(urth) Notes on _The Wizard_
Dan Rabin
wolfe-lists at danrabin.com
Mon Jan 3 21:55:14 PST 2005
What an outpouring of pent-up commentary we've had!
Here are some short notes I myself have been saving up:
1. "Arthur Ormsby". My reaction was "What, again?", thinking of "Oh
Wrangler, oh _Artie_" at the end of _Castleview_. So Able is really
Wrangler Dunstan, right?
2. "Arthur Ormsby". I thought the surname smelled of Significance,
so I did a Google search.
<http://www.ancestry.com/search/SurnamePage.aspx?html=b&ln=Ormsby&sourcecode=13304>
says the -by suffix is a Norse word for settlement.
The suffix occurs, I've heard, in those areas of Great Britain
conquered by the Vikings.
<http://www.ormsby.org/genie/Australia/Origin.html> has Orm as a big
strong hero from Scandinavia. I don't know how much to trust such
web sites, and I would welcome any scholarly confirmation of the
authenticity of the legend.
3. The acceleration of the last part of the book. I think this is a
bad habit of Wolfe's. I thought _Exodus from the Long Sun_ was
rushed, and it really just sets up the _Short Sun_ series rather than
ending. For that matter, _The Citadel of the Autarch_ just zooms
about once it's well past the stories that were put in to pad it out
after Wolfe split it off from _The Sword of the Lictor_. _The Urth
of the New Sun_, too, changes locales like a slide projector.
4. Queen Idnn. The giantesses were prepared for very carefully in
the narrative, but they still seem to come out of nowhere. I just
found it hard to buy the notion that a brief marriage, not known to
be consummated, would be taken as conferring authority on a
foreigner. And maybe I missed why the female Angrborn live apart,
and why the males prefer human women.
5. The Black Knight was obviously Duke Marder. Didn't surprise me.
6. Org's near-invisibility wasn't memorable from _The Knight_, and
was perhaps a tad overused.
7. Mani was a continued delight, and I missed him when the thickening
of the narrative could no longer accommodate his speaking role. Does
anyone think he was G. Gordon Kitty in a previous life :-) ?
-- Dan Rabin
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