(urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

[Gerry Quinn]

From: Jason H 


> But I don't think the identity puzzles are the real reason why Wolfe
>  is difficult. I think he's difficult because he writes so obliquely about 
> puzzling things, like space travel with mirrors, and 20th-century people
>  trapped in Urth's Botanic Gardens, and Miles-as-Jonas. There is a 
> sense of wondrous revelation that you, as a reader, almost but don't 
> quite get, and I think that wonder is what Wolfe is really aiming at, 
> and dealing with the ambiguities and uncertainties of these partially-
> explained wonders makes reading Wolfe hard and tricky. (And 
> frustrating. And great!)

Yes, I think the oblique descriptions of events are the tricky bit.  Wolfe also likes the notion that the attentive reader should only need to be told something once, so there tends to be a detective-story element to understanding the stories.  Identity puzzles do occur, but they are just one type of puzzle.  

I think Wolfe would say that most of his puzzles have explicit solutions with adequate clues, but that is a difficult thing to arrange.  It should be noted that the solution of any detective story involves (as Sherlock Holmes noted) eliminating the impossible to reveal the unlikely but true solution.  Readers who embrace too carelessly the impossible may therefore find themselves thinking that Wolfe is extraordinally ambiguous, whereas readers who dismiss too easily the unlikely may find them lacking in solutions.


> 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)
> 
> Caveat: I'm relatively new to Wolfe, having only read the Wizard-Knight 
> and the Book of the New Sun (I haven't even read Urth yet).
> 

> But does anyone agree with me? :) 

I do, in general.


> And does anyone know if Wolfe has ever voiced any opinion on the kind 
> of exegesis found e.g. in Robert Borski's book? I'd be very curious!

I don't have a reference, but I think he may have referred at some point to "the crazy things some people find in my books" or something of that nature.

- Gerry Quinn
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