(urth) The Devil in a Forest
James Wynn
crushtv at gmail.com
Wed Jun 24 15:48:14 PDT 2009
Michael Straight:
>>I think Wolfe is more interested in that sort of exploration
>> of the nature of evil than he is in making some sort of political
>> statement.
Josh:
> As interested. It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping. I really like TDiaF
> also.
That's pretty funny, Josh.
I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. I was expecting something along
the level of "Pandora" quality. When I finished it, I considered it solid
piece, but nothing of much depth. But as I discussed it, I began to
appreciate it much more. The characters are iconic with each having his own
"space". Very Dickensian. And as I said, it would be thick-headed to say the
novel is "about" this or that. Part of my low(er) opinion of it was that I
didn't think the political angle was very subtle at all. After talking to
people about it, I came to the opposite conclusion. Yeah, it's about the
corrupting power of greed and the human susceptibility to venality. But
those evils are dressed in the idea of "robbing from the rich to give to the
poor". And re-distribution of wealth is a major political issue. You can't
really escape that theme in an homage to the Robin Hood story (which this
is, and a quite deft one). The sad thing is that I'm probably spoiling the
novel for some people, at least, by pointing out that there *is* a political
statement in there. Fortunately, there seems to be more than enough
deniability in the work for readers to ignore me as a crank and enjoy the
novel for all its other attributes.
J.
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