Digest whorl.v010.n047

Richard Horton12 Nov 1999, 03:12original as archived

↰ answers Michael Straight · by quotation

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On Tue, 9 Nov 1999 07:10:37 -0800 (PST), you wrote: Different tastes. I like that sentence. Some of the others are overblown, but I think that one works just fine.

That sort of sentence is very characteristic of Clute. It's just his style. By the way, if anyone wants to read a novel more confusing (though, alas, less rewarding) than Wolfe at his most opaque, they could do worse than trying Clute's one novel, The Disinheriting Party.

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As I said before, my main beef with the review is that it contains way too many spoilers for the other series (or other novels, to use Clute's term) for an interview claiming to be fore a newcomer to Wolfe ("You can start here").

Clute is the most spoiler prone reviewer/critic I have ever read. I really like his reviews, but sometimes he just forgets that his putative reader probably hasn't read the book yet. And to be honest I think that while one =could= start with On Blue's Waters and enjoy =it=, it is very much a spoiler for The Book of the Long Sun. Even knowing that the narrator of On Blue's Waters wrote The Book of the Long Sun is a spoiler.

Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard.horton at sff.net Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent) *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

Alastair Reynolds12 Nov 1999, 08:34original as archived

↳ follows Richard Horton · by subject

Richard:

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On Tue, 9 Nov 1999 07:10:37 -0800 (PST), you wrote: By the way, if anyone wants to read a novel more confusing (though, alas, less rewarding) than Wolfe at his most opaque, they could do worse than trying Clute's one novel, The Disinheriting Party.

He's supposed to have a new novel out sometime - the last I heard was that it was to be called Appleseed. The thing with Clute is (for me anyway), just when I'm ready to throw one of his reviews across the room, he comes out with something brilliantly perceptive. If he has a review column in Interzone, it's always the first thing I turn to. Al, just got his copy of OBW... *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

Digest whorl.v010.n047Whorl