URTH |
From: Peter Westlake <peter@harlequin.co.uk> Subject: Re: (urth) Giving Wolfe to the inexperienced Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:27:57 +0000 At 09:44 1999-10-28 -0400, you wrote: > >I wonder if we could put together a list of the "easiest" or "most >accessible" Wolfe? "Wolfe for Beginners"? I recently saw someone >recommend "Fifth Head of Cerebrus" as a place to start with Wolfe, but >that seems to me to be one of his more obscure and difficult works (but >then I'm biased, because it's my least favorite, for some reason). Here's >my list: NOVELS (in addition to Rostrum's list) "Free Live Free" is fairly straightforward; maybe it's not typical? I could be missing something, of course :-) I'm not convinced that one shouldn't dive straight in with "Shadow of the Torturer". It has the advantage of being immensely readable, and rewarding even a superficial reading with a ripping good yarn. Finding large chunks of it engraved in one's brain almost verbatim years after reading it gave me a pretty big clue to the quality of the writing, too. SHORT STORIES "Kevin Malone" is an excellent exercise for beginners. It would be ideal for a tutorial: it's short enough that you can say "read that" and offers great scope for hints, as we saw on the thread about it. "Morning Glory" is a particular favourite of mine; it's also somewhat atypical in being both straightforward and optimistic in outlook. Alex said a while back ("Mysteries of Gene Wolfe/"The Science in Science-Fiction") that the mysteriousness of Wolfe's work is responsible for a lot of its lasting appeal, and I agree; Morning Glory doesn't leave any outstanding mysteries to puzzle over, but touches the emotions in a lasting way instead. In that respect it reminds me a little of "Slow River" by Nicola Griffith. An idle thought: a collaboration between Griffith and Wolfe would be the ultimate virtual reality, an imaginative experience so vividly real and meaningful that it would be impossible to leave. Sorry, have I said that before? Spectacled Bear *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/