The Snootiness of Gene Wolfe

Htn963 · 01 Mar 2004, 06:10 · from rec.arts.sf.written.2004.mbox

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From: Htn963 at peoplepc.com (Htn963)
Subject: Re: The Snootiness of Gene Wolfe
Date: 29 Feb 2004 22:10:47 -0800
Message-ID: <bcef0661.0402292210.55410d4c at posting.google.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
References: <Xns949D9FE6F929Difyouwanttoemailvisi at 199.45.49.11> <c21d3ba0.0402290659.37671483 at posting.google.com> <+tv*P4jeq at news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>

Thomas Womack <twomack at chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message news:<+tv*P4jeq at news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>...
> 
> >Maybe Wolfe does this too intentionally. But the thing is - he
> >succeeded. I only read the Book of the New Sun so far, but I'm
> >definately looking fot the others (I already have the Long Sun books,
> >but I'm trying to find _Urth_ first).
> 
> I have read BOTNS and am half-way through Urth; I'm not sure that the
> term to describe Wolfe's style isn't "infuriating". 

     I liked BOTNS, but, yeah, that's an apt description of the effect
his style usually has on me.

> I think really I find that life is too short to read very much written
> in first-person by that unreliable a narrator.

     Ditto.  I haven't been tempted to read anything else by Wolfe
after _Urth_, an overlong, rambling, pointless (and methinks
self-indulgent*) exercise in religious-philosophical jigsaw assembling
which detracts from the vividness and panache of the previous BOTNS
book.

*And that's how I would describe Wolfe himself -- not snooty.  The OP
is welcome to overstate his case, of course.

--
Ht

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