(urth) Cues and Lolita?

Jonathan Goodwin joncgoodwin at gmail.com
Fri Sep 11 16:29:33 PDT 2009


I'm actually teaching Island of Dr. Death, etc., in an introduction to
short fiction class in a few weeks.

The title of the story is actually "'Cues" (i.e., "Cues [unless it's a
misprint]). It's an opaque story, and I'm thinking about what I'll
have to say about it in class. I recall some discussion on this list
about scatological imagery. Wolfe's stories also allow for a ready
introduction to questions of interpretation and intention, as the
recent discussions about An Evil Guest show.


On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Matthew Groves
<matthewalangroves at gmail.com> wrote:
> Glad to see some activity on the urth list.  In the interest of possibly
> stirring up a little more:
>
> I Lolita for the first time a few months ago -- Amazing!!!  (But difficult;
> I recommend an annotated copy or an accompanying class notes booklet.)
> There's lots of wordplay throughout, and one that I seem to remember
> reccurring frequently is play with "Q" (as in "Quilty"), "cue," and maybe
> "clue."  Has anyone made any connection between Lolita and Wolfe's short
> "Cues" from TIoDDaOSaOS?  I haven't even reread "Cues" in a year or so, but
> I thought I'd throw this idea out there anyway.
>
> If any of you doesn't have any of Wolfe's collections, then that one (The
> Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories) is the one to
> begin with, both because it's first and because it's best.
>
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