Urth Net
Digest whorl.v012.n033
↰ answers Michael Straight
· by quotation
Michael Straight asked of IGJ:
1 quoted line
Is this Wolfe's most didactic book? I don't mean it reads like he's preaching at us, but Horn seems to make far more observations and speeches about what is right than I can recall from any other Wolfe character, even Silk.
I confess that this is one of the things I disliked about IGJ - a certain sententiousness from Horn is his disquisitions about life, family relationships et al. I couldn't help thinking that it was meant to be wise counsel from Wolfe, though the effect for me was more like Polonius's advice to Hamlet ie vacuous cliches presented as insightful. Maybe I'm wrong in interpreting Horn's wise words in this fashion, and I've yeat to reread IGJ so it might not irritate in the same way in future. But in short, I did think it was didactic and I didn't like it.
Tim
*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.