Subject: (urth) Jaynes and Wolfe

From: Alice Turner <al at interport.net>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 19:46:36 +0000

I think Mothman is really onto something here. Jaynes's book was published
in 1979 in the US and caused the most tremendous furor--it was a real
whoop-de-do. -Soldier of the Mist- was published in 1986. It seems to me
absolutely impossible that Wolfe, in researching these books, should not
have read it. And I do think that he borrowed what was useful to him from
Jaynes's thesis, not only for the Soldier books but for the relationship
between "gods" and men in BOTLS too--almost directly for the former. BOTLS
(which I admire more structurally with each contemplation--especially since
I don't think Wolfe was strong with structure up to that point) could be
read as Wolfe's attempt to integrate Jaynes with his (Wolfe's) new knowledge
of computers.

BTW, I don't posit that Wolfe actually *bought* the Jaynes thesis, which has
been pretty thoroughly scientifically pooh-poohed, but that it was awfully
useful to him as a novelist. Similarly, Martin Bernays's -Black Athena-,
which sent historians and archaeologists into fits of sarcasm and frothing
at the mouth, might be very useful to a writer like Crowley in his Aegypt
series.

Here, picked almost randomly, are a couple of paragraphs from Jaynes:

"The characters of the Iliad do not sit down and think out what to do. they
have no conscious minds such as we say we have, and certainly no
introspections. It is impossible for us with our subjectivity to appreciate
what it was like. When Agamemnon, king of men, robs Achilles of his
mistress, it is a god that grabs Achilles by his yellow hair  and warns him
not to strike Agamemnon. It is a god who then rises out of the gray sea and
consoles him in his tears of wrath on the beach by his black ships, a god
who whispers low to Helen to sweep her heart with homesick longing, a god
who hides Paris in a mist in front of the attacking Menelaus, a god who
tells Glaucus to take bronze for gold, a god who leads he armies into
battle, who speaks to each soldier at the turning points, who debates and
tells Hector what he must do, who urges the soldiers on by casting them in
spells or drawing mists over their visual fields. It is the gods who start
quarrels among men that really cause the wars and then plan its
strategy...In fact the gods take the place of consciousness."

"Who were these gods that pushed men about like robots and sang epics
through their lips? They were voices whose speech and directions could be
heard as directly by the Iliadic heroes as voices are heard by certain
epileptic and schizophrenic patients, or just as Joan of Arc heard her
voices. The gods were organizations of the central nervous system and can be
regarded as personae in the sense of poignant consistencies through time,
amalgams of parental or admonitory images...The gods are what we now call
hallucinations. Usually they are only seen and heard by the particular
heroes they are speaking to...."

Etc. There's much more to it, on how crowds behave, for instance. Hey, kidz,
there's an academic thesis for one of you in this! Note that Jaynsean
material is entirely absent in everything Wolfe wrote prior to the Soldier
books, and informs everything he has written since.

Interesting, for instance, Silk's blind faith in his Outsider, Mint's bowing
to the will of the god. Contrast with Hamlet's caution re the authenticity
of the Ghost--which he actually saw. Hamlet is a modern man, Silk and Mint
and Latro are archaic. (In my opinion, Wolfe is much, much better with the
archaic than when he attempts to be modern, but that, O Best Beloved, is
another story.) And Latro's and Auk's head wounds.

Thanks, Mothman, this was fun.

-alga

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

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From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 20:41:48 +0000

alga said:
> Subject: (urth) Jaynes and Wolfe

I think this is a very likely history--especially as Jaynes' hypothesis would
have fit in well with Wolfe's suspicions voiced here and there about the "real
existence" of the gods--it wouldn't fit precisely, but it would be an excellent
model to keep in mind in portraying fictionally the ancient world as Wolfe
(maybe) sees it.  How much new knowledge of computers is involved in Long Sun,
I'm not sure--it seems given Wolfe's general subtle but accurate technical
detail, he'd have known most of the concepts involved in BOTLS for a long time.
Mainframes, memory, & personality downloading are pretty old ideas...  &
actually Sillhoutte has some nice computer bits in it (the Overmonitor acts
like an old, cranky operating system, or an Infocom game...)

> heroes they are speaking to...."

Definitely sounds like the Soldier books, although I do think Wolfe wants us to
at least two-thirds of the way buy into accepting that these deities are real.
Not just seem real, but are--similarly, although Wolfe doesn't "cheat" by
having the Hand of God nuke the bad guys or something (a la King), the Outsider
is plainly meant to be God, in the sense of the real God showing up as a
"character" in fiction.

> Thanks, Mothman, this was fun.

Agreed.  I'll have to hunt down Jaynes--I half read part of it some time ago,
looking something up, but never actually finished it.  As to Wolfe,
archaic/modern, I'd agree but note that the "archaic" in Wolfe's sense isn't
exactly lacking from the "modern" world.  Chesterton's old statement that
assigning times and places to ideas is unwise; in the end that particular kinds
of thought are more popular at particular times and places says more about
those times & places than the ideas...  And Wolfe's "Hamlet"ism comes in that
he (usually) provides the reader an "out"--a way to say it wasn't a ghost at
all...  Latro's & Auk's wounds, Dr. Crane's hypothesis, etc.  It's clear which
"side" Wolfe is on, but he doesn't force that interpretation on the reader.  So
the Jaynes idea is the Dr. Crane hypothesis to explain everyone who sees a god
in Soldier...
	Probably why Wolfe's easier to digest that somebody like Lewis or
Chesterton for those who disagree with the theology, etc.

-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

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From: CRCulver <crculver at aol.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 01:49:47 +0000

Alga wrote:
<Interesting, for instance, Silk's blind faith in his Outsider>

But Wolfe has said that the Outsider is "a spiritual god," which to me means
the Outsider is the Pancreator.

<the relationship between "gods" and men in BOTLS too--almost directly for the
former. BOTLS (which I admire more structurally with each
contemplation--especially since I don't think Wolfe was strong with structure
up to that point) could be read as Wolfe's attempt to integrate Jaynes with
his (Wolfe's) new knowledge of computers.>

I should mention that there is another book inspired by Jaynes' book, though
very different from Gene Wolfe. It is Neal Stephenson's _Snow Crash_, which is
a hilarious sort of cross between a cyberpunk novel and a satire of that
genre. It would be interesting reading for Wolfe fans with time on their
hands, 'cause you can compare what Stephenson did to Wolfe's interpretation.

<BTW, I don't posit that Wolfe actually *bought* the Jaynes thesis, which has
been pretty thoroughly scientifically pooh-poohed>

My acquaintances in the mental sciences (psychology, psycholinguistics,
psychaitry) have informed me that the book is 90% crap, but that's in
accordance with Sturgeon's Law. When I read the book, I enjoyed its
entertaining qualities, and didn't believe a word of it. Still, Jaynes was
Professor of Psychology at Princeton, so he's no crackpot.

<Contrast with Hamlet's caution re the authenticity of the Ghost>

Y'know, I was reading _Hamlet_ the other day, and I found a strong influence
on Wolfe in it, and now I've totally forgotten it. Hopefully it'll come again.
I think I've yet to post the (rather obvious, to me) link to _Macbeth_ in
SotT.

Christopher R. Culver <crculver at aol.com>
http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html
------------------------------------------------

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From: Kieran Cleary <kierannwn at tinet.ie>
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 09:38:16 +0000

Alga wrote:

>Similarly, Martin Bernays's -Black Athena-,
series.<

If I'm allowed a wee tangent, what's the news on Crowley, anyone? Given that
Love&Sleep wasn't even published in the UK, and that it's probably out of
print already, I have this fear that the Aegypt sequence won't get
completed. Anyone got any pointers to recent intervews or other hopeful
news?

Kieran C.

North West Labs
Finisklin Industrial Estate
Sligo
Republic of Ireland

Tel. +353 71 69441
Fax. +353 71 69451
email: kierannwn at tinet.ie

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 08:56:10 +0000

> the Outsider is the Pancreator.

There's a big difference between Wolfe telling us that he personally
interprets the Outsider as a real "spiritual god" and the narrative
forcing that conclusion upon us.  One of the best things about many of
Wolfe's stories is that it's possible to read them with purely
materialistic presuppositions or with Wolfe's religious ones.  It's very
gentlemanly of him.

In contrast, try reading C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy and explaining the
events materialistically.

-Rostrum

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 09:14:01 +0000

On Thu, 29 Oct 1998, Alice Turner wrote:

> introspections.... 
[...]
> ...The gods are what we now call

I'm missing something here.  How exactly do you see Wolfe being influenced
by Jaynes as opposed to the Iliad itself?  Are you saying he gets the
idea that theophonies might be hallucinations from Jaynes?  Surely Jaynes
wasn't the first to suggest that.  Are you disagreeing with the earlier
posts noting that the gods do not act for Latro or Silk as the kind of
proto-consciousness Jaynes describes? 

Are you just saying that archaic people believed in gods but modern people
are more skeptical?  (I'm not sure even that much is true.)

-Rostrum

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From: Kevin J. Maroney <kmaroney at crossover.com>
Date: Mon, 02 Nov 1998 19:45:53 +0000

At 07:46 PM 10/29/98 -0500, alga quoted Julian Jaynes:
>introspections."

By complete coincidence, I just happened to be reading part of _The Iliad_
only a couple of weeks back--I'd never read it before; quite
interesting--and I can say that this is, as a categorical statement, false.
The death of Hector provides a clear example of introspection: (From Samuel
Butler's translation, Book XXII)

   "Alas," said he to himself in the heaviness of his heart, "if I go
within the gates, Polydamas will be the first to heap reproach upon
me, for it was he that urged me to lead the Trojans back to the city
on that awful night when Achilles again came forth against us. I would
not listen, but it would have been indeed better if I had done so. Now
that my folly has destroyed the host, I dare not look Trojan men and
Trojan women in the face, lest a worse man should say, 'Hector has
ruined us by his self-confidence.' Surely it would be better for me to
return after having fought Achilles and slain him, or to die
gloriously here before the city. What, again, if were to lay down my
shield and helmet, lean my spear against the wall and go straight up
to noble Achilles? What if I were to promise to give up Helen, who was
the fountainhead of all this war, and all the treasure that Alexandrus
brought with him in his ships to Troy, aye, and to let the Achaeans
divide the half of everything that the city contains among themselves?
I might make the Trojans, by the mouths of their princes, take a
solemn oath that they would hide nothing, but would divide into two
shares all that is within the city- but why argue with myself in
this way? Were I to go up to him he would show me no kind of mercy; he
would kill me then and there as easily as though I were a woman,
when I had off my armour. There is no parleying with him from some
rock or oak tree as young men and maidens prattle with one another.
Better fight him at once, and learn to which of us Jove will vouchsafe
victory."
  Thus did he stand and ponder....

And it's not a God who put this dilemma into Hector's heart; quite the
contrary, Apollo cautioned Hector not to stand and fight Achilles, as did
his parents. But he stands stupidly awaiting Achilles, torn between honor,
cowardice, pride, and good sense: as modern a scene as one is likely to see. 

-- 
   Kevin Maroney | Crossover Technologies 
   kmaroney at crossover.com | (212) 777-1190