Subject: (urth) time's arrow

From: Paul C Duggan <pduggan at world.std.com>
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 1998 09:05:46 +0000

I heard Martin Amis interviewed when his book came out. He made the
interesting point that morality can be defined by whether or not an action
is different when run in reverse or not. Two billiard balls hitting looks
the same no matter which way you run time. Poisoning a man looks very
different the other way around.

Apparently some people accused Amis of trivializing or glorifying the
holocaust by using such moral terms for it's opposite.

"I am an impure thinker. I am hurt, swayed, shaken, |  paul           + | +
elated, disillusioned, shocked, comforted, and I    |                 --|--
have to transmit my mental experiences lest I die." |                 + | +
                     --  Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy    |  pduggan at world.std.com

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 1998 10:19:15 +0000

> different the other way around.

I'm not sure I understand.  Is it because backwards it would look like you
are sucking the poison out of a man and bringing the dead back to life?

But almost everything except two billiard balls hitting looks different
when run in reverse:  typing a letter, changing clothes, eating a
cheeseburger, building a fence.  How does that help us define the morality
of these actions? 

ObWolfe: Someone mentioned "In Looking Glass Castle" as a story featuring
a backwards-living character, but I don't see that at all.  That's the one
featuring the world where there are no men and the scientist with a man
hiding in her house, isn't it?  What am I missing? 

-Rostrum

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From: William H. Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Date: Sat, 05 Sep 1998 00:31:52 +0000

>hiding in her house, isn't it?  What am I missing?

(To the tune of "Little Orphan Annie".)

Who could it be
but Robert Borski!

Who said:

>As for Gene Wolfe, "In Looking Glass Castle" is a shorter work of his where
>a character lives life backwards and thus remembers the future--clearly
>modeled here on Lewis Carroll's White Queen, who does the same. In this
>case, however, it's Daisy McKane, who, although she's naturally confused,
>remembers her own drowning.

I am with Rostrum on this one. I don't see how Robert can get "experiencing
time backwards" out of this story. But then again, I haven't understood how
Robert came up with many of his interpretations of other Wolfe stories,
either.

While I will bow to no one in my admiration for Lewis Carroll, as I have
demonstrated elsewhere on this list <g>, his White Queen is a pretty feeble
model for living backwards in time. The scene where she screams and bleeds
*before* pricking her finger is the only real example of this in _Through
the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There_. Perhaps that is why I
haven't noticed the backwards aspect of "In Looking Glass Castle".

William Ansley