Gene Wolfe interview in Locus

Doug Merritt · 04 Jun 1991, 04:12 · from rec.arts.sf-lovers.1991.mbox

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From: doug at netcom.COM (Doug Merritt)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe interview in Locus
Date: 4 Jun 91 04:12:03 GMT
Message-ID: <1991Jun4.041203.14967 at netcom.COM>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers
References: <1991Jun2.015734.14702 at netcom.COM> <5938 at lectroid.sw.stratus.com>

>writes:
>>  They [the clues] were pretty obvious, after all, and furthermore
>> about the only thing that kept some of us reading (albeit with a lot
>> of yawning and grimacing).
>
>So you would only read it if it were SF?  If the SF material wan't there,
>you'd quit reading. (That's what your last sentence DOES say.)

No, it doesn't! My last sentence says that I found it boring, except for
the tidbits that kept me going. The reason they kept me going was that
they lent *suspense* to something otherwise incredibly dull. The reductio
ad absurdum to your interpretation is that would imply I would keep
reading *anything* that had lots of juicy SF elements, no matter how
boring, and clearly I said nothing of the sort (nor is it true; I've
given up on lots of F&SF that was pure genre yet boring). You're reading
too much into what I said.

>Good fiction is good fiction. Gene Wolfe writes good fiction, that happens,
>most of the time, to have SF or fantasy elements. But if it didn't,
>I'd read it anyway.

I agree partially, except that I defy anyone to claim that Free Live Free
is a great novel under any category at all. Let's say it was published
as mainstream: it's still dull. The most you can say for it is that it
is a character study that teases without fully revealing the characters.
That might be interesting in an 8000 word vignette, but Wolfe did not
pull it off in the full length novel. Or have I missed reviewers who
thought it was great? I haven't seen such that might indicate that my
take on it was narrow minded, although I admit of the possibility.

You guys who think that anyone who complains about "supposed SF" not 
really being SF must therefore perforce be incredibly shallow are just
knee-jerk reacting.

>Sounds to me like the problem isn't Wolfe's fiction but our insistent on
>categories. "This is SF, this isn't."  That's not what matters. What matters
>is "This is good, this isn't."

Fair enough, except that I claim that FLF is not worth novel-length
treatment regardless of criteria, in or out of genre.

>  In fact, I agree with
>you on one point. I sometimes wish that Wolfe's books wouldn't always be 
>labeled as "SF" since there are lots of folks out there who would like
>much of what he writes, but don't ever see it.

Yes, except that Free Live Free is not one of the ones that I would recommend
to mainstream readers. If we were talking about something else, that
would be a good reason for the soapbox.

I was about to counter-flame someone much, much less polite than you, but
I thought that a calm difference of opinions deserved priority. Now on
to the flame. ;-)
	Doug

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