(urth) Wolfe at Readercon
JBarach at aol.com
JBarach at aol.com
Mon Jul 20 16:10:38 PDT 2009
Milton writes:
> I think Wolfe's done all he can do with Latro short of killing
> the character off. Althought Soldier of Sidon can't claim
> the level of writing its predecessors had, it still was a fine
> book and, I believe, a great place to end the story.
I haven't read Sidon yet, but ... surely the matter of his memory-problem
has yet to be resolved. That is, I assume Wolfe didn't intend it to be
just some weird feature that plays no role in the plot but that allows Wolfe to
do some fun stuff with the narrative.
Of course, that may have been how the idea originated ("What if I had a
character who couldn't remember more than a day at a time?"), but it seems to
me that Wolfe usually DOES something with those sorts of ideas. As he says
in one of his essays or interviews about writing, many people think they
have a great idea for a story when they come up with an idea for the premise
of a story or the opening of the story ("What if a guy couldn't remember
more than a day at a time?"). But what is important is knowing the *end* of
the story and how the story gets to it.
So if Wolfe came up with this particular idea, it seems consistent to me to
think that Wolfe had some idea of where he wanted to go with the idea.
It's not just a gimmick to allow, for instance, characters to deceive Latro
because he can't remember that they were untrustworthy. It's going
somewhere. The memory loss happened for a reason, and therefore it is something
that is both resolvable and needing resolution.
Or so it seems to me. Now you'll tell me that all that stuff was cleared
up in Sidon....
John
**************What's for dinner tonight? Find quick and easy dinner ideas
for any occasion.
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