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I confess that I'm not quite clear on this. Wolfe's fiction is full of gods and goddesses explicitly identified as such. And in TBOTNS, God is no more "pretending" to be the Incr…
20 Jan 2003, 17:03
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Klamm is a transplant to TAD's universe of Kafka's Klamm, although older. TAD's Klamm is "a crag-faced old man with long, pointed mustaches dyed jet black and cheeks pulled flaccid…
20 Jan 2003, 17:03
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I can't comment on the Graves angle. But my reading of the book, for what it's worth, is that it takes off from a certain view of gender relations which around that time, iirc, ha…
18 Jan 2003, 15:39
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Klamm calls the hero "Herr Kay" because Klamm is a character from Kafka's THE CASTLE, and the protagonist of that book is always referred to as K. I don't know why Klamm says K. "…
16 Jan 2003, 13:54
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You seem to be under a misapprehension. The idea that Wolfe may have been joking is not a "theory" that the anti-"Greeshas" people concocted. Rather, it was introduced to the lis…
29 Dec 2002, 14:58
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[snip] I have no access to Wolfe's motives, of course, but my money is on Wolfe's original comment to you being the joke, for several reasons: 1) While I don't believe Blue is Ur…
28 Dec 2002, 21:06
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I'm curious; what was your epiphany? I had an epiphany of a sort while pondering TAD, but I don't know whether it was the same as yours. --Adam…
21 Dec 2002, 03:17
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I think There Are Doors is Wolfe's most underrated book, but it's undeniably a very strange reading experience. It's probably his most somber book in tone, if not in plot. And if…
21 Dec 2002, 03:17
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This response is way late, but... Having reread the end of FLF (from the man in the duffel coat's speech), I see that I'd gotten the circumstances of Free's death wrong, and that …
16 Dec 2002, 14:55
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I can't share Dan'l's enthusiasm; in fact, I see several strong objections to this scenario, apart from Wolfe's words in the interview. 1) The white hole, iirc, is a conduit of m…
12 Dec 2002, 14:52
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Going to Narnia, through whatever door, doesn't magically change children into adults. In TLtWatW, the children spend many years in Narnia and grow to adulthood naturally, though …
02 Dec 2002, 21:12
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[snip] I always took it for granted that the four would become the quadrumvirate of the prediction who, having improved themselves by merging with their past selves, would take po…
30 Nov 2002, 16:04
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Rather than argue religion, I'll stick to the books and ask why, if the Outsider's "love" for humanity is compatible with letting most of the people on Urth die, He doesn't also le…
30 Nov 2002, 04:11
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And that is? If the Outsider loves human beings so much, why doesn't He stop the Hierogrammates from killing almost all of them? And if He's concerned with the salvation of the p…
27 Nov 2002, 03:33
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Here are my questions, from vol. 4 of the archives: 1) Why are there two Whittens (in addition to "Ben Free") in 1983? The younger Whitten (the man in the duffle coat) is there o…
26 Nov 2002, 15:08
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Not quite. The key line is "the future of the whole establishment turned, as upon less than a hair, on his judgment." (45, hc) It is not Peacock, but the proprietor of the boardi…
07 Nov 2002, 23:36
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I see some problems with this: 1) Did Typhon, then, fail to provide scriptures for his invented religion? If so, why? If not, what happened to them? 2) Iirc, the Writings were a…
07 Nov 2002, 23:36
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I'd forgotten this; which means that the analogy between Pas and the Demiurge, and the case for a gnostic influence on the Long Sun books, are even weaker than I thought. I see no…
06 Nov 2002, 02:41
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Whether or not he makes it in his interviews, it is clearly present in the books. Typhon is the ruler of Urth who built the Whorl; Pas is a copy of Typhon's personality that was d…
06 Nov 2002, 02:41
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I don't know much about Kabbalah (just what I've read in Gerschom Scholem), and don't recall much of the discussions on this list of the topic; but based on what little I do know, …
31 Oct 2002, 17:46
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D'oh! Of course. Thanks. --Adam…
30 Oct 2002, 22:01
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But this is not specific to Gnosticism, but true for any monotheist in a polytheistic world--like Silk. And the Outsider isn't really "outside"; that's just the role assigned him …
29 Oct 2002, 15:03
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The passage actually reads: Aunt Olivia, having untied the blue thread that had held it shut in the basket, peered into a small milk-glass with a lid shaped like a setting hen. …
29 Oct 2002, 01:02
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Perhaps I'm being dense, and it's been several years since I last read TBOTLS; but I don't see any particular connection between the Long Sun books and Gnosticism, either positive …
25 Oct 2002, 15:47
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If he doesn't speak to Weer because of loathing, yes. If, as I and mantis have argued, they just don't have occasion to speak to each other, then it's not so strange, given that w…
20 Oct 2002, 13:48
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For his parents, see below. As for Tilly, Smart couldn't have known that Tilly's relatives would keep him on at the store; he'd have had greater reason to think Tilly's death woul…
20 Oct 2002, 13:48
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[snip] An interesting speculation; but it strikes me as unlikely that, had Weer been in a position to blackmail Smart in his youth, he would have chosen to live in poverty for twe…
18 Oct 2002, 13:17
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A very interesting post, which motivated me to look at those passages again myself. A couple of comments: Do we know that Olivia has a checkbook? I don't know whether a woman li…
20 Sep 2002, 17:09
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I think this was discussed before. In any case, you're almost certainly correct. There's a moderately long discussion of "Suzanne Delage" in vols. 10 and 11 of the Urth archive w…
16 Aug 2002, 14:46
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But we don't know that the other man isn't above average height. All Miss Hadow says about him is that he isn't "really very tall," which still allows for him to be taller than av…
11 Aug 2002, 00:30
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I don't buy this line of reasoning. Wolfe's characters don't stop behaving realistically just because they're in retellings of older tales (as most of his characters seem to be). …
08 Aug 2002, 20:22
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[snip] No, it is clear that there are two photos. I am just questioning why Charlie only mentions sending one photo. Indeed; but then, as I asked in an earlier post, how can the…
08 Aug 2002, 13:38
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To be precise, I was only doubting that the photo Miss Hadow saw was the one Charlie described. Indeed, the photo Charlie says he put in the letter is certainly of Candy. But my s…
07 Aug 2002, 14:16
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In fact, Charlie says that Tom is eighteen. So if the letter is factual, and the picture is indeed of Tom, it must have been taken around the time the letter was written, which is…
06 Aug 2002, 02:32
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on 8/1/02 2:54 PM, Robert Borski at rborski at charter.net wrote: Blattid says that your explanation makes the Doris-is-Weer's-daughter theory plausible to him, but it doesn't to me.…
02 Aug 2002, 19:01
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One of the Ascian's sayings also alludes to shadow imagery: "Behind everything some further thing is found forever; thus the tree behind the bird, stone beneath soil, the sun behin…
02 Aug 2002, 00:20
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Neither are 99.9% of the Commonwealth's population. And do we know that no Ascians survived? If a few people survived the destruction of the Commonwealth, isn't it probable that …
02 Aug 2002, 00:20
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Well, it's not a "folk-etymology" in the sense of being an incorrect etymology; it's a true etymology based upon a false belief (cf. Ash's remarks in TCotA, chap. 16, pp. 121-2 of …
01 Aug 2002, 02:08
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I don't think so; "the book" says that "With the absorption of Europe by Russia and _the British Empire by the United States_ [my emphasis], two of the three existing powers, Euras…
31 Jul 2002, 13:37
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As Nutria said, no need to apologize; it was an interesting discussion. And you're not the only one to hold the Silk-reboot model; in fact, it may be the majority view among those…
19 Jul 2002, 14:50
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This reflects my view that Silk is present in "Horn" (or Silkhorn, the Narrator, or whatever you want to call him) throughout. Hmm, maybe I'd misremembered the earlier debate. Bu…
18 Jul 2002, 14:19
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I've stated my objections to this view before, so I won't repeat myself. But it just occurred to me that this position is also incompatible with the view (which seems to be the maj…
16 Jul 2002, 16:31
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OTOH, this could also be Severian speaking in terms appropriate to the audience, in line with Catholic views of Biblical language. That is, it would be easier for them to understa…
16 Jul 2002, 16:31
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Do you mean upload? Iirc, it was pretty explicitly stated that Pig is possessed by Silk, and the only way the "gods" can possess humans is through eye contact. I don't think ther…
16 Jul 2002, 16:31
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No, QED combines special relativity and quantum mechanics. The problem of reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics is still unsolved. --Adam…
12 Jun 2002, 15:49
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[snip] So in every universe, there is a figure who is regarded as a sacrificed God-become-man, but only one of these universes has it right? In that case, how do we know that we'…
12 Jun 2002, 03:30
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Textual and theological difficulties aside, I really don't like this idea. I won't say it ruins the books for me, but it does detract substantially from their sense of wonder and t…
11 Jun 2002, 14:01
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Of course, the hieros do plan to wipe out 99.9% of Urth's population. But Wolfe may be taking the "Live Free or Die" view (not to mention the various reasons why this mass murder …
11 Jun 2002, 14:01
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How does this square with your original argument that the inhumi's tragedy was that they were incapable by nature of being other than evil, and that if they were just "humans in dr…
30 May 2002, 13:57
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For a human to be killed by smallpox is a great evil. But we don't regard smallpox viruses as evildoers, because they are incapable of moral thought. Philosphical antelopes would …
30 May 2002, 13:57
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