White Gold and ghostsWhorl

Hi folks, I'll join the delurking trend. I had two notes that I wanted to respond to. First, to Alex's comments about similarities between OBW and Thomas Covenant: Covenant didn't get his ring from Lena, the girl he raped. He came into the Land wearing the white gold, which was his wedding ring (which he still wore, even though he was divorced). Sorry to hear you didn't like the Covenant books--I did, although I haven't reread them anywhere near as much as I've reread Wolfe. Second, on the "ghost in the middle of a novel" remark from Wolfe--this makes me think of the narrator of Peace, who, unless I'm misremembering, is revealed as a ghost at the end of the book. Can't remember his name, though, and don't have my copy of Peace handy. Although no one would dare to call Peace SF. Hmm...have to give this some more thought. Michael Purdy *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

Dennis Weir. And it's not revealed at the end; it's revealed, very obliquely, midway through. Peace does have a science-fictional element: The factory built by Dennis's "uncle" Julius manufactures a powdered orange drink made from potato powder. And a lot of the stories embedded within Peace are fantastic--either fairy tales or supernatural horror.