(urth) Clute review of PF in NYRSF
David Duffy
David.Duffy at qimr.edu.au
Tue Feb 5 14:02:57 PST 2008
On Tue, 5 Feb 2008, David Duffy wrote:
> Has he reviewed it elsewhere? It doesn't go too deeply into analysis
> (after all it is a review), though he mentions the possibility of 3rd or
> 4th iterations of Chris.
Actually, he doesn't mention further iterations and says the maze is
unicursal ;)
OK. This is in the NYRSF Jan issue, only one page. Generally liked it,
though found a bit Catholic ;) "Angriest and most fun"
most amusing claim: "any character in any Wolfe novel whose emotional
response to any event is deeper than seems exactly appropriate is fairly
likely to be the protagonist of that novel in a guise we have not yet
encountered". So, he implies that as he read it he was suspicious of
i) Ignacio crying;
ii) "We are almost dead certain" that on P 23-24, the man whose chicken is
stolen is Chris [see P 310].
comparisons: Severian - tall and thin, seen as dark; excel in
fighting; charismatic; repressed extreme emotions; attractive to
(untrustworthy) women; torturers; God speaks to them directly; inhumanly
acure moral judgements; write confessions. It seems to me this equally
applies to Latro and Able though.
difference: too certain in faith, "Savaranola-intense"
reason for confession: convince the reader that "life as a pirate [is] a
good preparation for becoming a priest". Well, self-justification anyway.
And ends:
"The reader may envy the sea-foam and clarity of that past, and would be
there with him in a flash of trance, if given entry. But the reader may
also take [the] final sentence as a dreadful warning: Danger! We are the
people. We are you." Well you either like Clute's writing style or you
don't.
Cheers, David Duffy.
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