(urth) a journal entry from 1991

aaron aaronsingleton at gmail.com
Tue Jul 30 17:58:50 PDT 2013


I read TBotNS to my wife back in '05.  It was a blast.  I even got to the
point where I had different voices and cadences for each character.  I have
also read 5HC to her, and Vance's Dying Earth series.  I find it a great
way to introduce someone to my favorite works--I mean, there is no pressure
other than to listen and relax.  Looking forward to reading some Wolfe and
Vance to my son one day soon, too.


On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 5:09 PM, Christopher Simon <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com
> wrote:

>  That was really a pleasure to read, thanks for sharing.
>  ------------------------------
> From: Editor B <b at rox.com>
> Sent: 7/30/2013 2:19 PM
> To: urth at urth.net
>
> Subject: (urth) a journal entry from 1991
>
> Hey all. I thought I'd delurk briefly to share an entry from my private
> journals dating way back to 1991. I'm pasting below for those who care to
> take a look. It's about reading Wolfe to my then-girlfriend, identified
> here simply as K to protect her identity. To date I've read *The Book of
> the New Sun* aloud four times now, and I'm kind of curious if others have
> tried this. It's quite an experience. Also, it should be noted that this
> was written before the net came to the masses, which may account for my
> presumption that I was some sort of super elite reader. That, and the
> arrogance of youth. — Editor B
>
>
> *7/10/91 Wednesday*
>
> the work day started late for K, so she woke me up around 8am and we had
> breakfast together (after I did my exercises — I think I'll be doing 30 of
> each now, though I haven't done push-ups for a while). After she left I
> looked over Chapter IX in *Shadow of the Torturer* ("The House Azure")
> but I only read it in a whisper because my throat was was a little raw from
> smoking *Leonicus sibiricus* last night with K. (Yes, the package came
> from Of the Jungle just a couple days ago. We smoked by candlelight, with
> spacy music playing, and seemed to enjoy some psychic effects. But the
> jury's still out.) As regards Gene Wolfe, I guess I should explain that K
> finally said go last week, after three agonizing months (at least) since I
> told her I'd like to share *The Book of the New Sun* with her. Every day
> I look over the chapter I am to read that night, and I read it aloud to
> myself, so that I can get the inflections right and look up any unfamiliar
> words. All day long I relish the thought of it, and it comforts me at work
> to think that when I get home, I will read her a chapter. I know that it's
> wrong to pin so much on this, but I do. At least we're past the anxious
> part — I asked her to listen to the first seven chapters before deciding
> whether she wanted to go on, and she did, and after the 7th (in which
> Severian meets Thecla) she said she was enjoying the story. From this point
> I can only imagine that her interest will wax. I know that she doesn't see
> even a fraction of what I see in Wolfe's writing, but then she hasn't read
> it ten times over. *The Book of the New Sun* is like a mystery that has
> to be unraveled, and that takes time and patience. How many of his readers
> have penetrated as deeply into the mystery as I, I wonder? His flowery
> sentences don't always lend themselves to being read aloud, but my
> prediction is that by this time next week, when Thecla is dead and Severian
> leaves the guild, K will be hooked. At this point, she's still rather
> ambivalent about Severian as a protagonist.
>
>
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-- 
Aaron Singleton
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