{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1851", "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": 1851, "subject": "Narratives", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "1999-10-25T23:07:16+00:00", "last": "1999-10-26T09:32:51+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Fusch", "address": "dfusch at hotmail.com" }, "date": "1999-10-26T00:55:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Narratives", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "William Ansley:\n\nsnip:\n\"We have some data to consider the question. Severian repeats several\nstories not of his own invention. Do they show any of the same\nidiosyncrasies as Severian's narrative?\"\n\nWilliam:\n\nNo, they don't. They have their own idiosyncrasies. Each is different from \nthe others, in structure, narration, and form. (I'll talk more about this in \na few paragraphs.)\n\nWhen you say that we have no evidence that the storytelling of Severian's \nculture is significantly different from our own, I have to answer: Every \nculture has its own species of storytelling. Homeric storytelling is \ninfinitely different from modern Euro-American storytelling (after all, the \nepic begins in the middle of the story, and works both backwards into the \npast and forwards into the future!). Native American storytelling is \ndifferent from Euro-American storytelling. Consider modernism and \nmetafiction as opposed to realist fiction. Also consider postmodern \nnarratives from African nations. You could argue that Achebe's \"Things Fall \nApart\" follows the structure of a Western narrative, but what about Ngugi's \nwork?\n\nSo narratives differ in structure and form even in the present. In \"The \nSound and the Fury\" there are four different narrators (five, counting the \nAppendix). The first is autistic; the second is in the last stages of \nsuicidal psychosis; the third lies to everyone, including himself. The \nreader is invited--required--to interpret the narrators. The reader can not \nalways take them at face value.\n\nIf Severian's time is far ahead in the future, with an entirely different \nculture and social order, it would almost certainly have different standards \nfor storytelling. Its people would expect different things.\n\nIndeed, in Severian's own time, there are different types of stories. There \nis the story told by Loyal to the Group of Seventeen, for example. There is \nFoila's story, which resembles a medieval romance. There is Melito's story, \nwhich is like a classical fable. There is also Hallvard's story, which is \nrealism. Note that Severian never gets the chance to judge between these \nstories; nor does he tell the reader what judgement he might make. The \nimplication is that all four are worthy. Consider that the Ascians invent a \nmode of storytelling to work around Correct Thought. They adapt their \nstorytelling to fit their culture.\n\nAlso consider the stories in the brown book. The story of the student and \nhis thesis, for example, which Severian relates in \"The Claw of the \nConciliator.\" This story starts out with one protagonist, then focuses on a \nsecond, then returns to the first--and ends with a theme--indeed, with a \nmoralist statement--that seems disconnected from the rest of the work. This \nstory may well be \"unsatisfactory\" by contemporary standards of \nEuro-American realist storytelling.\n\nIn the story of The Little Boy Called Frog, the plot bounces all over the \nplace! What does the end of the story have to do with the beginning of it? \nNote, too, that the distance from the main character changes \nthroughout--until in the fifth section of the story, the narrator relates \nfuture events in Frog's life very distantly, as if recounting a distant \nhistory.\n\nSeverian's world is filled with extremely different types of narratives, \nbecause it is filled with extremely different cultures. Remember, too, that \nHallvard, who is a realist storyteller, is disdainful of Melito's \nstorytelling, which is based on moral fables. Hallvard may well consider \nMelito's story to be an \"unsatisfactory\" narrative.\n\nAnyway, my point is that Wolfe is examining--and indeed, playing around \nwith--the structure and nature of storytelling. He presents us with \nSeverian, an unconventional narrator who is in many ways a modernist \nstoryteller, and Severian presents us with stories, tales, and fables that \ndiffer radically in narration and in narrator. In one sense, Wolfe is \nallowing us to survey the vast variety of storytelling methods. By not \nhaving Severian pass judgement on the four stories in Foila's \ncontest--indeed, by removing the opportunity for Severian to judge them (the \ncontestants all die)--Wolfe is saying that ALL types of narrators are \nsatisfactory narrators, and that ALL styles of storytelling are satisfactory \nstyles, because storytelling is unique to the culture and it is also unique \nto the individual. Storytellers with different backgrounds provide you with \ndifferent stories. Because the story is the work of the storyteller, you \nwill have as many different kinds of stories as you have different kinds of \nstorytellers.\n\nWith all this in mind, I rejoice in the fact that Severian is unreliable! \nSeverian's narrative puts my mind to work--and I, as a reader, have come to \nexpect intellectual stimulation from a story (I suppose one's judgement of \nwhether a narrative is \"satisfactory\" depends, in the end, on one's \nexpectations as a reader).\n\nI don't think Wolfe has failed with this narration; I think he has succeeded \nadmirably.\n\nThat said, I hope to continue to examine Severian's unreliability and try to \npin down exactly what sort of narrator Severian is--just as I might examine \nJason Compson's or Quentin Compson's unreliability in Faulkner's \"The Sound \nand the Fury,\" in order to better understand the work and what the author is \ntrying to say about the human condition. --And, of course, to increase my \nenjoyment of the work.\n\nI hope this clears up my viewpoint a little,\n\nDaniel Fusch" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice Turner", "address": "akt at attglobal.net" }, "date": "1999-10-25T23:07:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Narratives", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Daniel,\n\n-The Sound and the Fury-, which I read in college, had long ago occured to\nme as something that might have influenced Wolfe, but only wrt -Fifth Head-\n(and we have detected other influences there too, rather spectacularly that\nof Proust [first novella], certainly not a modernist in the same sense). I'm\ninterested, but not convinced, at your bringing it up with NS. Will have to\nnoodle that over.\n\nThe experimentation with different forms of storytelling is, of course, a\nhuge attraction in the NS series. You bring up \"The Boy Called Frog,\" and I\nremind you that the principal godfather of that story was Kipling, who told\nMowgli's story as \"linked tales,\" not a novel--it too \"bounces all over the\nplace\" and I remember that, reading it as a child, I was bored and somewhat\nsaddened by the \"grown-up\" parts. I'll bet all of us love (as much as I do)\nthe recognizable (yet altered) folk-tale origins of the tales told at the\nPelerine camp (well, 17's tale doesn't quite fit--well, yes, it does,\nactually, in its curious way). And the Theseus tale, \"The Student and His\nSon,\" is a take on the original that could never have worked as a \"real\"\nshort story in a magazine, but is unforgetable in place.\n\nHe abandons this altogether in LS, which trades off different narrations in\nan effective but conventional way (Wm. Gibson does this very well, usually\nusing four different points of view in sequence; Wolfe is not so formal). At\nthe end, we learn that an \"author\" attempting to give an overview is\ninvolved; this technique is quite common to historical novels where the\nauthor needs to be in several places at one time. And in SS, so far, we\nstick with Horn, and are likely to continue to do so unless, as in the\nSoldier books, someone else has to take over temporarily. So each series is\ndifferently told.\n\nI miss those interspersed stories, now that I think of them. Though OBW is a\nterrific tale!\n\n-alga" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "William H. Ansley", "address": "wansley at warwick.net" }, "date": "1999-10-26T00:09:53+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Narratives", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Daniel Fusch\" wrote:\nWilliam Ansley:\n\nsnip:\n\"We have some data to consider the question. Severian repeats several\nstories not of his own invention. Do they show any of the same\nidiosyncrasies as Severian's narrative?\"\n\nWilliam:\n\nNo, they don't. They have their own idiosyncrasies. Each is different from\nthe others, in structure, narration, and form. (I'll talk more about this in\na few paragraphs.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Daniel,\n\nCredit where credit is due. Michael Straight aka\nRostrum wrote the paragraph you are attributing to me.\n\nI haven't dared reply to you myself. You have overwhelmed me with your\nknowledge of literature .\n\nWilliam Ansley" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1999-10-26T09:32:51+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: narratives", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rostrum wrote:\nWe have some data to consider the question. Severian repeats several\nstories not of his own invention. Do they show any of the same\nidiosyncrasies as Severian's narrative?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What would it matter if they did? They're stories. Severian is writing about something that actually\nhappened. We can't expect his narrative to reflect the ideosyncrasies of storytelling in his age if he\ndoesn't think he's telling a story - any more than we could expect John Major's recently published\nmemoir to use Magic Realism or Burroughs' cut-up technique. (If only it did!)" } ] } ] }