Alden Weir's Dimensionality
The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 05 Nov 1998
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1247

Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright
in each message remains with the person who wrote it.

Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original
archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than
retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.

==============================================================================

David Duffy — 06 Nov 1998, 00:13

(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 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alex David Groce — 05 Nov 1998, 21:45
  follows, by subject match David Duffy

> David Duffy wrote:
> 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?).  

	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

------------------------------------------------------------------------------