form* - i.e. the second novella written in a totally different mythical or folktale sort of style) just blow my mind and I really don't *ever* need to discover for sure who's who or what's what in that tale.? 
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For other readers I know that indeterminacy would be maddening.? I'm fairly sure if I'd read Fifth Head first, I would have been in awe of what was clearly a brilliant writer and would've started hunting down all his stuff.? 

I suppose all this just shows our individual intuitions about what to recommend as a first reading of Wolfe?are always going to help some and hinder others.
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-DOJP
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I read The book of the new sun in the fourth grade and really liked it, but I would definitely have listed, say, something easier like Zelazny as my favorite at the time, but when I re-read it in the seventh grade I saw the beautiful beautiful structure of so many things, the mythic resonance.? But I was raised so very very Catholic that even in the fourth grade I saw Severian as a cool torturing kind of end times Jesus with a big sword, relaxed "destruction based" eschatological?morals and uninhibited sexuality.? I used to draw pictures of him on my textbooks in school, sword raised and the sun highlighting it so that its shadow was a cross.? Probably get in big trouble for those drawings nowadays.? Didn't read the rest of Wolfe until a few years after that.? It is definitely the??perfect book of my childhood, though.
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