(urth) Pandora + new reader questions

Ab de Vos foxyab at casema.nl
Wed Oct 2 12:28:59 PDT 2019


Hi,

Don't you buy books through search engines like Eurobuch and AddAll or a 
platform like Amazon? I order often from Amazon UK, Germany and Abe 
books. In fact both new and second hand books for the last 10 years.

Op 2-10-2019 om 20:16 schreef matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com:
> I don’t know how many UK readers are here, but if you’re looking for 
> reliable dealers, maybe check on the Tartarus Press website which 
> stores carry their books? Wolfe never published with them, but I 
> expect they’d be a *lot* of overlap between dealers that carry 
> Tartarus stuff and dealers that carry Wolfe books. And I have had very 
> good experiences with dealers I found through Tartarus.
>
> You could also special order most of the in-print titles at most 
> bookstores.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Oct 2, 2019, at 2:07 PM, Adam Greenhill <thrax at fastmail.com 
> <mailto:thrax at fastmail.com>> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Recent fan and first time mailer here. I've been working my way 
>> through Wolfe over the past months -- slowly, as I tend to survive on 
>> secondhand shops for my fiction reading, in which I have found slim 
>> pickings.
>>
>> Through these means I picked up Pandora and read it (in a day) 
>> yesterday. I was surprised by the seeming earnestness of the book, 
>> and the lack of sci-fi elements, and a quick search through the list 
>> indicates it's not held in very high regard by some past contributors.
>>
>> One contributor quoted another writer as saying, to paraphrase, that 
>> every writer must write a Sherlock Holmes pastiche sooner or later. 
>> But while reading I wondered whether it was a pastiche of Nabokov's 
>> /Lolita/. Firstly, the narrator's triple H initials are surely a 
>> tribute to Humbert Humbert. Secondly, the Foreword 'spoils' some of 
>> the ending in much the way that Nabokov's does (though I suppose this 
>> kind of structure is itself a pastiche of real narrative accounts 
>> that do similar things). Thirdly I think there are some similarities 
>> in theme, such as the corruption of youth (where HHH is a sort of 
>> Lolita and Aladdin Blue a sort of HH/Quilty), and in content, such as 
>> the Carmen references (explicitly invoked by the narrator in chapter 
>> 6, but also echoed by the character of Larry Lief (another 
>> alliterative name) -- military background, womanizer, etc).
>>
>> This isn't to say that I think it's a particularly deep novel, but I 
>> do wonder if Wolfe threw a few things like this in to add interest to 
>> what is otherwise a fairly pedestrian crime story. Couldn't find this 
>> discussed in the list before.
>>
>> --
>>
>> On a separate note: as I mentioned, it's hard to track Wolfe books 
>> down without engaging the daunting marketplace websites like eBay. I 
>> was wondering if anyone in the UK had any recommendations for where 
>> to find good copies of his works (preferably all of the same edition 
>> and all from the same dealer). I'm mainly looking to continue reading 
>> the Urth books after devouring the New Sun series earlier this year, 
>> though I might try to pick up the Best Of too.
>>
>> --
>>
>> Hope this reaches everyone okay and looking forward to continuing 
>> correspondence with you all,
>>
>> Adam (Thrax)
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>
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