Subject: (urth) Alden Weir's Dimensionality

From: David Duffy <davidd at qimr.edu.au>
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 00:13:33 +0000

(Maybe it should be Alder rather than Alden -- elm, though then you can't 
throw in Den)

I have the impression (coming back to the pillow story) that Weir's life
represents a wrong choice at every key point in his life, while Smart 
makes the correct choices.  Weir's final financial security/success is 
quite accidental.  Furthermore, his behaviour at the forking points -- on 
the stairs, outside the freezer room, in the creek-bed -- is quite 
understandable/forgiveable (coming back to the idea of Purgatorio rather 
than Inferno).

Also I might raise the two allusions to Cabell (and isn't there one 
Cabell novel set in Florida?) -- Cabell saw Jurgen as the thinker and 
Manuel as the doer (Weir/Smart?).  Felix Kennaston in the _Cream of 
the Jest_ is perhaps even closer, though Wolfe and Cabell's world-views 
are slightly different. (do I need a smiley?).  

| David Duffy.                                                    ,-_|\
| email: davidD at qimr.edu.au  ph: INT+61+7+3362 0217 fax: +0101   /     *
| Epidemiology Unit, Queensland Institute of Medical Research    \_,-._/
| 300 Herston Rd, Brisbane, Queensland 4029, Australia                v 

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

---

From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 21:45:41 +0000

> are slightly different. (do I need a smiley?).  

	Slightly, yes.  I always thought that my high school English teacher
disliked fantasy (with a grudging like for Bradbury) until I discovered he'd
done his master's thesis on Cabell.  I tried to get him to read Wolfe (he's
even Catholic...) for years to no avail...
	By the way, looking up something about Nabokov stumbled across this
page on lycos:  http://rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/borges/borges.infl.wolfe.html

Right now it's just a bit from the McCaffrey interview, but it might turn into
something someday...

-- 
"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