revelatory appeal

maa32 · 28 May 2002, 16:20 · from urth-v0205.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subject: (urth) revelatory appeal
Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 09:20:10 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0205-1101 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0205/1101.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Well, this revelation/renewed appeal has happened for me with a ton of Wolf=
e's=20
stuff.  I'll be honest: I didn't get Peace or the Fifth Head of Cerberus or=20
The Book of the Short Sun the first time through - and I hated Return to th=
e=20
Whorl the first time I read it.  Now, after me tree revelation, (which I cl=
aim=20
responsibility for, but the challenges and comments (especially of Nutria)=20
helped me to polish into a theory) made me believe that TBOTSS was not only=20
great, but that it was my favorite book in the whole world. I love to read =
it=20
at random now - because it always confirms my grand unifying theory (no mat=
ter=20
what you dudes say - and one or two people actually believe me).

The reason for this is simple: Wolfe always seems two steps ahead,but when =
I=20
get something he writes I feel like a genius. In other words, I feel that y=
ou=20
really do have to come to a key realization worked into the text on your ow=
n=20
to appreciate them; I don't know many other authors who do this so=20
successfully.  In a way, to love a work of fiction by Wolfe is to love your=20
own ideas; he reaffirms my faith in my own mental processes and gives me ho=
pe=20
that there really is someone out there who thinks like me.

I will say this: I had a hard time reading Peace the first time, and now th=
at=20
I get it, it is fun to read.  I will make this distinction: Zelazny's=20
Chronicles of Amber were fun to read the first time through, and I read the=
m=20
every couple of years just because they were fun and they are still fun. =20
Wolfe's texts may not have been fun to read the first time through, but the=
y=20
become ultimately much, much more fun for me everytime.  I really do like t=
hem=20
more.  A lot more.   I love them; I foist them on my friends; I read them t=
o=20
my mother; I serve as a one man propaganda army; I caress them everyday. A =
few=20
years ago they just sat on my shelf with the rest of the books.

Marc Aramini

--=20

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net