{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2118",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2118,
    "subject": "The Ziggurat: Three readings",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-02-06T04:38:44+00:00",
    "last": "2000-02-06T04:38:44+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0777@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nicholas Gevers",
        "address": "vermoulian at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-02-06T04:38:44+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) The Ziggurat: Three readings",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Here's my more detailed take on \"The Ziggurat\" (at\nlast).\n\nTHE THREE MEANINGS OF “THE ZIGGURAT”\n\nBefore analyzing “The Ziggurat” in detail, I’d like to\nsum up once more the overall analysis I’ve offered of\nSTRANGE TRAVELERS, and which Jim Jordan had begun to\ntake further before he went away:\n\nSTRANGE TRAVELERS is a single work in mosaic form, all\nof its stories presenting variations on the same\ntheme, their ordering in the book broadly reflecting\nthe progression of Wolfe’s argument. That argument is\nthe irretrievable horror of this world, the need to\nescape that horror through transcendence (escape), and\nthe further need to escape or transcend in the right,\ni.e. Christian, manner, avoiding hellish and sinful\npitfalls that may appear to be tantalizing routes of\nescape. Unfortunately, the pitfalls are usually the\nexits opted for (suicide, paganism, solipsism, etc.) \n\nIn this context, “The Ziggurat” can be read in three\nways, all of which are simultaneously valid. The three\nreadings form a hierarchy, which, to be allusive and\nflippant, I will frame along the lines of the three\nlevels of meaning in THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER: the\npractical meaning, the soothsayer’s meaning, and the\ntranssubstantial meaning. None of these meanings is to\nbe scanted; they are, once again, all valid. But their\nimportance differs; the second is greater than the\nfirst, and the third far outweighs the second. So,\ntaking the meanings in ascending order:\n\n1) THE PRACTICAL MEANING. It may seem presumptuous to\nequate John Kessel, Michael Swanwick, and others with\nDorcas’ ploughman; but they have proposed the Maximum\nDelusion theory, which is the most obvious, and\ntherefore least consequential, hypothesis in play.\nEmery may be a madman. He may have molested his\nstepdaughters. He may have dreamed up the ziggurat as\na fantastic sublimation of his criminal actions. The\nkillings of the two time-travelling women may in fact\nstand for Emery’s murders of Jan and Aileen. If Henry\nJames and William Hjortsberg, among many others, can\ndo this sort of thing, why not Wolfe? An SF story\nbecomes a case of maximum delusion. There’s easily\nenough evidence in the text to justify this view, and\nit has been intensively cited. Upshot of 1): Emery is\ndestined for the electric chair, a life term, or an\nunpleasant few decades in a mental hospital.\n\n2) THE SOOTHSAYER’S MEANING. This is the\nreconciliation theory. The war of the sexes is\nportrayed in mundane and extreme forms, which\ncomplement each other closely. Everything that\nhappens, however symbolically resonant, is objectively\nvalid. Thus, the disagreements between Emery and Jan,\nand the allegations of child abuse, are mirrored in\nthe nature and actions of the time travellers from the\nziggurat. Emery is precise, believing in punctuality:\nthe masculine outlook; Jan and the strange women\nwillfully manipulate time, Jan by arriving early to\navoid the storm, the strangers by using a time\nmachine. Men and women cannot understand each other,\neven though they speak the same language (English, in\nall cases). Jan is divorcing Emery; the\ntime-travellers are divorced from our time on every\nlevel of understanding. The twins resemble the\ntime-travellers, and are about to cease to be Emery’s\nchildren. Etcetera. This is Tiptree territory. But\nreconciliation beckons: the ziggurat, a Tower of\nBabel, has fallen; the women-only (monolingual) future\nthat is the ziggurat’s time of origin can perhaps be\naverted. Emery and Tamar, using their own resources,\nwill come to understand each other, and build a new\nlife together. BUT: problems: Emery’s relationship\nwith Tamar reeks of abuse; Emery is deluded about his\nfuture (after all, Brook’s murder has to be accounted\nfor to the sheriff); and he is selfishly destroying\nthe ziggurat, with most of its invaluable\ntechnological potential, to cover his tracks. Upshot\nof 2): Emery is destined for prison, or is a selfish\nand abusive monster, or both.\n\n3) THE TRANSSUBSTANTIAL MEANING. This is where “The\nZiggurat”’s context, STRANGE TRAVELERS, becomes\nsalient. STRANGE TRAVELERS is, as indicated earlier, a\nreligious text, or, to be more precise, a religious\nanthology. “The Ziggurat” is, like most of the stories\nin ST, an account of an attempted transcendence that\nis in reality damnation. Emery has damned himself, as\ncan be seen in his own words to Alayna on page 290, a\nhomily against lying as something that is intensely\nharmful to oneself. Having held up this high standard,\nEmery violates it, lying to the law about a succession\nof violent deaths, lying to the world by denying it\nthe truth of the ziggurat’s existence, lying to\nhimself in the manner of either 1) or 2). Upshot of\n3): Emery is damned.\n\nMy opinion is that Wolfe intended all of these\nmeanings to be inferable, to be held simultaneously in\nthe reader’s mind, a technique he has used many times\nbefore. The precise resolution of what is real and\nwhat is delusional is unimportant; what matters is\nthat all three readings conduce to the same sense, of\nEmery taking a decisively wrong turning, onto yet\nanother road to Hell."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}