Subject: (urth) Modernism

From: Daniel Fusch <dfusch at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 07:24:12 +0000

OK, now that I've confused myself as to who has posted which messages, I'll 
address this reply to alga.

alga,

I agree with several things you said.

I think Wolfe's work is likely to last into the next century, although it is 
unlikely that he will receive much in the way of critical attention for some 
time to come. I think the work of writers like Walter A. Miller, Jr., Ray 
Bradbury, and Ursula K. LeGuin will also last into posterity, since they are 
also authors who experiment with different forms of storytelling. These 
authors are also--incidentally--taught in today's college lit classes.

And I think it very likely that some of the science fiction "classics" will 
last as "relics" of the past...at least for a little while. For example, 
Asimov's "Foundation" is probably here to stay, whether or not we agree with 
its "literary merit" (if such a thing can be defined), since that work 
defined a generation of speculative literature. Certain films--"Things to 
Come" and "2001: A Space Odyssey"--will be a matter of speculation 
throughout the ages; "Things to Come" remains a frequent film for British 
lit courses even sixty years after its first appearance.

I should add, though, that I think these relics remain because people like 
to read/watch them, not simply because they supply us with information about 
the literary/historical traditions of their time.

So I don't think Wolfe is the only writer who will survive. Of course, in 
centuries to come, who knows who will remain? Homer's work, after all, comes 
to us completely isolated from its literary tradition.

Interesting to speculate, anyway!

You said something else that caught my interest:

(snip)
"Daniel Fusch brings up--re the inconsistent or unreliable narrator (Sev) 
that we've been discussing--the modernist novel. Well, actually, that's not 
quite accurate, as he brings up -Moby-Dick- and -Paradise Lost- too. But I 
think that M-D can stand as a modernist novel ahead of its time, and Milton 
was certainly striving to do something different with PL. The point, and the 
Faulkner novel is included here, is the effort toward originality."

I think I will agree with you, in saying that Moby Dick is, in many ways, a 
modernist novel before its time. I think I would call it a tragic romance 
told via a modernist nature (there's a hybrid for you!). Modernism deals 
almost exclusively with the Everyman--the ordinary, everyday character with 
the ordinary, everyday life, with the ordinary, everyday romance, tragedy, 
and fall. The traditional tragic romance, on the other hand, deals with the 
decline and fall of some larger-than-life figure (Macbeth, for instance). 
Moby Dick has as its main character Ahab, the larger-than-life captain who 
will sacrifice his ship, his life, his soul...in battle against the 
Unconquerable, against the Infinite. Yet the narration is distinctly 
modernist--Melville experiments with different modes of storytelling, and 
Ishmael--whose identity we never learn much about--is a modernist (and, in 
part, unreliable) narrator.

I think "The Book of the New Sun" is like this, also. Wolfe presents us with 
a romance (or a fantasy, if you prefer the modern time), in which a 
torturer's apprentice becomes a king. This is a very familiar, conventional 
plot--the tailor who becomes a prince, the girl with the ash-covered face 
who marries the prince, the pauper who becomes king, etc. But the narration 
is modernist, experimental.

We might call Melville's "Moby Dick" a proto-modernist work (did you know 
that only some 20 copies a year were published at first...the novel vanished 
into obscurity until the 1920s, when the modernists discovered it). It is 
perhaps too tempting to label Wolfe "post-modernist." One surmises that the 
author of The Book of the New Sun is well aware of postmodernity--certainly 
Wolfe is writing metafiction in one sense--although I would argue that 
metafiction is more an outgrowth of modernism than it is a branch of 
post-modernism. Faulkner wrote metafiction. For that matter, metafiction has 
existed in one form or another since the eighteenth century (Henry Fielding 
comes to mind). (Metafiction, by the way--for those of you who are 
unfamiliar with the term--is fiction that intentionally draws attention to 
the methods by which it works, in order to investigate or examine the nature 
of fiction--the nature of storytelling).

Post-modernism is really extremely difficult to define--it is that work 
which is "beyond modernism" (it makes more sense when you apply the term to 
post-colonial writings), and the term usually seems to include both 
deconstructionism and metafiction.

In the end, I think it safe to assume that The Book of the New Sun is more 
modernist than post-modernist. The fascination with the nature of Time, the 
experimental narration, the tendency toward metafiction, the cyclical 
beginning/ending (reminiscent of James Joyce), and the presentation of 
different forms of narrative (i.e., Foila's Contest) without a final 
judgement on them (reminiscent of "The Sound and the Fury" -- in which all 
four (or five) perspectives are equally important and equally close/distant 
from the Truth or the Whole of the story) -- all these seem to fit Wolfe's 
work into a modernist niche.

It is difficult to label "The Book of the New Sun" that easily, however. One 
must keep in mind that it fits within many traditions. It is a heroic 
romance, it is a mythopoeic work, it is a modernist work, and it is also a 
work of science fiction. Maybe assigning one label to the book would deprive 
it of its totality--would allow us to look at only one part of the whole. 
That, of course, is a distinctly modernist thought.  =)

Well, that's what I've been pondering.

Any thoughts?

Daniel

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

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

---

From: Jim Henley <jlhenley at erols.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 07:08:59 +0000

> -----Original Message-----
> From: urth-errors at lists.best.com [mailto:urth-errors at lists.best.com]On
> Behalf Of Daniel Fusch
>
> defined a generation of speculative literature.

Keep in mind also that Heinlein's lasting contribution was _precisely_ a
literary one, though people didn't necessarily think of it that way. He
changed the way SF stories were told. [Waves hands in the direction of
Delany's essay about "The door irised."]

Best,

Jim
 ****************************
 "I once was lost
	but now I'm just blind"
			- Kid Rock

---

From: Alice Turner <akt at attglobal.net>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 10:23:06 +0000

> From: "Daniel Fusch" <dfusch at hotmail.com>

> authors are also--incidentally--taught in today's college lit classes.

Bradbury and LeGuin will last as children's authors. Miller will last for
people interested in the history of SF (as Bradbury and LeGuin will too, of
course--the way Sheridan LeFanu has lasted).

> defined a generation of speculative literature.

I would rather watch 24 successive viewings of "Eyes Wide Shut" than have to
read the Foundation trilogy again, which is not only abysmally written but
also has one of stupidest premises ever concocted. But chacun a son gout.

Certain films--"Things to
> lit courses even sixty years after its first appearance.

I've never seen "Things to Come." Agree about "2001," for several reasons,
one of which is that it is as pure a relic of the 60s as "Sgt. Pepper."

> to us completely isolated from its literary tradition.

Oh, I never meant that! I was making a point about his encompassing the big
pulp traditions with these series, using every bit of the familiar cliches
but making them into something bigger and richer so that readers to come
could somehow absorb the 20th c. tradition without having to wade through
the innumerable precursors.

[snip on Melville]

> is modernist, experimental.

Well, yes; that was more or less my point.

> That, of course, is a distinctly modernist thought.  =)

Would back you up.

> To drop another axiom, forewarned is forearmed....

Like Popeye?

-alga

---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:40:28 +0000

I also agree that if you had to assign a critical label to Wolfe, it would
be as a modernist (much more so than a post-modernist).

I suspect, though, that the most important literary influences on Wolfe are
not modernist--I don't particularly see Joyce, Faulkner, Eliot, or Woolf as
key to understanding Wolfe.  He's mentioned both Woolf and Faulkner in essays
or interviews, and I'm sure he's familliar with them, but I think that their
_stylistic_ experimentations have had very little impact on his work--the
modernist view of art/literature (if you can pin it down) more so, but still
not that strong.

I would argue there are two (somewhat arbitrary, I think Wolfe would say, 
given his views on genre and mainstream) major source groups to look at:

(1) Mainstream literary sources:  

The most significant here, I think, is Proust.  There is the highly visible
influence on "The Fifth Head of Cerberus," but also the running theme of 
memory:  the nature of memory is a central concern in ALL of Wolfe's work--
most clearly in BOTNS and PEACE.  And I would argue, without spoiling 
anything, that it's one of the focal points of OBW (and couldn't LONG SUN be 
retitled "The Memory of Silk").  This is part of the reason why Wolfe seems to
be often at his best when he's writing in a first-person confessional mode, 
making some particular soul's memory of the past be the whole work.  Proust
can be called a modernist, and sometimes is, but as Alga points out, he's an
odd kind of modernist.

Borges is also always looming over Wolfe's work, although I think more so in
BOTNS than elsewhere--you could almost (if you're willing to really stretch
some points) say that every story in Ficciones is reproduced in miniature in
BOTNS ("Funes the Memorius" and "The Circular Ruins" are obvious ones)--always
when Wolfe touches on paradox or time, or starts writing about fictional books
within books (the Gold story of how the world is a construct of frauds that
become real in PEACE is quintessential Borges--is it a lie when "the universe
makes our lies become true?") Borges' shadow is showing.

Some other writers that I see in Wolfe's work are:  Chesterton (Father Brown
& Silk, but Chesterton's also had a strong influence on Wolfe's worldview),
Kipling (the Mowgli/Frog, but also Kipling's feel for soldiers/engineers--
Wolfe's loving detail in describing how the world works and the detail of 
people doing their work), Dickens (who is the topic of several Wolfe stories--
and the source of Sam Wellerisms, and I suspect Wolfe sees cities much more in
the fashion of Dickens/Chesterton/Stevenson than as Joyce saw them or with 
Eliot's disdainful eye), Conrad, Kafka ("Forlesen"), Robert Graves (since
Severian takes a limp and a wife and some prophecies, not to mention a 
narrative form, from stuttering Claudius), H. G. Wells, and Poe.  There's a 
strong Victorian streak in Wolfe.

But equally important are the "anonymous" sources that can be called mainstream
(and the fed the other source)--the Arabian Nights, both by themselves and
filtered through Proust's constant evocation of them, Greek and Roman (and
to a much lesser extent, Norse) mythology, and fairy tales.  Not only do
Wolfe's characters tell these kinds of tales, but the tales they live out are
often (as many genre stories are) versions of these old types with a highly
varied background and less purely archetypal characters.

Finally, the Gospels and the traditions of the Catholic Church influence not
only Wolfe's choice of stories and the implications he puts into them, but the
trappings of the guilds, manteions and the metaphysics he chooses.

Note that while Wolfe's way of combining these sources can be called modernist
(and especially his habit of reworking sources and altering the uses of a form)
his literary techniques avoid most modernist experiments:  disjointedness,
stream-of-consciousness, extremely incapacitated or mentally aberrant narrators
(when Wolfe's narrators say they are possibly insane or lying, it is not meant,
I think, to be something unusual, as some of the narrators in Faulkner (either
_The Sound & The Fury_ or _As I Lay Dying_) who are meant to be difficult to
parse, alien--rather, they are evincing Wolfe's idea that we are ALL, to some
extent, mad and incapable of expressing the truths of our experience fully
either because of misunderstanding our reluctance to accuse ourselves), or
typographical experimentation.  Rather, Wolfe prefers "traditional" narrative
techniques with prose that is formal and ornamental, Latinate and rich--the one
"new trick" he applies a lot is the use of fictional documents that have a
history themselves that explain the presence of the text we are reading.  But
this trick is derived, I think, from Poe & H. Rider Haggard & everyone else
who has added "verisimilitude" to a romance by claiming "I translated this
manuscript found in a bottle" or "here is a letter from my strange cousin who
went to explore the ruins of America" than from Nabokov or more recent sources.
I'd love to consider Nabokov more of an influence, in that there are some 
striking similarities, but we have Wolfe's report that he didn't come to 
read Nabokov until well after he had developed the traits I find in both.

(2) Genre sources

While Wolfe draws general ideas from the history of the genre (sword & sorcery
trappings, generation ships, the planetary romance), and relies heavily on
our expectations (not always violating them, often just using them--any SF
reader should quickly suspect once he has a few clues that the towers are old
rocket-ships) it seems that Jack Vance is the real center of science fiction's
literary influence of Wolfe.  I see very little, if any, sign of Asimov or
Heinlein or Clarke, or, for that matter, Dick or Bester, in Wolfe.  Other
writers he's on record as admiring, from Damon Knight and Fritz Leiber to
R. A Lafferty and Ursula K. LeGuin (when he likes her work--Wolfe seems to have
shared my distaste for THE DISPOSSESED) also seem to have had little visible
influence (presumably with Knight the influence was more personal).   I think
that when Wolfe encapsulates the genre, he tends to encapsulate it through the
filter of Vance--which is why Wolfe's sword & sorcery and generation
starship tales take on a strong element of the planetary romance (a tour of
cultures).  Lovecraft and Clarke Ashton Smith show through here as well, but
Smith through Vance, and Lovecraft as someone to evoke rather than in a real
sense to resemble.  Interestingly, this Vance-ness shines through the fact that
even Wolfe's most morally questionable protagonists are usually light-years 
from Vance's cynical rogues and that Wolfe almost never views a society through
the abstract, critical, satiric eyes that Vance often employs.

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce

---

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:28:20 +0000

At 10:23 AM 10/26/99 -0400, you wrote:
>> time to come.

>the innumerable precursors.

I add this (depressing) thought: 
	Wolfe's writing may be so complex, and so dependent on the tropes of SF,
that he will never make it into a "canon." It is hard to imagine non-SF
people reading it and thinking much of it, save that it is "weird and
well-written, but what on earth is he talking about?" 
	Anybody have anything more positive to put out against such a negative
thought? 

Nutria

---

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:37:59 +0000

At 01:40 PM 10/26/99 -0400, Alex wrote:

>typographical experimentation. 

	I think Wolfe intends his characters to be Everyman and Everywoman. I
distinguish them because I think Wolfe wants to say that men and women are
quite different, and this is sometimes jarring in the light of the kind of
"unisex" traditions in our literature. At any rate, he's not showing us
weird or unique people, but "ordinary" people in extraordinary situations.

>(2) Genre sources

	Yes. Vance is clearly the major influence. Wolfe also refers to *The
Voyage to Arcturus* as an early influence on him. And E.R.Burroughs is
present in *Operation ARES.* (It would be nice if someone would publish
that entire book, which was cut down to 1/3 its original length for
publication, if only so we'd be able to trace Wolfe's development better.)

Nutria

---

From: Daniel Fusch <dfusch at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 20:01:19 +0000

Jim,

(snip)
"I add this (depressing) thought:
thought?"

Mind if I put out something positive against that negative thought? 
Actually, I'm not sure whether it is positive or not. But here goes....

I think you could define me as a technically non-SF person. That is to say, 
I have read relatively little science fiction--mostly that which has made it 
up into the upper "literary" spheres of the academic universe. I can't 
profess to be very familiar with the teeming ocean beneath--just as I cannot 
profess to be very familiar with the truly vast genre of Victorian mystery, 
despite my familiarity with those authors who broke the surface and caused 
such a disturbance that they remain to this day.

(Having said that, I hope you all don't decide to stone me!)

Also, so far as I know, there are a great many people who enjoy science 
fiction but who do not enjoy Wolfe; science fiction is not traditionally 
modernist (there I go bringing up modernism again!)

Anyway, when I said that Wolfe was unlikely to receive much critical 
attention for some time to come, I actually had two reasons in mind:

A. Like you say, Wolfe can be categorized on SF (although I would argue with 
that word "dependent" -- if I were in a nasty and nitpicky mood). Back in 
the 40s, science fiction was unfortunately identified with pulp and comic 
books--even though Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and many other 
"literary" authors had experimented with the form in the previous century. 
This prejudice lasts to this day. The truth of the matter, of course, is 
that there are both notable and un-notable authors in ALL genres--mainstream 
or otherwise.

B. "The Book of the New Sun" is less than twenty years old. Since Wolfe has 
not enjoyed the instant popularity of Tolkien or Dickens, he has not 
received immediate attention. --Remember, also, that Moby Dick went 
unnoticed for decades. Time is a factor.

Well, I suppose all that wasn't very positive after all. I suppose my point 
is: give it a few decades.

Daniel

---

From: Daniel Fusch <dfusch at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 20:24:05 +0000

alga,

Thanks for the reply! Sorry for rambling so much.

You said something I was wondering about:

(snip)
"Bradbury and LeGuin will last as children's authors. Miller will last for 
people interested in the history of SF (as Bradbury and LeGuin will too, of 
course--the way Sheridan LeFanu has lasted)."

I'm curious--are we thinking of the same works? I didn't know Bradbury wrote 
fiction for children. I was thinking of his short stories--"Usher II" and 
"The Moon Be Still As Bright," for instance--and his "Farenheit 451," which 
seems to be a staple in college fiction courses. When I mentioned LeGuin, I 
was thinking of "The Left Hand of Darkness" (about as far from children's 
fiction as you can get) and others. I know she did write some books for 
children--"A Wizard for Earthsea." I had something else in mind, though.

Anyway, are we thinking of the same Bradbury?

About "Foundation": I have mixed reactions to that work, but I think it is 
evident that it will last.

About "Things to Come": Watch it if you ever get the chance. 1936, written 
and directed by H.G. Wells. An eerily prophetic movie. A world war started 
in 1940 and continued for decades, until a technological society came to 
power and built cities that look exactly like modern malls, right down to 
the escalators. The movie brilliantly captured the whole ideology of 
imperialism and manifest destiny.

About "2001": A relic of more than the 60s, perhaps. Another movie that 
summarized an entire ideology. It's almost the ideological capstone of the 
"golden age" of science fiction; its literary roots extend back to 
Nietzsche--the idea of Zarathustra, the Super-man, the god-man of Reason and 
The Mind. Well, that's not a very good way of explaining it. I suppose, in a 
nutshell, the thesis of the film is: "Man is god, and will evolve into ever 
higher states of existence." I think this theme appeared in the writings of 
Frank Herbert and also Gordon R. Dickson (but I haven't read Dickson, so I'm 
basing this on hearsay). It was definitely implicit in much of the 
mid-century science fiction.

Anyway, these films will be around for a while--they stand as monuments 
(perhaps I should say monoliths?) to an ideological and literary tradition 
that had a profound influence on our society.

Hmmm. You know, I suppose that's another, more long-winded way of saying 
"It's a relic of the 60s," after all.

=)

This is a fascinating discussion. Checking my e-mail this morning, I found 
almost twenty messages on the mailing list! It must be a very busy mailing 
list.

Well, it keeps the mind working!

Daniel

P.S. When you have an alias on the mailing list, do I address you by the 
alias or the actual name?

---

From: Daniel Fusch <dfusch at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 20:59:39 +0000

Alex,

(snip)
"I suspect, though, that the most important literary influences on Wolfe are 
not modernist--I don't particularly see Joyce, Faulkner, Eliot, or Woolf as 
key to understanding Wolfe.  He's mentioned both Woolf and Faulkner in 
essays or interviews, and I'm sure he's familliar with them, but I think 
that their _stylistic_ experimentations have had very little impact on his 
work--the modernist view of art/literature (if you can pin it down) more so, 
but still not that strong."

Yes, I meant to say that there are many influences. It is the narration and 
the narrative structure that is modernist.

You can, by the way, be both a science fiction writer and a modernist 
writer. Modernism is technique and philosophy; science fiction is a term 
used to categorize the story and the plot. There are science fiction writers 
who are realist (I think Kim Stanley Robinson might be a good example). 
There are science fiction writers who are romanticist (Madeleine L'Engle). 
There are science fiction writers who are modernist (Walter M. Miller--in 
part. Also Wolfe and LeGuin--although you could argue that LeGuin is 
"post-modernist," if you could ever manage to define that literary tradition 
precisely enough to use it as a label).

Specifically, a modernist narration is one that examines the nature of our 
perception of reality. The story told in The Book of the New Sun is NOT a 
modernist story, but the narration of the story IS modernist. Severian is a 
modernist narrator for the following reasons:

A) Severian has an "abnormal" memory, which causes him to perceive reality 
in subtly different ways than the rest of us do; he cannot forget. Several 
times Severian lapses into the past, in a dream-like state, allowing us to 
examine a different means of perceiving time.

Memory is often the subject of modernist work. For example, Benjy in "The 
Sound and the Fury" also has an abnormal memory; he experiences the past and 
the present simultaneously, and cannot distinguish between them.

I have not read Borges, but he sounds modernist.

B) Severian is two people, and later more. Thecla-in-Severian surfaces 
several times during the narration; this allows Wolfe to show us different 
ways of perceiving reality, while still using a first-person narrator.

C) Severian does give us all the information that one would expect from a 
linear narrative. He leaves out some events, which we learn about later (I 
am thinking of his healing of the man-ape's arm, and also his physical 
intimacy with Thecla).

You mentioned that The Book of the New Sun doesn't make much use of 
stream-of-consciousness. Yet stream-of-consciousness is not the only form of 
modernist narration; Joyce used it frequently, Woolf didn't use it much, 
Faulkner used it sometimes but not always. An example of a modernist work 
that comes closer to Severian's narrative would be Faulkner's "Light in 
August." Most of the narration in "Light in August" is Third Person 
Omniscient, which some lapses into stream-of-consciousness and some periods 
of Third Person Limited. Yet the narration remains very concerned with 
examining the characters' perceptions of reality.

The Book of the New Sun is also metafiction--by challenging our 
expectations, Wolfe draws attention to the technique by which the story is 
told. The reader is not allowed to look ONLY at the story; Wolfe forces the 
reader to remain aware of both the plot and the technique. In modernist 
literature, just as in poetry, the way in which you tell a story is as 
important as the story itself.

Certainly we can say that Wolfe draws upon science fiction, mythopoeia and 
heroic romance (or heroic fantasy) for his subject matter, and he is clearly 
influenced by Victorian fiction. But this does not prevent us from also 
analyzing The Book of the New Sun as a modernist work. It is the narration, 
the form, and the technique, and the use of metafiction that is modernist.

In the end, you can examine the book on any number of levels.

Daniel

---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 18:54:45 +0000

To be sure, Wolfe's concern with memory and perception is a very modernist
idea, and BOTNS (and all of Wolfe's fiction) is highly concerned with not
just the stories told but the manner in which they are told--Wolfe, despite
being "difficult" for SF, however, eschews the particular quirks of form that
are most often associated with modernism by people who took Modernism 101 as
a survey Lit. course and think "Modernism = ULYSSES or THE SOUND AND THE FURY"
(modernist poetry I'm side-stepping here).

Alga mentions how everyone takes ULYSSES as "the" modernist novel because it is
the first (often only) one most people tackle.  THE SOUND AND THE FURY is the
other most likely candidate, as far as I can tell, in American courses in 
Modernism 101.  Both of these are difficult in part because of part that do
not parse as the normal declarative sentences of the novel.  Proust and Wolfe
do odd things with the structure of what is related to us, in what order, and
"how" as in who tells it and why, and may seem difficult at the sentence level
because they like complex sentence structures, but they are, for want of a 
better metric, usually possible to diagram (Proust here, for me, and 
apparently for Wolfe, is the English translations, and in fact C. K. 
Scott-Moncrieff doesn't always produce a "good" English sentence, but that's 
another matter).

It is certainly possible to be a Modernist and a science fiction writer, and
because of these concerns it is where Wolfe is probably best categorized.
But, for purposes of analysis, I actually think that how little he uses the
tools commonly associated with modernism is interesting.  

In other words, Severian's strange memory affects what he reports to us, but
does not affect _how he reports it_ in the same manner than Quentin's 
posthumous time-derangement or Benji's retardation does what they report.  
Severian uses pretty standard 1st-person narrative tools to convey to us even
very strange perceptions (like Proust, he tends to wrap anything really odd
up in a nest of metaphors--the metaphors, and not a distortion of syntax or
semantics, convey the alien experience).

> I have not read Borges, but he sounds modernist.

For the love of God, go grab FICCIONES or one of the other collections (I
guess LABYRINTHS is in print) or, if you're feeling good, the new collected
stories, and devour away!  It's a true crime that Borges never received the
Nobel, especially considering some of the people who did (Bertrand Russell,
for instance--a fine mathematician, interesting if wrong philosopher, but
really not a particularly great writer).  And Borges makes Wolfe better and
Wolfe makes Borges better.

--

So, alga, when (if ever) are you going to explain to us how Wolfe's possibly
a racist?

---

From: Jim Henley <jlhenley at erols.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 22:14:03 +0000

> Behalf Of Jim Jordan
> 	Anybody have anything more positive to put out against
> such a negative thought?

Quite the opposite: My good friend Frederick Pollack is one of the
country's finest poets. He has two booklength narratives from Story Line
Press (THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS) and no less than three even better
manuscripts in the drawer. And because his work, while densely
high-modernist and shot through with what I would cussedly call approved
marxist twaddle, makes such heavy (and striking) use of the tropes of
science fiction, literary people for the most part have no idea what to
make of it.

It's like Delany said, some people won't read sf, some people can't. They
just have no idea what the hell is going on, however intelligent they may
be and however perceptive about other kinds of writing.

On a related note (who will "survive"), I have to demur from what seems to
be the list consensus. We are already at the point where "posterity" ain't
what it used to be - it is so relatively cheap to reproduce writing that
"the test of time" is ceasing to mean much at all. Consider that two
potboilers of the last century, Chesney's _The Battle of Dorking_ and
Saki's _When William Came_, can be readily purchased in the Oxford Popular
Fiction reprint edition. What sticks in my mind is that Agatha Christie was
precisely the sort of author that someone like Harlan Ellison (or Raymond
Chandler FTM) said wouldn't be survived 10 minutes by her work. But you can
get almost any mystery she ever wrote without going to any trouble.

Best,

Jim
 ************************************
 "Here's a song that you can sing
       by which to do the measuring"
              -- Elvis Costello, "45"

---

From: Damien Broderick <d.broderick at english.unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:47:22 +0000

>precisely enough to use it as a label).

Ahem. This is not entirely unbroken ground. You might glance at, say,
Teresa Ebert, Fred Jameson, Vivian Sobchack, Brian McHale's POSTMODERNIST
FICTION or even my own READING BY STARLIGHT: POSTMODERN SCIENCE FICTION.

>perception of reality.

And, in the McHale tradition, a postmodernist narration is one that
examines the reality of our 
reality, so to speak.

I'm inclined to regard Gene Wolfe's central affiliation as modernist, FWIW.

And I'm loving this discussion...

Damien Broderick

---

From: Daniel Fusch <dfusch at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 04:12:33 +0000

Damien,

"The reality of our reality"! Well said!

I'd hoped that somebody had written something on the topic at some point. 
I'll look for those books you mentioned--or are they articles?

Thanks for the information!

Daniel

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 01:30:34 +0000

literary one, though people didn't necessarily think of it that way. He
changed the way SF stories were told. [Waves hands in the direction of
Delany's essay about "The door irised."]<<

    I'm glad to see amid all this discussion of authors, writing styles,
influences, and contributions to literature, in and out of the genre,
Heinlein get some credit. The younger list members who have grown up with
whole shelves of SF&F in the bookstores and libraries probably don't realize
that things weren't always that way, and Heinlein was perhaps the major
reason for the change. He helped lift SF out of the literary gutter and give
it at least a veneer of respectability. And it's doubtful that many of the
SF writers of today would be able to command the dollars they do but for
him.

thought?<<

    I have argued much as you have, last March, about Wolfe's ultimate place
in literature, comparing him to James Branch Cabell, not so much in terms of
writing style but as to who will bother to read him fifty or a hundred years
from now. Even within the genre, as alga has indicated, most people don't
care for Wolfe. Most everyone who reads the genre will have read Wolfe at
one time or another, and the all-too-typical reaction is just what you have
described. They choose not to bother with his books, that he's just not
worth the effort. However regrettable this may be, Wolfe invites it with his
chosen writing style. Mantis has described getting  what he called "an
ice-cream headache" from reading too many Wolfe short stories too quickly.
If Wolfe's stories have that kind of effect on someone like mantis, who
*likes* Wolfe's work and is willing to go the extra mile, imagine their
effect on the larger reading public, which only wants a good story well
told. They don't want to read something they don't understand, that leaves
them feeling stupid, especially when they know they're not.

    As I have indicated before, the urth/whorl list members are a bright
bunch, comprising authors, editors and others in the publishing business,
academics, scientists, and sundry, some of whom even correspond with Wolfe,
all well read. This is the best audience Wolfe could hope for. Yet, nearly
twenty years after the publication of SHADOW, debates abound here over even
what the plowman saw, never mind the higher meanings. I don't think that
augurs well for the Lupine legacy. I think PEACE is Wolfe's best shot at
longevity.

    And,  Alex, I *liked* CASTLEVIEW.

Roy