{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1596", "note": "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.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1596, "subject": "thoughts on Nigel price's response", "messages": 3, "voices": 2, "first": "1999-04-29T16:36:41+00:00", "last": "1999-05-21T07:20:28+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jonathan Laidlow", "address": "laidlojm at hhs.bham.ac.uk" }, "date": "1999-04-29T16:36:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) thoughts on Nigel price's response", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nigel.\nHaven't time to give your comments the thought they deserve just yet, \nbut I do need to clarify my own (and I know I'm right, so there!)\n\nMy post was an attempt at a general rebuff to those (like Borski) who \ntry to produce a 'classic realist' interpretation of the Urth cycle \nwhere everything coheres and we get a clear picture of everything as \nif it were a 19th century realist novel. Classic realism is a rather \noutdated critical concept from the 70s which attempted a rather \nmisguided critique of 19th century novels and attempted to refine the \nbroad idea of 'realism'. Briefly put, Classic realism is texts which \nattempt in some way to 'capture' the 'essence' of reality in some \nway, to present an illusion to the reader. Yet texts such as these \nalways in some way undermine themselves. Good example I used in my \nfinals paper - Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Mary Barton' shows at great \nlength the suffering of the industrial poor, yet in a crucial scene \nwhere the workers meet the industrialists, the omniscient narrator \ncomments that if only each side could understand the other's position \na little, then all could be resolved. They cannot, and tragedy \nensues. Gaskell contradicts herself in that despite showing the \nsuffering, she cannot identify the cause of the suffering in any real \nterms. Of course this is based on a materialist/Marxist reading, and \nfalls down when you consider the market for the book, and the reading \naudience were all middle class- you don't alienate your readers if \nyou can help it....\n\nAnyway - I object to a 'realist' reading of Wolfe that attempts to \ndecide what kind of android Jonas was, whether the navigator was \nKennedy, or whether we can easily locate the position of Christianity \nin Urth's past. Not because this may not be possible, but that it \nmisses the point. Wolfe surely was not trying to perpetrate 19th \ncentury 'illusionism' - to make us enter Sev's world and 'experience \nit'. The text demands an extra layer of reading beyond the realist \nlevel, into the figurative.\n\nOf course Urth has continuity with Earth, but on a fictional level. \nLet us not make the mistake of viewing this as a viable potential \nfuture. Of course Urth has a degree of 'realism'. When Clute calls \nWofle a 'modernist' we must remember that they were dismissing the \nold school of realist and 19th century novel (however misguided that \nmay be) and attempting to forge a better kind of realism. Joyce's \n'Ulysses' is an attempt to truely capture just one day in Dublin, \nthrough a literary style that does not rely on attempting to \npresent the illusion of reality, but by reminding us of it. The true \nconnection between Earth and Urth is in its stories - the story of \nthe silver knight on the moon - the story of a saviour - \nFrankenstein. Remember that Wolfe doesn't just use stories, he uses \ngenres of stories - like the fantastic Dickens stuff in the beginning \nof 'Shadow'.\n\nOf course Christianity figures in the texts - but whether it lies in \nUrth's past or future (remember- Wolfe is translating these texts - \nwhere did he get them?) does not matter to me. I like your reverse \ntypology idea - its a fantastic way of describing Wolfe's use of \nChristian theology. I look forward to forcing you to elaborate. \n\nSo can fictional worlds not show us valid, important, and 'real' \nmoral choices? Of course they can. I never said that they couldn't. \nWhat I object to is the attempt to apply a false version of 'realism' \nto Wolfe. What critical purpose is achieved by deciding the class of \nmechanical being Jonas is? Isn't it enough that he is one? \n\nI think what it comes down to is a way of reading that recognises the \nfictional nature of these texts - we are constantly reminded after \nall that much of the text is about story-telling - but still \nacknowledges their power and the importance of what they are saying. \nOf course there should be internal consistency (the fact that there \nisn't always is a further reminder of the metafictional nature of the \ntexts) but the way that the whole Urth cycle works is that is not \n'realistic' in that Urth could be recreated from these novels, but \nthe stories told map onto stories that we already know, and present \nan interesting reconfiguration.\n\nAnd I still couldn't recognise Severian if I met him on the street.\n\nThats it - I have to leave work right now and go home\n\nI'm sending this to Nigel and cross-posting to URTH - look forward to \nyou all joining in....\n\nJonathan\n\nVisit Ultan's Library - A Gene Wolfe web resource\nhttp://members.tripod.co.uk/laidlow/index.htm\nJonathan Laidlow\nUniversity of Birmingham, UK" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Stephenson", "address": "pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it" }, "date": "1999-04-30T09:20:39+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) thoughts on Nigel price's response", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Jonathan Laidlow\" wrote:\nClassic realism is a rather \noutdated critical concept from the 70s which attempted a rather \nmisguided critique of 19th century novels and attempted to refine the \nbroad idea of 'realism'. Briefly put, Classic realism is texts which \nattempt in some way to 'capture' the 'essence' of reality in some \nway, to present an illusion to the reader. Yet texts such as these \nalways in some way undermine themselves." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I can't quite agree with this, or what it seems to me to say, though I may\nbe reading too much into it as usual (and I realise how much it blights\nyour career in literary criticism to have anything positive to say about\noutdated schools of thought :-)). Certainly any novel will fail at some\npoint to represent the real world (indeed, in a not-necessarily-so-trivial\nsense, by definition). But there are clear distinctions in the intentions\nof the author. Mrs Gaskell probably thought the world was how she wrote\n--- and people like Wilkie Collins tried extremely hard to make the\nillusion watertight. Surely you can't deny there *is* an attempt to\npresent an illusion of reality to the reader. Wolfe --- apparently, at\nleast --- doesn't do that, and the difference is interesting. (If the\npoint is simply that the illusion can never turn into a true representation\nof reality, then I agree and I'll shut up and go home.)\n\nThe key word is `attempt': you can make a distinction between authors who\ntry to represent what they think is the real world (ours), and others who\nbuild up their own --- and consequently, you can ask where a particular\npiece of Wolfe's writing falls. It's not a simple division: some authors\nwho attempt to write about the `real' world deliberately have outlandish\ncharacters, some authors who deal with fantastic universes have more\nrealistic characters, etc., etc. It's worse --- for example, some people\nbelieve in alien abductions, so you can have `realistic' books about that.\nBut you can still question the author's intentions at every step, although\nit may dissolve into farce on some points because the author's world isn't\nfinally self-consistent. This, rather than rejection of `classic realism'\n(though maybe it's not so different), is what makes me sceptical about some\nof the more extreme interpretations offered on this list.\n\nTrivial concrete example: in Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon believes in V2's --\nthe rocket itself is realistic. But the character's names are often\nnonsense, Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, etc --- they are not realistic. (You can\npull even these two examples apart even further.) Between the two, there's\nmuch you can't decide on. You can do similar things with, say, Wolfe's\nChicago in Free Live Free: giving down-and-outs the bum's rush is\nrealistic, eternally circling aeroplanes (airplanes to the rest of you)\nsending you back to your former selves aren't. I stress, it's a difficult\ndivision and you can't always make it.\n\nSo I agree an author is ultimately going to fail to represent `the' world\n--- how, can be as much a philosphical as a literary matter; and I agree\nthat an author's world, if it is anywhere, is inside their head; but I deny\nyou can suffocate the question of realism completely with a post-modern\npillow.\n\nconrcrake" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Stephenson", "address": "pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it" }, "date": "1999-05-21T07:20:28+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) thoughts on Nigel price's response", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I wrote (weeks ago):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Jonathan Laidlow\" wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "\n" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Whoa! sorry about this, our mailer seems to be stuck in another age.\nJonathan's had enough stick about this, and anyway his subsequent remarks\nmake it clear I'm not in any serious disagreement at all.\n\ncorncrake" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Peter Stephenson Tel: +39 050 844536\nWWW: http://www.ifh.de/~pws/\nDipartimento di Fisica, Via Buonarroti 2, 56127 Pisa, Italy" } ] } ] }