{"id":14740,"date":"2014-07-31T18:08:03","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T22:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/?p=14740"},"modified":"2014-07-31T18:08:03","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T22:08:03","slug":"a-qa-with-gene-wolfe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2014\/07\/a-qa-with-gene-wolfe\/","title":{"rendered":"A Q&A with Gene Wolfe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is an absolutely wonderful interview with SF great Gene Wolfe<\/a>. Some interesting questions did get asked along with what you would expect.<\/p>\n

\n

Which writers have most influenced you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a difficult question. My first editor,\u00a0Damon Knight<\/a>, asked me the same thing when I was just starting out, and I told him my chief influences were G.\u2006K. Chesterton and\u00a0Marks\u2019 [Standard] Handbook for [Mechanical] Engineers<\/em><\/a>. And that\u2019s still about as good an answer as I can give. I\u2019ve been impressed with a lot of people\u2014with Kipling, for example; with Dickens\u2014but I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve been greatly influenced by them.<\/p>\n

What struck you about Chesterton?<\/strong><\/p>\n

His charm; his willingness to follow an argument wherever it led.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Most of the interview concentrates (as it should) on the themes in his various books. Along with some of the craftsmanship often found in his writings regarding the unreliable narrator.<\/p>\n

I was happy to see in a interview for the MIT Technology Review (Wolfe was originally an engineer at Proctor & Gamble) that they did get around to the use of religion in his books and his being Catholic.<\/p>\n

\n

Were you born a Catholic, or was Rosemary?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, I was a convert.<\/p>\n

Like Chesterton.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bad thing in that born Catholics tend to look down on you. But being looked down upon has its advantages.<\/p>\n

Like what?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You don\u2019t put yourself forward as an expert. You understand other people who are in similar situations, and not only in religious matters. I once met Archbishop\u00a0Fulton Sheen<\/a>, who we\u2019re trying to get made a saint now. He looked at you and you felt that he knew all about you, that he had taken your worth, both positive and negative, and had formed a correct opinion about you, and that was it.<\/p>\n

Did Sheen feel saintly? He was canny by your account; he had an intelligent eye.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sheen was a very intelligent man. He was smaller than I had expected. I suppose he was about five-five, five-six, or something like that.<\/p>\n

John XXIII was a little man, too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, size only counts with football players, really.<\/p>\n

But did Sheen feel saintly? Did he have a quality of holiness?<\/strong><\/p>\n

He had a quality of something really quite extraordinary. I was at a party once for locally important politicians\u2014a former governor of Illinois, for example. And Sheen came through as somebody who was actually on a higher level. A hundred years from now, he was the only one at the party who would still be important. The rest of us were lost.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I really enjoyed his responses and the last answer he gave really made me laugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is an absolutely wonderful interview with SF great Gene Wolfe. Some interesting questions did get asked along with what you would expect. Which writers have most influenced you? It\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-link"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14741,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14740\/revisions\/14741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}