(urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

David Duffy davidD at qimr.edu.au
Mon May 23 00:24:38 PDT 2011


On Sun, 22 May 2011, Jason H wrote:

> These, for me, are the real "puzzles" of Wolfe, and not the logistical
> identity questions. I don't have much interest in mapping out Severian's
> family tree (other than hints of the grandmother and the mother). In fact,
> I've always thought the identity puzzles are either obvious by the end of
> the book, or, honestly, non-existent and totally unsupported by the text.
> Wolfe is smart and clever, but I don't think the way he shows his cleverness
> is by leaving elaborate clues at that level of misdirection. At the level of
> tower-as-rocket, yes. But more elaborate and obscured than that, I've never
> seen evidence for. It just doesn't strike me as the kind of thing he's
> interested in (based on reading interviews and Castle of the Otter).
>

I can't find the interview or article where Wolfe explains a few puzzles 
and symbols in New Sun -- I think they were all from one page of the text. 
I thought it was a response to Clute or Feeley.

Cheers, David Duffy.



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