{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1617",
    "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": 1617,
    "subject": "Earth to Urth Pt 2: Realism and Modernism",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-05-06T19:59:15+00:00",
    "last": "1999-05-06T19:59:15+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0026-0089@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nigel Price",
        "address": "nigelprice1 at compuserve.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-05-06T19:59:15+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Earth to Urth Pt 2: Realism and Modernism",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "As punishment for the dreadful video that I sent him (and various other\noddities, including a copy of William Hope Hodgson's \"The Night Land\" -\ndidn't Hodgson get a mention round here recently?), Jonathan Laidlow very\nkindly sent me some wonderful SF paperbacks, and a copy of Joan Gordon's\ninteresting \"Starmont Reader's Guide\" to the works of Gene Wolfe.\n\nBeing the verbose sort of windbag that I am, I could resist commenting to\nhim on the chapters that I had read so far...\n\n                                                --0-0--\n\nI'm enjoying the Joan Gordon book on Wolfe very much at the moment, and\nfind much of what she says very helpful.  On the other hand, she seems to\nmiss some crucial things in Wolfe's writing, with the result that her\nconclusions, interesting in themselves, sometimes still fall short of the\nmark.  For instance, her failure to spot the possibility that the narrator\nof \"Peace\" may in fact be dead certainly undermines her otherwise helpful\ndiscussion of that book.  (I'm not saying that the narrator's death is\nobvious, and I wasn't sure when I read \"Peace\" for the first time, but it\nwas at least one of the possibilities that I considered, given some of the\nclues that we are given.)\n\nHer chapter on \"Operation Ares\" is balanced and perceptive, but I really do\nthink that there are some important points that she misses, and that the\nbook is not quite so unsubtle as she implies, for all that it is,\nundeniaby, an apprentice work.  The Hunters cult is shown to be completely\nbogus, with a tame lion being manipulated in what is nothing short of a\nstage illusion - and yet...  And yet, when the lion first appears,\nsuddenly, on the street below, while the hero is up on the roof, trying to\nsave a hostage from the clutches of an armed psychotic, it really is like a\nsign from God.  The arrival of the lion tips the balance, and although the\nhostage taker falls to his death, his hostage escapes (if I remember\ncorrectly), and the hero survives (just!).\n\nSo, on the one hand, the phenomenology of religion is undermined, because\nscience can always reproduce or explain the outward and physical signs of\nthe allegedly divine, while on the other hand the possibility remains that\neven the most debased, artificial and flawed religious cult may still,\nalmost by \"accident\", reflect something of the glory of God, or, possibly,\nbe used for purposes greater than their own.  I think understanding this is\nabsolutely key in grappling with the implied theology of the B/UotNS, where\nthe machinery of the New Sun's arrival is explicitly shown to be a cosmic\n\"conspiracy\" by self-interested aliens, but where the possibility remains\nthat it may still serve a greater, divine, purpose.\n\nBy the way, the business of science replicating the phenomenology of\nreligion, which is central to the science fictional rationale of Severian's\nstory, is essentially a special application of Clarke's Law that any\nscience of sufficient sophistication will be indistinguishable from magic\nto those who don't understand it.  Wolfe's subtle addition is to insist on\nthe possibility that all science may still be magical.\n\nIf I can organize myself, I may write something to the list to \"refute\" (!)\nyour assertion of Wolfe's alleged modernism, or, at least, to qualify it\nsomewhat.  My argument - just so that you are pre-warned - would probably\nrely partly on the importance of the Dickensian fictional \"autobiography\"\nas a formal model for TB/UotNS (thus establishing its essentially\npre-modernist roots), and partly on the \"humanity\" of Severian's narrative,\nin which poor, ordinary, and suffering individuals all play a prominent and\nmemorable part.  A great part of the novel's emotional impact, in my view,\ncomes from the contrast between the very real personal tragedies and\nsorrows of Urth's inhabitants and the vast cosmic backdrop which gradually\nunfolds behind them.  We see heaven and we see hell, or their close science\nfictional equivalents, we meet aliens and angels and we travel through time\nfrom the distant past to the remote future, but at the end of it all I for\none am haunted by my recollection of small, precisely depicted individuals,\nliving out their lives as best they can amidst the ruins and in the face of\noncoming disaster...  Severian himself as a small boy, sneaking off school\nto go swimming in the river...  The leper in the shanty in the favelas of\nThrax...  Dorcas, weeping amidst the ruins of the deserted quarter of\nNessus.\n\nI appreciate that your formal objection to an overly realist interpretation\nof the text rests on the undeniable use that Wolfe makes of an unreliable\nand subjective narrator, rather than an omniscient authorial voice, but\nsome may, perhaps unfairly, have seen this as implying either a lack of\nsubstance in the picture we are given of the dying Urth and her\ninhabitants, or a lack of true sympathy for their plight.  On the contrary,\nSeverian's memoriousness ensures a vivid and highly detailed picture of the\nworld in which he grew up, while his cool gaze gives us an unsentimental\nbut far from unsympathetic portrait of human suffering.\n\nWith all its eccentrics and grotesques, it is in many ways a very\nDickensian approach - provided we confine ourselves to the Dickens of\n\"Great Expectations\" and the other novels of his full literary maturity.\n\nFootnote:\n\nJoan Gordon picks up on the importance of embedded stories in \"Peace\"\nwithout quite pushing the idea to its logical conclusion.  Wolfe seems very\ninterested in what I might call the Magic of the Americas.  At some level,\nthat magic resides in the remembered, imaginary, and imaginative stories of\nits peoples, and I think that the imported folk tales of America's ethnic\nminorities, as included in \"Peace\", form a vital part of the magic\nsubstratum of the American consciousness.\n\nIt's like the faeries of Europe coming to Illinois in \"Castleview\", or the\ndimly remembered myths of Urth that persist in the much altered South\nAmerica of Severian's Commonwealth.  For Wolfe, the Americas are haunted by\nstories, and technological wonder tales are part of the United States'\nparticular contribution to this repository of fable.\n\nI love the ghost story at the end of \"Peace\" that is set in the orange\njuice factory, and regard it as a perfect paradigm of Wolfe's life and art,\ncombining as it does his experience as a working process engineer and his\nunquenchable sense of the mystic, the eldritch and the marvellous.\n\nDid I mention in my earlier post that I think the lion-led Cult of the\nHunters in \"Operation Ares\" is part satire on Aslan and Lewis' allegories\nof Narnia?\n\nNigel Price\nMinety, Wiltshire\n\nCarry On Torturer: Bernard Bresslaw IS Baldanders!"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}