{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2366", "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": 2366, "subject": "Suzanne Delage", "messages": 2, "voices": 1, "first": "2000-08-20T20:41:38+00:00", "last": "2000-08-20T20:44:29+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Redhaven1", "address": "redhaven1 at aol.com" }, "date": "2000-08-20T20:41:38+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I haven't posted on this mailing list in a long time, but now I have a \nquestion and don't know who else to ask. I'm trying to stay away from WHORL \nfor a while, at least until I read In Green's Jungles. Anyway, I've been \nreading Endangered Species, a collection of Wolfe's short stories and I ran \nacross this:\n\n\"The idea which has so forcibly struck me was simply this: that every man has \nhad in the course of his life some extraordinary experience, some dislocation \nof all we expect from nature and probability, of such magnitude that he might \nin his own person serve as a living proof of Hamlet's hackneyed precept-- but \nthat he has, nearly always, been so conditioned to consider himself the most \nmundane of creatures, that, finding no relationship to the remainder of his \nlife in this extraordinary experience, he has forgotten it.\"\n\nThis quote is from the beginning of a story entitled \"Suzanne Delage\", \npublished in 1980 in Edges. The story then goes on to describe the \nnarrator's uneventful life and his relationship with a seemingly unnoteworthy \nwoman named Suzanne Delage. I have two questions. The first relates to the \nquote itself and probably sounds very niave. I'm unfamiliar with much \nShakespear and simply wonder what \"Hamlet's hackneyed precept\" is and how it \nrelates. My second question is regarding the story itself: does anyone \nunderstand it?! And if so, could you please illuminate me? The beginning of \nthe story hints that something fantastic and half-remembered took place in \nthe narrator's life, and as the story progresses you keep waiting for it to \nbe revealed. The narrator however, seems to not remember, or at least only \nremember pieces. I'm sure there's something in the story but I'm just too \ndense to realize it. All in all, the story is a riddle, as most of Wolfe's \nstories seem to be, but I'm not getting this one. (Which is not unusual; I \nmost often am too dense to understand the whole of most of his stories, but \njust deep enough to enjoy them nonetheless. Not fully understanding is what \nI believe makes them so appealing to me.) Anyway, I'd appreciate help in \nunderstanding this one.\n\nThanks,\nSteve" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Redhaven1", "address": "redhaven1 at aol.com" }, "date": "2000-08-20T20:44:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I haven't posted on this mailing list in a long time, but now I have a \nquestion and don't know who else to ask. I'm trying to stay away from WHORL \nfor a while, at least until I read In Green's Jungles. Anyway, I've been \nreading Endangered Species, a collection of Wolfe's short stories and I ran \nacross this:\n\n\"The idea which has so forcibly struck me was simply this: that every man has \nhad in the course of his life some extraordinary experience, some dislocation \nof all we expect from nature and probability, of such magnitude that he might \nin his own person serve as a living proof of Hamlet's hackneyed precept-- but \nthat he has, nearly always, been so conditioned to consider himself the most \nmundane of creatures, that, finding no relationship to the remainder of his \nlife in this extraordinary experience, he has forgotten it.\"\n\nThis quote is from the beginning of a story entitled \"Suzanne Delage\", \npublished in 1980 in Edges. The story then goes on to describe the \nnarrator's uneventful life and his relationship with a seemingly unnoteworthy \nwoman named Suzanne Delage. I have two questions. The first relates to the \nquote itself and probably sounds very niave. I'm unfamiliar with much \nShakespear and simply wonder what \"Hamlet's hackneyed precept\" is and how it \nrelates. My second question is regarding the story itself: does anyone \nunderstand it?! And if so, could you please illuminate me? The beginning of \nthe story hints that something fantastic and half-remembered took place in \nthe narrator's life, and as the story progresses you keep waiting for it to \nbe revealed. The narrator however, seems to not remember, or at least only \nremember pieces. I'm sure there's something in the story but I'm just too \ndense to realize it. All in all, the story is a riddle, as most of Wolfe's \nstories seem to be, but I'm not getting this one. (Which is not unusual; I \nmost often am too dense to understand the whole of most of his stories, but \njust deep enough to enjoy them nonetheless. Not fully understanding is what \nI believe makes them so appealing to me.) Anyway, I'd appreciate help in \nunderstanding this one.\n\nThanks,\nSteve" } ] } ] }