{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2215", "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": 2215, "subject": "Little, Big stuff", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2000-04-30T15:00:09+00:00", "last": "2000-04-30T23:24:39+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "2000-04-30T15:00:09+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Little, Big stuff", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hmmm... I think I know what I'm reading as soon as I finish the Lafferty\nfest that I'm indulging in at the moment. Thanks to all for the various\nuseful insights on LB.\n\nMichael: Yes, LB as a whole is much less compelling than the individual\nparts taken by themselves, which are (with only a few exceptions, such as\nthe Eigenblick thing) beautiful indeed. Maybe this fits the \"inside is\nbigger than outside\" theme...\n\nAlga: Yes, Crowley is much less of a genre writer than Wolfe, but I really\nwasn't thinking of it in genre terms, but as a kind of thematic connection\nto Dunsany (who obviously wasn't drawing on \"genre\" sources, since as such\nthey didn't exist for him anymore than for Carroll or Kingsley). This,\nhandled as anything other than the rather crass Niven \"iron drove out the\nmagic\" or the simple story of someone from \"reality\" whisked off to fantasy\nto be a hero, hasn't really been used much in conventional genre work, has\nit? Usually fairy and reality are nicely compartmentalized, with fantasy,\nwhile more \"fun,\" usually given a fairly explicit short end of the ontological\nstick. Crowley is certainly more in keeping with the 19th c. sources he's\nusing than anything I'm aware of in-genre.\n\nMantis: Perhaps Crowley cruelty really does explain the ending--after all, \nEngine Summer strikes me as the same thing, amazing beauty that in the end \nsums up to an extremely cruel vision of a personality trapped in amber.\nWolfe at his most savage is considerably kinder to his poor fictional\ncreations, although perhaps this just shows a lack of nerve on his part,\nwhile Crowley has what it takes to let the Revolutionary do it's work and\nnot pass the knife under the door.\n\n\n\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jack and Melissa Holcomb", "address": "jackandmel at socket.net" }, "date": "2000-04-30T23:24:39+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Little, Big stuff", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ah! Finally something I feel equipped to comment on, a little! I've read\nLB, but it was years ago. It just went into the bedside table pile again\n(right under the Gormenghast omnibus --so it'll be awhile)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Alga: Yes, Crowley is much less of a genre writer than Wolfe, but I\nreally\nwasn't thinking of it in genre terms, but as a kind of thematic connection\nto Dunsany (who obviously wasn't drawing on \"genre\" sources, since as such\nthey didn't exist for him anymore than for Carroll or Kingsley). This,\nhandled as anything other than the rather crass Niven \"iron drove out the\nmagic\" or the simple story of someone from \"reality\" whisked off to\nfantasy\nto be a hero, hasn't really been used much in conventional genre work, has\nit? Usually fairy and reality are nicely compartmentalized, with fantasy,\nwhile more \"fun,\" usually given a fairly explicit short end of the\nontological\nstick. Crowley is certainly more in keeping with the 19th c. sources he's\nusing than anything I'm aware of in-genre." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's pretty much true, although there seems to be a growing body of\nstories/books dealing with the interpenetration of faery and mundanity. I'm\nthinking of Emma Bull's overrated _War for the Oaks_ and Charles de Lint's\nstuff, all of which seems to work from the assumption that the faery place\nhas been/is being marginalized, although it is still accessible--and the\nupshot seems generally to be that encountering faery enriches existence.\nThis body of work has been christened (poorly, I think) Urban Fantasy, and I\nsuspect that a lot of it is written in imitation of _Little, Big_, despite\nthe fact that they seem to disagree with it premise. (In fact, I seem to\nrecall that the most recent trade paperback release of LB was touted as both\nUrban Fantasy and Magic Realism.)\n\nThere is one exceptional treatment of the boundaries between faery and\nmundanity that leaps to my mind: Robert Holdstock's excellent Mythago Wood\nbooks. That's a very different notion of faery--actually an externalized Ju\nngian collective unconscious--but it has a similar effect of drawing people\nin and making them less than they were. In fact, I'd say there's a strong\nstreak of Lovecraft through the Mythago books.\n\nSorry to drag us even farther off topic.\n\nSay, does anyone know if there's a Holdstock e-mail list anywhere about?\n\nJack\njackandmel at socket.net" } ] } ] }