My reaction to IN GREEN'S JUNGLES

William Ansley · 05 Dec 2000, 23:51 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Subject: RE: (whorl) My reaction to IN GREEN'S JUNGLES
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 23:51:58
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0050 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0012/0050.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

At 8:50 AM -0800 12/5/00, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>3. If you haven't done so already, catch up with Gene Wolfe's favorite
>detective (and mine): Nero Wolfe, as chronicled by his assistant,=20
>Archie Goodwin, and his literary agent, the late Rex Stout (do not=20
>bother with the pathetic imitations by Robert Goldsborough). The=20
>ideal would be to read them in chronological order, but if you lack=20
>the will, the money, or the ability (that is, motive, means, and=20
>opportunity) to dig up all the books, some of the best are: TOO MANY=20
>COOKS; BLACK ORCHIDS; GAMBIT; OVER MY DEAD BODY; and THE DOORBELL=20
>RANG. Three books deserver special mention, and should be read in=20
>the correct order, as they involve Wolfe's equivalent to Holmes's=20
>Moriarty, one Arnold Zeck: AND BE A VILLAIN, THE SECOND CONFESSION,=20
>and IN THE BEST
>FAMILIES. These build to a definite climax; they are collected in=20
>the omnibus TRIPLE ZECK (groan), which may be available in your=20
>local public library. (At any rate, most of them are fairly easy to=20
>find in cheap used paperback editions.)

Since recommending books seems to be in fashion at the moment, I'm=20
going to chime in. First, I would like to very strongly second the=20
recommendation for the Nero Wolfe books above. I think that there are=20
about 30 of them and they are all well worth reading; I have read all=20
of them more than once.

Second, I have been meaning to recommend Iain Pears' book _An=20
Instance of the Fingerpost_ to this list for some time. It is a=20
historical mystery/thriller that most reviews compare to Umberto=20
Eco's _The Name of the Rose_. This comparison is apt, although I=20
liked _Fingerpost_ better, but any reader of Wolfe will not be able=20
to stop making comparisons between his books and Pears' novel.

Although Pear's writing style isn't much like Wolfe's, he is as good=20
a writer (if such a statement has any meaning) and he uses trick=20
after trick that we have seen in Wolfe's writing, each in his own way.

There is a (nearly) unnamed narrator, multiple narrators who may or=20
may not be reliable, very important religious issues and a good deal=20
of complicated politics. One big difference is that you do feel you=20
have a pretty complete grasp of what really happened in the book when=20
you are done. But, despite this, I don't think even the most fervent=20
admirers of ambiguity here will be disappointed.

This book is in print and available at Amazon.com and elsewhere I am sure.

--=20
William Ansley

*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.
*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.moonmilk.com/whorl/
*To leave the list, send "unsubscribe" to whorl-request at lists.best.com
*If it's Wolfe but not Long Sun, please use the URTH list: urth at lists.best.=
com

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