"Gene Wolfe - Seven American nights" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

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SEVEN AMERICAN NIGHTS*
Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe is a solid and substantial Midwesterner who Is easy to like as a person, and Impossible
to fault as a writer. He has one flaw He doesn't write enough. Particularly, he doesn't write
enough novellas-a form which, some would hold, Is the Ideal length for a science-fiction story,
and which few persons have performed in more successfully than Gene Wolfe. His "the Fifth Head of
Cerberus" proved that a few years ago, and the statement Is reconfirmed with the present example,
"Seven American Nights."

Esteemed and Learned Madame:

As I last wrote you, it appears to me likely that your son Nadan (may Allah preserve him!) has
left the old capital and traveled-of his own will or another's-north into the region about the Bay
of Delaware. My conjecture is now confirmed by the discovery in those regions of the notebook I
enclose. It is not of American manufacture, as you see; and though it holds only the records of a
single week, several suggestive items therein provide us new reason to hope.
I have photocopied the contents to guide me in my investigations: but I am alert to the
probability that you, madame, with your superior knowledge of the young man we seek, may discover
implications I have overlooked. Should that be the case, I urge you to write me at once.
Though I hesitate to mention it in connection with so encouraging a finding, your most
recently due remission has not yet arrived. I assume that this tardiness results from the
procrastination of the mails, which is here truly abominable. I must warn you, however,

*Runner-up for Nebula, for Best Novella of 1978.
that I shall be forced to discontinue the search unless funds sufficient for my expenses are
forthcoming before the advent of winter.

With inexpressible respect,
Hassan Kerbelai

Here I am at last! After twelve mortal days aboard the Princess Fatimah-twelve days of
cold and ennui-twelve days of bad food and throbbing engines-the joy of being on land again is
like the delight a condemned man must feel when a letter from the shah snatches him from beneath
the very blade of death. America! America! Dull days are no more! They say that everyone who comes
here either loves or hates you, America-by Allah I love you now!
Having begun this record at last, I find I do not know where to begin. I had been reading
travel diaries before I left home; and so when I saw you, O Book, lying so square and thick in
your stall in the bazaar-why should I not have adventures too, and write a book like Osman Aga's?
Few come to this sad country at the world's edge, after all, and most who do land farther up the
coast.
And that gives me the clue I was looking for-how to begin. America began for me as colored
water. When I went out on deck yesterday morning, the ocean had changed from green to yellow. I
had never heard of such a thing before, neither in my reading, nor in my talks with Uncle Mirza,