2020-09-20 08:56
Back home again. The drive back from the shore felt like a transition from summer to autumn. It's cool here, more than expected. We had to get out blankets and socks and by this morning I turned on the heat for the first time.
Ended up not pausing long on Wolfe's The Wizard Knight, I had too much momentum on it. By this point I've got about 100 pages to go and it keeps going places I don't expect. I'm sure that will continue right up to the very end. Like some of other Wolfe's novels he often elides important moments in the plot/action. Big events sometimes happen "off screen" or are summarized in an abbreviated format. In contrast, this novel has a lot of scenes of people talking, often just asking each other questions and negotiating over asking/answering questions ("I will give you a boon if you answer two questions truthfully"). There's very much a negotiation of knowledge at play, who knows what and when/how they know it. This gets a mirrored a bit for the reader who is often also trying to answer questions but is unable to ask them directly. I could be just imagining it, but I also feel like the style of the writing, of the protagonist's narration, is somehow based on Arthurian literature.