(urth) If I already like ...

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Tue, 4/17/12, Dave Lebling <dlebling at hyraxes.com> wrote:





At this point I'm reminded of Neal Stephenson as well. The Baroque Cycle is rather Wolfean and Powersian, in my opinion, infodumps aside.

I believe there's a big difference between the people who like Wolfe (and Lewis, Tolkien, and some others) largely because their work is heavily influenced by their Catholicism, and those who like Wolfe because of his pre-post-modern-ish (to coin a phrase) sensibility. I'm one of the latter, although the Catholicism works fine for me as a background.

Dave Lebling
 
I am sure the Catholicism contributes to the baroque spirituality that I so admire - though I find him almost entirely (but VERY cryptically and elusively) modernist in outlook.  (I fervently believe in almost every case there IS  a bottom to get to - something I would abandon in an author  who I felt was being deliberately "postmodern").
 
I love his prose and his creations and his mysteries, and I tell myself it is for that reason that I rank him at the pinnacle of all artists, in this or any time, and that everything that comes after will surely be a pale shadow, as everything that came before was just a fleeting glimpse of promise.  Yet it might very well be that my basic spiritual but eccentric and pragmatic "ends justify the means" conservatism is what really makes me put him far above the other authors I admire - that the arguments of his characters speak to me in particular.  
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