(urth) Suggestions for Podcast Episode on "Peace"

[Darrell Burgan]

I don't know of any sites, but I've discovered that reading anything by
Wolfe usually requires at least three iterations:

1. Read it for enjoyment. Don't try to pick out all the hints and secret
messages Wolfe is embedding in the story. Read it at a natural pace and be
amazed at Wolfe's lustrous and often indecipherable prose. By the end,
you'll have enjoyed a book but won't be able say exactly why.

2. Read it again, this time pay close attention to every word, especially
when there is a speaker or setting change, when there seems to be a typo or
wrong name used in a sentence (it's not wrong). Try piece together mental
notes about what is going on under the surface of the book. Maybe even
scribble down a few notes. By the end you'll begin to realize the depths of
Wolfe's genius.

3. Read it one more time, and this time have several colors of
highlighters, a white board, and copious paper for notes. As you go through
the story, map out every single event, every single character, draw the
lines between them, speculate on relationships between them that aren't in
the text, and generally analyze the heck out of every word. You'll end up
with a large pile of somewhat-less-inscrutable information about the book,
but still tons of questions left unanswered - and probably a general sense
of Wolfe chucklng that you still missed the whole point of the book.

How many more iterations beyond that, I do not know. I'm only on iteration
2 ....


On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 10:32 AM, Fred Kiesche <godelescherbach at gmail.com>wrote:

> Greetings:
>
> I'm involved in a podcast related to the genre site SF Signal. The podcast
> is called The Three Hoarsmen (long story). In our most recent episode, we
> took a look at Samuel R. Delany's "Nova". In our December or January
> (sometimes these things slip!) episode, we're planning on covering Gene
> Wolfe's "Peace".
>
> One thing that we always include in our podcast notes are links to
> websites that the listener can go to. I've already thought of the Neil
> Gaiman essay (found at F&SF's site) "How to Read Gene Wolfe". Does anybody
> have any other suggestions of sites I should include?
>
> And, anybody able to point to any essay (online or off) that I can point
> my co-hosts to in order to help us prepare for Gene Wolfe in general and
> this book specifically?
>
> Thanks much!
>
> --
> F.P. Kiesche III
>
> Husband, Father, Good Cook. Reader. Keeper of abandoned dogs. Catholic
> Liberal Conservative Militarist. Does not fit into a neat box or category.
> "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble,
> scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with
> Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at Bernal
> Alpha. On Twitter as @FredKiesche
>
>
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-- 
Darrell Burgan
http://earthmantra.com
http://spiritcanyonaudio.com
http://palancar.net
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