Gene Wolf

Barbara Jernigan · 07 Feb 1986, 22:58 · from net.sf-lovers.1986.mbox

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From: barb at oliven.UUCP (Barbara Jernigan)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolf
Date: Fri, 7-Feb-86 17:58:33 EST
Message-ID: <511 at oliven.UUCP>
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
References: <194 at analog.UUCP> <3840005 at csd2.UUCP> <11683 at ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1722 at jhunix.UUCP>

>Finding all the nuances in the books to be found, that's something no one will
>ever do. I think that's what the original poster had in mind when he said that
>about understanding the books.  I think someone once defined art as that which
>is always new.  Who can understand something that is forever new to them?  Who
>would want to?

If it makes the reader feel any better, sometimes authors are in the same boat.
To quote Jung:

   The secret of creativeness, like that of the freedom of the will, 
   is a transcendental problem which the psychologist cannot answer 
   but can only describe. . . . Art is a kind of innate drive that 
   seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.  The artist is 
   not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but 
   one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. . . . As 
   K. G. Carus says:  "Strange are the ways by which genius is 
   announced, for what distinguishes so supremely endowed a being is 
   that, for all the freedom of his life and the clarity of his 
   thought, he is everywhere hemmed round and prevailed upon by the 
   Unconscious, the mysterious god within him; so that ideas flow to 
   him -- he knows not whence; his is driven to work ant to create 
   -- he knows not to what end; and is mastered by an impulse for 
   constant growth and development -- he knows not whither."

In my own work, I have found myself unconsciously foreshadowing later events --
and was aware of the foreshadowing only within the second and third passes.
Is strange, remaining inexplicable (but pretty neat).  When the writer says,
"The book wrote itself," he/she is not lying or belittling his/her craft.
The ideas, hard as they are, are not the hardest part.  The *hard* part is
turning the idea into something readable.  But I digress.

> As to who's the best SF author ever, that remains to be seen, doesn't it?
> 									Mark!

"Best."  Do I know that word?                                         ;-)

Barb

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