<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div><span>And if he was this meticulous that early on, even for a little ghost story, it tells us a little about how he generally regards detail in narration. He's a high-resolution writer, and as you say, such "necessary" detail is to be both given and withheld. Sometimes the pattern of permitted/omitted information forms a puzzle, but that doesn't mean the gaps are just puzzles.<br></span></div><div><br></div> <div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <hr size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Marc Aramini <marcaramini@yahoo.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> The Urth Mailing List <urth@lists.urth.net> <br> <b><span
style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Friday, March 30, 2012 9:20 AM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: (urth) Short Story 4: The Dead Man<br> </font> </div> <br><div id="yiv2043214786"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td style="font:inherit;" valign="top"><div>Yes, I agree, especially looking back now to a time without easy access to the internet; it is pretty easy for me to look up the terms in a general database and find references - Gene seems to me obsessively complete in his reasearch even very early in his career. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>The gun stories we are coming up to now are so meticulous in their detail about the type of wood used in construction, how long it would take for the scent of that wood to fade, etc. Even in his fairly amateur works, he really does make most other writers look very shoddy and sloppy - this is why I feel when something is elided in Wolfe, HE knows exactly what should feel the gap, and it was engineered that way. <br><br>--- On <b>Thu, 3/29/12, David Stockhoff <i><dstockhoff@verizon.net></i></b> wrote:<br></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT:rgb(16,16,255) 2px solid;PADDING-LEFT:5px;MARGIN-LEFT:5px;"><br>From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff@verizon.net><br>Subject: Re: (urth) Short Story 4: The Dead Man<br>To: "Craig Brewer" <cnbrewer@yahoo.com>, "The Urth Mailing List" <urth@lists.urth.net><br>Date: Thursday, March 29, 2012, 6:30 PM<br><br>
<div id="yiv2043214786">
<div>I can only add to this that the depth of research needed for this little OMG-I'm-the-ghost ghost story is remarkable. It's not <i>entirely </i>convincing, because of the little Orientalist "footnotes," but the sheer legwork to get us into the peasant's mind---banter of women, jungle species succession, the croc's chimney, if true (I can't confirm it)---is commendable. <br><br>Incidentally, the croc is known as the "mugger" crocodile and does lie in wait for prey (<a rel="nofollow" class="yiv2043214786moz-txt-link-freetext" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugger_crocodile">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugger_crocodile</a>). However, the manner in which it actually killed the peasant sounds more like the "death roll" described for the saltwater croc (<a rel="nofollow" class="yiv2043214786moz-txt-link-freetext" target="_blank"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_crocodile">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_crocodile</a>). One would
need to delve deeper than Wikipedia to sort it out further, but the conflation works, if conflation it is. <br><br></div></div></blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table>
</div><br>_______________________________________________<br>Urth Mailing List<br>To post, write <a ymailto="mailto:urth@urth.net" href="mailto:urth@urth.net">urth@urth.net</a><br>Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br><br><br> </div> </div> </div></body></html>