The Great Gene Wolfe Rebuild

Craig Brewer · 26 Mar 2012, 23:12 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 16:12:50 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) The Great Gene Wolfe Rebuild
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Wright is usually right (sorry) about Wolfe's relation to the reader, and he's really insightful about the way Wolfe crafts relationships between text, narrative, readers, etc. The problem is that he draws some pretty clear conclusions about the content of the books based on the ambiguities of the different levels he analyzes, rather than turning that ambiguity back on his own reading.

I think people who dislike the book based on the materialistic/atheistic conclusions miss out on a lot of good stuff in his approach. Like you say, his real thesis or "theoretical basis" isn't primarily the materialism/atheism reading of New Sun; that's a consequence of his more important things to say about how he conceives of Wolfe relating to readers, fuzzing the relation between truth/fiction/manipulation and what not. I ultimately think that his approach to Wolfe is compatible with both atheistic and theological interpretations. It's not *what* you conclude about the book's relationship to Wolfe's religion that's important to him; it's how to arrive at those conclusions.

I do think Shadows is important just because it finally collects a lot of things in one place that were scattered. Whether or not it's worth the price it's going for now is another issue...

________________________________
 From: Nick Lee <starwaterstrain at gmail.com>
To: urth <urth at urth.net> 
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2012 5:54 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) The Great Gene Wolfe Rebuild

Fred Kiesche:

"The back of the book does not say much about Wright, but the name rings a
bell. The only other credit they list is a book on British TV...did he
write/co-author a book about Doctor Who as well?"

Wright is also heavily into film studies. He does anaylze sci-fi television.

This might be the book you're thinking of:
http://www.amazon.com/British-Science-Fiction-Television-Hitchhikers/dp/184511048X

Marc Aramini:

"the slightly narrow materialistic interpretive scheme of "Attending Daedalus""

You have to be pretty familiar with Wright's theoretical basis to
grasp his thesis. I think it's a valid reading of the novels though I
don't agree with all of it. I was actually a little disappointed in
Shadows as I already was familiar with most of that information,
either in print or on-line.
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