The Snootiness of Gene Wolfe

Thomas Womack · 01 Mar 2004, 09:04 · from rec.arts.sf.written.2004.mbox

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From: Thomas Womack <twomack at chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Subject: Re: The Snootiness of Gene Wolfe
Date: 01 Mar 2004 09:04:59 +0000 (GMT)
Message-ID: <pQg*U8leq at news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>
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> <394d822b.0402291845.58775386 at posting.google.com>

>Thomas Womack <twomack at chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message news:<+tv*P4jeq at news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>...
>> The book that's really impressed me recently is Dorothy Dunnett's
>> "Niccolo Rising"; absolutely superb pacing, and a really compelling
>> environment, quite substantially thanks to everything being told in
>> a well-calibrated omniscient third-person.

>To me it's odd that you would find Wolfe's unreliable narrator
>infuriating but you're not bothered by Dunnett's practice of having
>vitally important matters take place offstage then having the
>characters refer to them as if the reader ought to know what they're
>talking about.  Gradually, of course, the reader clues in.

I rather like that approach, in Dunnett and in GG Kay (with writers
that good using it, it must have something to commend itself); it
keeps my poor brain from atrophying, and offers an interestingly
different sort of dramatic irony.  I'm much more convinced that there
is a Big Story of which the characters we're reading know parts than I
am from Wolfe.

>The Niccolo books just get better and better, by the way.  Dunnett was
>as good a historical novelist as Cecilia Holland, and that's saying
>something.

I'm looking forward to the next ones, as soon as the library's
catalogue server comes back on-line and I can actually order them ...
_Niccolo Rising_ I proselytised enthusiastically about, and lent out
to a friend the day I'd finished it.

Who's Cecilia Holland?  Georgette Heyer's real name, or some other
writer I've not yet had the privilege to encounter?

Tom

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