Subject: (urth) Typology, etc.

From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 12:56:37 +0000

Laidlow's elaborated presentation of Wolfe's modernism also rings mostly true.
Wolfe isn't writing a 19th century novel (although the text does, in fact, as
Wolfe intends, pull us into an imagined world).  So, arguing about what the
furniture is made of may be pointless at times--but arguments about the
metaphysics of the fictional reality, and in particular the theology and
"economy of divinity" is crucial to understanding the text.
	A purely materialistic "interpretation" seems to both violate the
realistic narrative and the metafictional use of story--it tries to "untell"
what seems to be the central story.  If ULYSSES is a "re-telling" of Homer's
Odyssey in any sense that matters, surely BOTNS is a kind of "re-telling" of,
well, the Bible (with an emphasis on the New Testament).  To "untell" these
central stories is to distort their embodying works.

-- 
"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

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