Kevin's Watch

Yeah, he does do good short stories. I like most of the stories in Skeleton Crew, although not so many in Nightmares & Dreamscapes. (Although I love that title.) The beauty of them is when one is bad, you can just skip it.

--A

I reached the bit where he goes off to his place by the lake and then fizzled........ The story was not really getting me and it was all a bit "It's behind you!" On Z.'s appraisal I may resume it at a later point, but I have my doubts.

Gene Wolfe practically cannot stop doing this. In the first chapter of Shadow of the Torturer, he tells you how the whole series ends. He tells you of future events dozen times in the first dozen chapters. But it's subtle, in that it is understated.

I think this is connected to the concept of an unreliable narrator. Except he's not unreliable ... just ... non-linear. A bad narrator.

Haha, Wolfe isn't subtle, he's cryptic. You know he's telling you something, but you only know what it was after it happens. Sometimes it's annoying.

--A

I was doing a reread of LOTR recently and I noticed that Tolkien does it. When the Fellowship are in Lothlorien Aragorn shows Frodo Cerin Amroth, and the last words in the chapter are, '...he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as mortal man.'

Here Tolkien is actually setting up a bit of misdirection, as there is an implication that Aragorn is going to be killed.

u.

Subtle is fine. King is altogether too blatant about it.

--A

ussusimiel wrote:I was doing a reread of LOTR recently and I noticed that Tolkien does it. When the Fellowship are in Lothlorien Aragorn shows Frodo Cerin Amroth, and the last words in the chapter are, '...he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as mortal man.'

Here Tolkien is actually setting up a bit of misdirection, as there is an implication that Aragorn is going to be killed.

u.

The way you wrote that, it seemed that 'he left the hill...' referred to Frodo, and I thought to myself: of course! Frodo is a hobbit, not a mortal man!

I was slightly lax there, but since it isn't the 'Tank I'm not likely to lose numerous layers of skin!

I see how you can make that connection, as Merry stabs the Lord of the Nazgul to fulfill part of the prophecy that he shan't be killed by the hand of a mortal man.

u.

I thought Eowyn fulfilled it, being a woman...

--A

Avatar wrote:I thought Eowyn fulfilled it, being a woman...

--A

In part, but she could not have done it if the Witch-king wasn't stabbed by the magical blade which was made for stabbing Witch-kings that Merry happened to stumble upon in some graves that he just so happened to be rescued from by the embodiment of God.

Hahaha, but just the stabbing didn't do it either, although obviously Merry also wasn't a mortal man...

--A