From: "Jonathan Laidlow" <LAIDLOJM@hhs.bham.ac.uk>
Subject: (urth) Quiet around here
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 17:58:41 GMT

Hi folks,

[waits for tumbleweed to drift by]

You'e all gone quiet so I'll ask a daft question.

One of the articles in the recent NYRSF Gene Wolfe special, Paul 
Witcover's essay-review of 'Strange Travelers', suggests that:

"Wolfe - whose futures owe as much to the visions of William Blake 
as to those of Jack Vance - sees the world as a kind fo relic, a work 
of art designed by a perfect and loving engineer whose purpose, 
insofar as human beings can discern it, is to afford us the 
opportunity to perceive the beauty and meaning with which (and for 
our benefit), this work of art, the world, has been invested."

It's the Blake idea that I like. Now I don't know much about Blake - 
have read a bit of Ackroyd's recent bio, read a few of the poems 
and looked at the colour facsimiles available, so I can't really 
comment on whether its an accurate statement.

Would anyone like to?

Jonathan
Visit Ultan's Library - A Gene Wolfe web resource
http://members.tripod.co.uk/laidlow/index.htm
(no updates for a while - coming soon)
Jonathan Laidlow
University of Birmingham, UK

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/