From: "Joshua A. Solomon" <j.solomon@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: (whorl) cant, etc.
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 16:38:40 +0000


[Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Been lurking awhile. Have read most Wolfe thanks to
rave review of SHADOW in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.
LONG SUN certainly is full of puzzles/half-baked ideas.
Ever since I tried--unsuccessfully--to work out the "timeline"
for FREE LIVE FREE, I've been reluctant to work hard at unravelling
Wolfe's more obscure plotknots. 
	At first I was disappointed with LONG SUN because it seemed that
the writing wasn't anywhere near as tight as the writing in, say, 
NEW SUN (the original tetralogy). After lurking here I now realize
that these puzzles are what makes LONG SUN worth reading.
A few miscellaneous items:
Palatine (it's not hilly) is an affluent (moreso than
Barrington, anyway) northwest Chicago suburb.
(Charlie) Trotters is a trendy Chicago restaurant.
And from James Joyce's Ulysses (Penguin page 59): "Bus her, wap
in rogue's rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping dell."
Unless I find more cant in Ulysses, I probably wont post more soon
because I've just started it. It's 933 pages. Maybe I'll reread
LONG SUN after that.

bee

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