{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2339", "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": 2339, "subject": "Crowley Interview Excerpts", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2000-08-10T07:16:48+00:00", "last": "2000-08-10T07:16:48+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "stilskin", "address": "stilskin at sff.net" }, "date": "2000-08-10T07:16:48+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Crowley Interview Excerpts", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Alga, I'd love to see the entire interview posted here or would be grateful for a copy emailed to me. And what possessed you to snip out Adam's LB=Alice scheme? Are you trying to torture us?\n\nBy the way, regarding Crowley's writing habits, I have a brief note from him that looks as though it could have come from the nineteenth century; penned in a flowery hand using what I fondly imagine to have been a feather pen! It's amusing to think of him composing all his books that way.\n\nPaul" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 09 August 2000, urth-errors at lists.best.com wrote:\n\n\n-------------- BEGIN urth.v029.n043 --------------\n\n 001 - \"Alice Turner\" \nSubject: Mr. Crowley. do you talk to the dead?\nDate: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 18:28:43 -0400\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-Type: text/plain;\n charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\nQUESTIONS FROM THE LIST\n\nMantis:\n\nIn the AEgypt series, is JC really talking about the decline and fall of\nthe glorious 60s into the ugly 70s rather than any other cryptic secret\nrecent history?\n\nThere's a sense in which the series is about a whole phase in the 60s\nthat seemed not to pay off. But perhaps anybody who's going through\ntheir 20s, 30s, experiences the same kind of decline. I was reading a\nmemoir about the 50s-back in the 50s we were filled with such hope, all\nthings seemed possible, change was coming, we were so disappointed, and\nthe war in Vietnam came and it all turned ugly. Well, of course, because\nhe was 25. But there's also, as in the theory of climacterics that Mike\ncomes up with, the case that your own feelings coincide with a general\nsocial sense that things are on the rise and changing.It can be\nenormously potent. I think it's more about that feeling. An analysis of\nthe feeling rather than an expression of it, I would hope.\n\nWm. Ansley:\n\nThe Gorey quote from The Unstrung Harp: Yup, it's wonderful to reach a\nstage in your life where people are paying such close attention that\nthey can catch your semi-conscious plagiarism, which is what that is.\nSometimes you get to a point that you just cannot find words better than\nsome other author's, and you think you can get away with it. Gorey has\nbeen a favorite of mine ever since I bought The Willowdale Handcar from\nmy older sister in like 1959. I had never heard of this person or this\nbook, and it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. The next one I\ngot was The Doubtful Guest. My sister and I used to exchange them. She\nhas a whole set of originals, which is probably pretty valuable now.\n\nWhat is really going on when Smoky has his heart attack; Wm. suggests\nthat the \"garden\" in Smoky's heart (p 618-20 in the QBPB ed. is opening\nto become the new works into which the Drinkwaters and their clan move.\n\nThat's really interesting. That's not what I was thinking, no, but maybe\nit is one way of viewing the end. My understanding of it was a sort of\nmetafictional one. What Smoky knows at the end is how the Tale is going\nto end and where they are headed. What he says to them is No, you're\ngoing the wrong way. It's back there we're headed. And he even tries to\nturn around and finds himself unable to turn. Meaning: The Tale is over,\nand where they are headed is into the book they are in the process of\ntrying to exit from. He has just come to the understanding that the\nwhole thing was a Tale, that it's happened, that he's in it, that he can\n't exit from it. So no, it was not my idea that he had opened up the\nparadise into which they enter, but it's an extremely moving idea. And\nhe [Wm.] has just demonstrated that it was there.\n\nAdam:\n\nIn what sense are the Drinkwaters dead? And is the final banquet a dream\nas in Alice?\n\nI don't regard them as dead at all. Smoky is, but not the rest of them.\nSmoky dies of a heart attack, just as they're all setting out. Dr.\nDrinkwater's scheme of the reverse infundibulum is in fact the case.\nEvery group, everybody, moves on one place, as in Alice's tea party. As\nthe people from our side move into the position of the fairies in that\nsection of the world, the old fairies move on to some place even more\ndistant.\n\nAre the Drinkwaters fairies already or do they become fairies once they'\nve crossed over?\n\nThey become the fairies they modeled in physical life once they get to\nthe other side. Another group of human will replace them. It's not\ncyclical; it's progressive. As Dr. Drinkwater said: Inside, the lands\nget larger and larger, the further in you go the bigger it gets, till it\nis infinite at the center. Self-selected groups, I guess, would be the\nones who say We're going over and identify themselves with those who\nhave gone over. But the dead are not there. Dr. Drinkwater's dead, so is\nNora, so is Violet and that gang, and they don't come.\n\nIs LB a retelling of Through the Looking Glass? If so, who is Smoky?\n\nAlice would not be Alice. It would be Smoky, obviously, who is Alice.\nThat's an amazing scheme [Adam's, which I have snipped]! I wouldn't have\nthought it would work out so neatly. Well, of course it couldn't be\nSmoky, because he doesn't make it to the other side of the mirror. Daily\nAlice is definitely named for Alice. Her name actually comes from a bell\nthat went off in my brain when I saw an ad in The New York Review of\nBooks for \"Dali's Alice,\" Alice, illustrated by Salvador Dali. I read it\nin my mind as Daily Alice.\n\nIn GwoT, the date given for the dirigible crash is not the date of the\ncrash in reality. Is this deliberate?\n\nDr. Johnson, after he wrote the Dictionary, was reproached by a\nhorsewoman who asked him why on earth he had defined a pastern as a\nhorse's \"knee.\" And he looked at her and said, \"Ignorance, Madame, pure\nignorance.\" No, it's just a mistake. If I got the year wrong, it's\nbecause I forgot to look it up to make sure that it was right.\n\nWhat happened in Rhodesia? Does he meet his older self who warns him\nagainst creating the Otherhood, and confabulate the story of the lion\nlater?\n\nNo, he doesn't convince him not to do it. It can't be done any more. The\nDenis who went back to shoot Cecil Rhodes failed to shoot Cecil Rhodes,\nat which point none of the plots happened, none of the succeeding\nthings. But he can't get back, and is stuck there in 1898. He gradually\ngrows older within the time frame of the original situation, which\nrestores itself progressively as he lives on. He does meet himself\ncoming to Africa in 1956. The thing that was possible to have happened\ncan't anymore have happened. The thing about time travel stories, of\ncourse, is that they are impossible. They're not only impossible in\nfact, they're impossible to describe, to write. It's all a matter of\ntricks and writing them is a bizarre experience because you're studying\nyour own premises constantly--who is this, and is it right, and how\ncould he have done this if he hadn't already done that. The paradoxes\nare constantly accumulating as you write, and you have to keep pushing\nthem aside and picking only the ones that will continue to create a\nstory ahead of you. Because if you think about them, you'll find that\nyou can't write the story.\n\nCompositional methods: I have always written books in longhand because I\nnever learned how to type. That's changed somewhat with computers, but I\nstill do most of every book in longhand on long legal pads. Nowadays\nbecause typing and retyping and rewriting is so much easier, I do more\nof it on the computer than I ever used to do on the typewriter. I used\nto write a draft in pen, and then another draft in pen and then only\nwhen I had finally thought everything through, as far as I possibly\ncould, did I start typing. I would usually type only one draft, maybe\nretype some pages if I absolutely had to, but the idea of retyping\nthings was just so appalling that sometimes I'd leave things rather than\nretype. Learning a new method of putting words on paper definitely\nchanges your compositional methods. Word processing has changed a lot of\nthings. I think of Henry James halfway through his career when he began\ndictating to a \"typewriter\"-a typist-and she would type this up and give\nhim a draft and he would go over it and correct it and change it and\nedit it and give it back. And it really changed the way he wrote. I\nstarted using the computer on GwoT, only the latter parts of it. L&S was\nthe first whole book I actually wrote on it. But my holograph manuscript\nwas still very complete. Now they're scrappier, but they still exist. I\nlove the word processor--it's a great thing! And the micro-editing you'\nre capable of, it's just so fabulous. I'm still a slow typist, but I've\nfinally learned to type with all my fingers instead of just two. I'm\nbetter in the morning than I am in the afternoons. I think a long time\nbefore writing, I don't generate huge numbers of drafts; in fact I find\nit nearly impossible to throw out something I've written. I'll put it in\nanother book, or put it somewhere else, or spend huge amounts of time\ntrying to shoehorn it in. It's a drawback since I'm very prolific and I\ndon't need to do that, but I can't resist hanging on. I also tend to\ncheckerboard as I write, instead of starting at page 1 and then writing\non to the end. A scene, and then one later on, and then over to the\nside. This may be part of what makes these last books so\ninterreferential. I write a scene and then remind myself that I want to\nwrite something that references or mimics that much later on. It's a\ndanger, because I know that readers can't read them in the same way as\nwriters write them. I tell my writing students not to do that. Don't\nhave a book assembled in your mind and then give out gradual scraps to\nthe readers, assuming that they will put them in the right places, like\na jigsaw puzzle with a big picture that you will have in the end.\nReaders don't read like that, because you don't have a big picture to\nplug these things into. You're just getting them sequentially, one at a\ntime. So I warn against that, but I actually do it myself.\n\n\n\n\n--------------- MESSAGE urth.v029.n043.2 ---------------\n\nFrom: Patri10629 at aol.com\nSubject: Re: Digest urth.v029.n042\nDate: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 20:33:45 EDT\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-Type: text/plain; charset=\"US-ASCII\"\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\nDear Alga,\n\nPost all the Crowley you want. But make sure you add about 87 lines that read \n*SPOILER*\n\nnaughtily,\n\nPatrick\n\n\n--------------- MESSAGE urth.v029.n043.3 ---------------\n\nFrom: David Duffy \nSubject: Re: Crowley reveals all...\nDate: Wed, 9 Aug 2000 14:33:40 +1000 (EST)\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII\nIn-Reply-To: <200008082210.PAA18349 at lists1.best.com>\n\nPut me down please!\n\n-- \n| David Duffy. ,-_|\\\n| email: davidD at qimr.edu.au ph: INT+61+7+3362-0217 fax: -0101 / *\n| Epidemiology Unit, The Queensland Institute of Medical Research \\_,-._/\n| 300 Herston Rd, Brisbane, Queensland 4029, Australia v \n\n\n\n--------------- END urth.v029.n043 ---------------\n\n\n*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "www.sff.net/people/stilskin" } ] } ] }