(urth) Home Fires: Wolfe doing Heinlein?
Fernando Gouvea
fqgouvea at colby.edu
Mon Aug 12 09:27:12 PDT 2013
I agree. There are clear links to the war in Starship Troopers (with a
nod to Haldeman's Forever War as well, of course). But there's also the
"nothing is as it seems" note that crept into late Heinlein (as in The
Cat Who Walks Through Walls). Though without quite the same level of
nihilism.
I think there may also be a sort of slantwise commentary on us, who
investigate Wolfe's work with a view to finding out all the hidden
secrets. After all, the narrator of Home Fires keeps trying to figure
things out, and in so doing he keeps getting himself and those around
him in trouble. You can almost see the book as a commentary on the vice
of curiosity.
But, being Wolfe, the book also has something to say about love,
marriage, and the connection (if any) between the two. I particularly
like the way he lets the narrator convince us (as he has convinced
himself) that his fling with that girl 20 years ago was the great
romance of his life. The girl, for whom it has been much less time, has
constructed no such a myth for herself.
Fernando
On 8/12/2013 11:13 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> I didn't feel that at the time, but looking back at it, yeah, I think so.
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 6:18 PM, Brian Doherty
> <brianmdoherty at gmail.com <mailto:brianmdoherty at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Don't know if this is either an overdone or an absurd observation,
> but did anyone else feel that the character/scenario/tone of Home
> Fires (I'm only about 130 pages in) feels like a Wolfean take on
> Heinleinian themes/characters/situations?
>
> Brian Doherty
>
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> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
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--
=============================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea http://www.colby.edu/~fqgouvea
Carter Professor and Chair
Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
Colby College Editor, Carus Mathematical Monographs
5836 Mayflower Hill Editor, MAA Reviews
Waterville, ME 04901 http://www.maa.org/publications/maa-reviews
The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all.
-- G. K. Chesterton
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