Petty complaints (RTTW spoilers)

William Ansley · 14 Feb 2001, 01:08 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Subject: (whorl) Petty complaints (RTTW spoilers)
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 01:08:24
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0218 at digest.urth.net>
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At 6:03 PM -0500 2/13/01, <akt at attglobal.net> wrote:

>From: Kieran Cleary <kcleary at jb.man.ac.uk>> Subject: Re: (whorl) Pig,
>Godling
>
>>  Alga,
>>
>>  Couldn't agree more re Pig. Did he like deciphering that dialect? He
>did
>>  nae!
>
>It fashed my een! And my kin are Scottish on my mother's side--which
>made it all the more irritating! I know where your kin are from despite
>that "uk" in your address....

Hi, alga and all.

I finally had time to finish RTTW. I can't say that I was all that=20
thrilled with it either, for a variety of reasons. I found Pig's=20
dialect quite irritating as well; there were some things he said that=20
I never figured out.

(Now that I think about it, I suppose that the fact that Hornsilk=20
could always understand Pig could be taken as more evidence that=20
Hornsilk was really Silk all along. In TBotLS, Silk could always=20
understand, Tick, that highly annoying catacrest that always used=20
random consonants at the beginnings of the words it spoke. (Something=20
that has always bother me: what was the catacrest's real name? It=20
couldn't have been Tick, if that's what it called itself.))

In fact I got heartily sick of all of the "distinctive" ways Wolfe=20
came up with for his characters to speak in this book: Pig's dialect,=20
the village of the Yodas, Olivine's repeating, Olivine's repeating=20
herself, Prolocutor Italics and Remora's mumblings.

>  > The encounter with the godling struck me as very similar to one of
>Sev's
>>  meetings with Juturna ('I would save you'), or with the hierodules,
>where
>>  they kneel before him. In a sense, the godling is a debased version of
>a
>>  hierodule, and recognises Silk as the 'holy one'.
>
>Well, yes. But I do think the operative word is "debased." I love
>Juturna and the hierodules and think they are used *extremely* well by
>the author (especially in that last book that some on this list like to
>put down), but as I said in an earlier post, the godling, to me, seems
>like a Hollywood special effect that serves no purpose other than cover
>art.
>

I was also bothered by the impossibly large size of the (big)=20
godling. Wolfe should make up his mind, is he writing science fiction=20
or isn't he?

As far as the cover art goes, this book far surpassed all of the the=20
others in the wrongness of the cover, in my opinion. The artist=20
apparently read the book with very little attention.

On p. 53 the godling is described as having "a smooth, domed head."=20
No mention of a hat or hood. So where does the artist come up withe=20
the very peculiar headgear he puts on the godling's head? From p. 139.

--------------------
The yellow flame of the candle rose; he shut his lantern, mesmerized=20
by the end of the godling's thumb, the smoothly rounded face of a=20
faceless man wearing a peaked hat that was in fact a claw.
--------------------

So the artist puts a hood with a bizarre, claw-like forward thrusting=20
peak on his godling's head but no claws on his hand. I guess it's=20
just me, but I find this profoundly irritating.

More complaints to come!

William Ansley

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