{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2377", "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": 2377, "subject": "Report on the Gene Wolfe Symposium", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2000-08-28T11:15:51+00:00", "last": "2000-08-31T12:04:19+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Nigel Price", "address": "nigelprice1 at compuserve.com" }, "date": "2000-08-28T11:15:51+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Report on the Gene Wolfe Symposium", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Grateful thanks to Jonathan Laidlow for organising, and to the English\nDepartment of the University of Birmingham for hosting, Saturday's Gene\nWolfe Symposium. It was a fascinating day, and it was great to meet some of\nthe British-based members of the Urth and Whorl lists.\n\nThe morning was devoted to the Book of the New Sun, and, not having\nfinished writing up my paper (some lame excuse about holidays and visitors\nfrom the States) I mumbled and stumbled my way through my notes on a\nproposed explanation of the Urth cycle in terms of a combination of topical\nsatire and allusive neo-platonic hierarchies. (Alga, you asked ages and\nages ago if you could have a copy of my paper when it was finished. Yes, of\ncourse you can - I should be very interested in your comments. All I've got\nto do is finish writing the wretched thing first! I'll send you a copy as\nsoon as it's done, but don't hold your breath!)\n\nPlenty of constructive discussion on that, and then on to a paper from\nJames Russell on the strategies which Gene Wolfe employs in the Urth cycle\nto convey the strangeness of his post-historic world. Some fascinating\nanalysis, particularly on the use of arbitrary and apparently illogical\nsystems of categorisation to describe society and natural phenomena as a\nmeans of depicting alien patterns of thought and cultural assumptions.\n\nAfter a buffet lunch, we had a helpful update from Peter Wright, on the\ncurrent state of the publishing of Lupine literary criticism - more\nencouraging than I had expected - followed by a few tantalisingly brief\nglimpses of Peter's own forthcoming book on Wolfe, which I am very much\nlooking forward to reading.\n\nPeter then went on to read us his paper on post-colonialism in The Fifth\nHead of Cerberus. An overtly political interpretation of the book, Peter\nexplored not only the contrast between the stifling immutability of Number\nFive's cloned family and the shape-changing mimicry of the native Annese,\nbut also the political and sociological implications of cultural imitation,\nas the colonised both flatter and satirise their colonisers by adopting\ntheir ways and values. In this reading, such imitation leads to the\ninevitable corruption of the colonised, a snare only avoided by a mutual\nwillingness to embrace cultural and racial hybridity. This hybridity is\nrepresented in Fifth Head by the ambiguous figure of Marsch-Trenchard,\nwhose eventual imprisonment reprents the failure of the colonial society of\nSt Croix and St Anne to accept this option.\n\n(Did I get all that right? Other attendees correct me, please!)\n\nAfter further discussion, Jonathan Laidlow read the last paper of the day,\nNick Gevers' exploration of the spiritual plight of the chems in the Long\nand Short Sun book. Nick helpfully categorises the different types of\nartificial life in these stories, and examines their tragic limitations as\nsoulless beings. Despite their aspirations to humanity and even godhood,\nthey remain inferior to human beings, and stay trapped in their mechanical\nand electronic existence, even as most are forced to remain on the failing\nWhorl when the human colonists finally leave for Blue and Green.\n\n(Is that a fair summary, Nick?)\n\nA final round of discussion of Nick's ideas took us to the end of the\nafternoon, leaving us with no time for the day's last programmed item, a\nproposed discussion of Wolfe's mysterious short story \"A Solar Labyrinth\".\nA shame, because I would have liked to have heard what everyone had to say.\n\nOf course, even after so much discussion, some important Lupine mysteries\nremained. How do you pronounce \"Gevers\"? (Or \"Andre-Driussi\", for that\nmatter.) What does Robert Borski do for a living? Will we ever get to read\n\"Soldier of Sidon\"? And what music does Gene Wolfe listen to while\npedalling his exercise bike in his basement at six o'clock in the morning?\n(Peter Wright has introduced him to the gentle lyricism of Iron Maiden -\nfrightening thought - and confirms that GW listens to a lot of folk music.\nI'd always imagined that he listened to Country, a guess which was\npartially confirmed by Those-In-The-Know, but what else does he play on the\nlupine hi-fi?)\n\nIt was an excellent day, and I look forward both to reading the published\npapers, and to next year's event...\n\nNigel" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Westlake", "address": "peter at harlequin.co.uk" }, "date": "2000-08-31T12:04:19+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Report on the Gene Wolfe Symposium", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 11:15 2000-08-28 -0400, Nigel Price wrote:\nGrateful thanks to Jonathan Laidlow for organising, and to the English\nDepartment of the University of Birmingham for hosting, Saturday's Gene\nWolfe Symposium. It was a fascinating day, and it was great to meet some of\nthe British-based members of the Urth and Whorl lists." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Seconded! Ignore what Nigel says about mumbling and stumbling - his\ntalk was very good. It now seems the most natural thing in the world\nfor someone to use allusive neo-Platonic hierarchies for topical satire,\nand I can't think why I didn't notice it earlier :-) All the papers were\nvery good, and I hope Jonathan's plan to get them published succeeds.\nI'm impressed by Nigel's summary, too. Were you recording it, Nigel,\nor just taking very good notes? I stopped writing things down when I\nheard the papers were to be published.\n\nBecause Peter Wright was going to talk about The Fifth Head of Cerberus,\nI finally managed to make enough time to read it while wide awake. Reading\nbefore going to sleep, as I normally do, doesn't work for Wolfe! I finished\nit on the train, half a mile outside Birmingham, so it was fresh in my mind\nfor Peter's talk. The only thing I would add to Nigel's synopsis is the idea\nthat Victor is in some sense free, though imprisoned, because he is no longer\npart of either of the conflicting societies. (That isn't a very good way of\nexpressing it, I fear - are you here yet, Peter?) Since then I have had a\nlook at Robert Borski's \"Cave Canem\" website, and the contrast between the\ntwo interpretations is quite marked. In one, VRT is a positive figure, even\nbecoming quite a good anthropologist, and in the other he's a crazed killer!\nOne problem I had with \"Cave Canem\" is that it fails to distinguish things\nstated in the text from conjecture. It assumes that the cat is a shape-\n-shifted Annese woman, for instance, which seems very unlikely to me.\n\nOn the way home I read \"Strange Travelers\", which was probably a mistake.\nReading \"And When They Appear\" when you're tired is not an experience I\nwould wish on anyone. I tried reading on in the hope of finding something\nmore upbeat ... well, most of you will have read ST, so you can imagine.\n\nOne small question about ST - in \"Ain't You Most Done?\", Tim notices a\nstrange day, \"Grunday\". I came across the same thing last night, as a\ntypo in the course schedules in \"Death of the Island Doctor\". Searching\nthe web just gives me lots of people called Grunday. Is it something to\ndo with the Sandman references that have been mentioned here?\n\nPeter (Spectacled Bear)." } ] } ] }