Home Fires: Wolfe doing Heinlein?

Fernando Gouvea · 12 Aug 2013, 16:27 · from 2013-August.txt.gz

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From: fqgouvea at colby.edu (Fernando Gouvea)
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 12:27:12 -0400
Subject: (urth) Home Fires: Wolfe doing Heinlein?
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	<CAJ8=rtg8t_DATCipSVUg1p4PUWUURsx=vo++xCk3yXhTFJSOXQ at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <52090CE0.5060309 at colby.edu>

I agree. There are clear links to the war in Starship Troopers (with a 
nod to Haldeman's Forever War as well, of course). But there's also the 
"nothing is as it seems" note that crept into late Heinlein (as in The 
Cat Who Walks Through Walls). Though without quite the same level of 
nihilism.

I think there may also be a sort of slantwise commentary on us, who 
investigate Wolfe's work with a view to finding out all the hidden 
secrets. After all, the narrator of Home Fires keeps trying to figure 
things out, and in so doing he keeps getting himself and those around 
him in trouble. You can almost see the book as a commentary on the vice 
of curiosity.

But, being Wolfe, the book also has something to say about love, 
marriage, and the connection (if any) between the two. I particularly 
like the way he lets the narrator convince us (as he has convinced 
himself) that his fling with that girl 20 years ago was the great 
romance of his life. The girl, for whom it has been much less time, has 
constructed no such a myth for herself.

Fernando

On 8/12/2013 11:13 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> I didn't feel that at the time, but looking back at it, yeah, I think so.
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 6:18 PM, Brian Doherty 
> <brianmdoherty at gmail.com <mailto:brianmdoherty at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Don't know if this is either an overdone or an absurd observation,
>     but did anyone else feel that the character/scenario/tone of Home
>     Fires (I'm only about 130 pages in) feels like a Wolfean take on
>     Heinleinian themes/characters/situations?
>
>     Brian Doherty
>
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> -- 
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
>
>
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-- 
=============================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea         http://www.colby.edu/~fqgouvea
Carter Professor and Chair
Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
Colby College              Editor, Carus Mathematical Monographs
5836 Mayflower Hill        Editor, MAA Reviews
Waterville, ME 04901       http://www.maa.org/publications/maa-reviews

The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all.
   -- G. K. Chesterton

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