ACoC Dialectic!
The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 09 Jun 1999
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1678

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Michael Andre-Driussi — 09 Jun 1999, 17:01

Nigel Price,

> Re: Blish's ACOC, you wrote:
> Other than
> that, I can't make up my mind whether it's a peculiar twist in Blish's own
> thinking, or the effect of the novel's technique, which is to set the main
> characters against each other in a sort of chiaroscuro dialectic,
> reminiscent in both its brilliance and its staginess of George Bernard Shaw
> at his most argumentative.  (There are parts of the first book of ACoC
> which are actually set out as dramatic dialogue, as if written for a play.)

Thanks--I wanted to say something like that!  (Rather than Shaw, I was
going to draw attention back to the [in my mind] similar roughness of
Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain," full of declamations!  And
stark revelations!  People speak frank!  [As contrast to Smith's "Alpha
Ralpha Boulevard"]  But that would only have led to tangents on Cordwainer
Smith.)

Hurry up and finish reading it, so you can say whatever it was I was going
to say!

=mantis=

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