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From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy@siebel.com> Subject: RE: (whorl) Copperhead Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:15:17 > Other good Wolfe Short Shorts: > "A Solar Labyrinth," "Westwind," "How the Whip Came Back," "Peritonitis," > "The War Beneath the Tree," "Useful Phrases" (actually Wolfe's translation > of a Borges short story, but still good). I also like the one that's in > Peace, the tall-tale about the cat and the big ship, and I also love the > little story about the sidhe at the end of Peace; some people also seem to > like "Suzanne Delage" more than I do. Oolp -- well, if you're going to go that long (I have trouble thinking of a couple of these as "short shorts") don't neglect "The Detective of Dreams," my single favorite Lupine text, _period_. OTOH, I would regard about half the ones you name as essentially conceits ("Peritonitis," "The Whip") or bits of fluff ("War Beneath," maybe "Useful Phrases"). My first reaction to "Copperhead" was roughly equivalent to my first reaction to several other Lupine shorts, notably the ever-present "Suzanne Delage": "Huh?" I'm not ashamed to say that I Don't Get It, and (unusual for me with Wolfe) I'm not at all convinced that "it"'s there _to_ get. there's bunch of stuff at the beginning that isn't followed up at all; I have no idea why the woman with the strange voice from another dimension behaves as she does; and the ending vaguely-out-of-Genesis simply doesn't follow from the story in any way I can perceive. I suspect the whole thing of being to some extent a venting of spleen at Wm Jefferson Clinton, who doubtless has it coming, but would probably not have a clue that spleen had been vented at him. --Dan'l *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.moonmilk.com/whorl/ *To leave the list, send "unsubscribe" to whorl-request@lists.best.com *If it's Wolfe but not Long Sun, please use the URTH list: urth@lists.best.com