Keep the mailing list focused on Gene Wolfe

I for one would prefer that the Urth mailing list remain focused on Gene Wolfe's work. That's what I subscribe for. Since I'm an infrequent contributor, perhaps I should back up my vote with a proposal for a new Wolfe-centered discussion topic: Wolfe's craft in the small. We are greatly struck by the quality of Wolfe's ideas and by the way he uses them to great effect. What about the small-scale details of how he tells his stories? I have in mind, for example, two occasions in The Book of the New Sun on which Severian ends a situation with decisive violence. First, in Torturer at the end of Ch. 14 `Terminus Est', Severian's crushing of the nerve in the peltast's neck is preceded by the reflective commentary `The peltast was relaxed, so there was no great difficulty.' The presence of the word `relaxed' contributes to the calming effect. Then--KER-POW--action! Second, in Sword, at the end of Ch. 26 `The Eyes of the World', we have a reversal in the sequence of action and reflection. This time the occurrence of the violence in the paragraph `I struck then,' interrupts Typhon's arrogant attempt to swear Severian to his service. OK, so he struck, but what happened? The following paragraph, beginning `There is a way of smashing the nose with the heel of one's hand...' forms a nice little disquisition on how Severian killed Typhon, revealing that Severian must have been carrying out the outlined reasoning during the preceding dialog with Typhon without telling us. KER-POW!, and then `Elementary, Watson, I simply deduced that to kill a two-headed human you must exploit a reflex that can only protect one head.' Does anybody else have a favorite example of Wolfe's technique at the sentence-and-paragraph level? By the way, the flinch reflex seems to be a bit of a favorite with Wolfe. Hammerstone uses it as an example explaining `standing orders' to Silk on p. 223 (hardcover) of Lake of the Long Sun (near the beginning of Ch. 9 `In Dreams Like Death'). -- Dan Rabin