Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

Larry Miller · 14 Dec 2011, 17:06 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: decanus1284 at gmail.com (Larry Miller)
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:06:58 -0500
Subject: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?
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I too found Wolfe at an early age and began reading New Sun the summer
before middle school (When I got to the Hut in the Jungle chapter I
was so lost I had to start over) but it wasnt until I got in to my
late teens and discovered the more Literary side of sf/fantasy (Peake,
Crowely, Delany etc) did I really begin to appreciate Wolfe.  New Sun
was my gateway into his work and would recommend that as a great place
to start.

On 12/14/11, Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
> Precocious!  I was reading Hobbit and LOTR during those years.  Didn't
> discover Wolfe until my late twenties.  I would've LOVED New Sun,
> especially Severian, in my childhood and adolescence.  I was greatly
> enamoured of tough guys with legendary swords.  I wish I'd discovered it
> shortly after LOTR instead of being sidetracked by (*cringes to admit it!*)
> the interminable world of Dragonlance (of which I can now remember
> *nothing* but a pair of twins, one a wizard and one a warrior).
>
> -DOJP
>

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