Wolfe's humor

adam louis stephanides · 24 Oct 1997, 14:34 · from urth-v0005.mbox · original

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From: adam louis stephanides <astephan at students.uiuc.edu>
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's humor
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 14:34:54
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[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other work=
s]

On Fri, 24 Oct 1997 urth-errors at lists.best.com wrote:

> From: "Tony Ellis" <tellis at futurenet.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: The Quiet Urth

> Yes, Wolfe is a Catholic, but he is
> also a polymath, and a terrible punster, and I find plenty of double
> meanings and conceits in his stories that have nothing to do
> with Christian themes.

This reminds me of a topic that I've long been intending to bring up:
Wolfe's humor.  Most of Wolfe's work strikes me as utterly solemn
(though there are undoubtedly things I'm missing); and his overtly
humorous stories have, in my opinion, a lower proportion of successes
than most of the other stuff he tries his hand at.  But I do like
the humorous short stories "Car Sinister" (though I suspect I
may be a minority in this) and "An Article about Hunting." And "For-
lesen," one of my favorites too, is full of dark humor of the sort
that Kafka was so good at.  Anybody have any other favorites?

--Adam

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