_The Wizard_ by Gene Wolfe - too much like previous Wolfe

JavaJosh · 08 Nov 2005, 06:26 · from rec.arts.sf.written.2005.mbox

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: "JavaJosh" <javajosh at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: _The Wizard_ by Gene Wolfe - too much like previous Wolfe
Date: 7 Nov 2005 22:26:29 -0800
Message-ID: <1131431189.729910.179260 at o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
References: <1131110580.237908.247530 at g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1131155926.362586.111770 at g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <436FE8FA.79611C1 at optonline.com> <t110n1hcf5j5f5rg6hggoo52jm9hpokvad at 4ax.com>

viv wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 18:53:28 -0500, Andrew Wheeler
> <acwheele at optonline.com> wrote:
>
> >As you say, Wolfe is the master of the scene in which things almost
> >happen, but don't quite do so. Sometimes (as in "Book of the New Sun" or
> >"Book of the Short Sun"), the things that *don't* happen are important
> >and clear and stunning.
>
> Not sure what you're trying to say here.
>
> Do you mean certain events or plot threads never materialize the way
> we anticipate or that they "occur" off-stage, behind the main
> narrative, like a puppeteer's hand movements, and we must therefore
> infer them?
>
> An example perhaps would be edifying...

Interrupted action. As fiction readers we've learned to anticipate
certain things. For example, if you were to read:

"She had been aching for a slice of pie for so long her eye lids
fluttered at the mere thought. A cherry pie, apple pie, boston cream
pie - they all swam langoriously in front of her, tempting her.

But of course there was no pie; the pie famine of '68 made sure of
that. The word was without pie and more's the pity. So she had to make
due with cake and ice cream and she tried to forget pie by whistling
tunelessly and thinking about boys. But they were all second to pie.

She made her living spearing apricots with a dainty silver utensil made
for the purpose. One day at work she noticed a windowsill in the
distance. But this was no ordinary window sill - this window sill  was
*steaming*. And being no fool, she knew that steam in a window sill
could mean *pie*.

Pocketing her gracefully turned apricot spearer into its special velvet
pouch, she loped through the apricot grove and over the grassy hill to
the little cottage with the steaming windowsill. Her back now against
the cottage, she sidled up to the pie, wondering if the owner would be
mad if she had a little piece.

"Who goes there!" bellowed a deep voice from around the corner. "I can
smell 'ye smellin' me pie. Begone! There ain't none fer ye, so
skiddadle!"

Terrified of that booming voice, she fumbled with her apricot spearer,
and with a sudden spurt of gumption, walked around the corner to
confront the owner of that booming voice.

Much to her suprise, the man was Maddy Mudwinner, an uncle on her
mother's side, and always a hoot at the family get-togethers and a mad
scrabble player. "Maddy!" she said, laughing, "How on earth did you
make a pie? If you love your niece you will give me some!"

Upon seeing his niece, Maddy's coarse face relaxed and wiping his
mitten hands on his greasy white apron explained with a smile, "Oh my,
well hello little darling! How is the apricot spearing business?"

She sighed with ennui, "It's the same as ever, spearing day in, day
out. My technique has gotten quite good. Watch!" with that she flicked
her wrist and pinned one of Maddy's apron strings to the rough wooden
door standing open behind him.

Hooting with pleasure, Maddy made gestures to come inside, "Oh, it's
been too long little one. Come on in and have some pie."

"But uncle", the girl said pulling her utensil out of the door, "there
is something I haven't been honest with you about, and I just wouldn't
feel right eating your pie without telling you. Do you remember Aunt
Margaret?"

Maddy frowned. "Yes. Of course. What about her?"

"You never knew this but it was I who cut off her left index finger
during the Lemon festival of '69, you know the one right after the pie
famine. She never told you because she knew I was your favorite niece,
and then when her head was crushed by Farmer Moony's giant summer
squash, it didn't seem like the right time to tell you."

"Bless your heart little one, I forgive you, of course. I've been
meaning to tell you something too. I've got a new love, and she's right
there next to your foot."

Looking down, she noticed a mole looking up at her, it's blind eyes
looking up at the sun and warm wet nose brushing her ankle.

"Uncle, she's a mole!"

"Well, yes." Maddy looked a little abashed. "But love knows no bounds,
your mother used to say. Do you think she'll think less of me for
loving a mole?"

Wihtout a word the girl flung her apricot spear at the ball of brown
fur at her feet. With a sickening thud, the spear stuck out the head of
the mole, now lying motionless on the ground.

"I hate moles" she said coldly, wiping her tiny spear, and walked back
to her apricot tree to continue her day's work. The sound of Maddy's
sobs drifted away.

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