{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2443", "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": 2443, "subject": "PEACE: geography and interviews", "messages": 5, "voices": 3, "first": "2000-11-06T09:32:21+00:00", "last": "2000-11-06T18:55:05+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at sirius.com" }, "date": "2000-11-06T09:32:21+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: geography and interviews", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Re: the PEACE bit from \"Thrust\" interview. I have this item (bought it\nwhen it was new), and I had recently reviewed it myself, but I couldn't\nbring myself to post it--so thank you, Robert! Now others have access to\nit, for further clarity and confusion. \n\nI especially wanted to mention that Logan bit. Based on a town in Ohio (go\nlook at an online street map right now); but is the fictional town actually\nsupposed to be there? Joan Gordon says it is in Ohio (based upon her own\nreading, based upon her interview with Wolfe which I haven't read; I don't\nknow exactly what it is based upon). The text seems to resist such\ncertainty: the nearest the text comes to saying Cassionsville is in Ohio is\nregarding Quantrill, who was born \"near here\"; but then the text seems to\nretreat from such a tight focus of \"here\" to being more regional, i.e.,\n\"the Midwest.\" So on the one hand I think of Cassionsville as being in\nOhio (despite the text evidence that suggests Ohio is out of state--I'm not\ngiving it here, but I seem to remember Ohio being mentioned in a few\ncontexts where it wouldn't be mentioned if the speakers were located in\nOhio), but on the other hand I think of a fuzzy line between Lawrence,\nKansas and Dover, East Ohio (birthplace of Quantrill).\n\nThat _sidhe_ reading mentioned by the interviewer provoked a mini-debate\nbetween Dan'l and myself: he thought it was wild, off the chart, something\nwe never talk about (thus far removed from the current local consensus); I\nthought I could understand it but admitted that I'd been living with the\nnotion for so long that I may have been contaminated (familiarity breeds\nfaux-understanding?)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam wrote:\nIt's a bit difficult to reconcile what Wolfe says here with his\nstatements re the house in the Jordan interview that I cited earlier." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh good: now we can see that interviews, while providing some data points,\nare not necessarily the be-all and end-all. I mean, not to complain or\nanything, but I was starting to feel that people around here were beginning\nto give great weight (perhaps even supreme weight) to data points from one\ninterview or another. Which is fine, I mean, whatever: the answer that\nfits a given reader is where ever he/she finds it (I really don't mean to\nknock that); toss out all the lit crit and find all answers in interviews;\nbut the impish side of me always wants to point out, \"Just read _another_\ninterview.\"\n\nBecause it seems to me that the text of all Gene Wolfe interviews will form\nanother complex plate of spaghetti to be interpreted: the drawback is that\nit is a step removed from the primary text (not to mention the larger\nmargin for editorial error, mistakes in transcribing, and all the other\ndetails that make a product of journalism different from a product of\nfiction writing). And thus a step removed from \"your\" reading of the\nprimary text, whether this reading is wildly idiosyncratic (like the sidhe\nreading?) or tightly consensual (the \"dead Weer\" camp).\n\nI don't want to discard all interview datapoints (I'm happy to use them\nwhen they serve my purpose--when they buttress a point that is also in the\ntext): I just want to remind us all that the interviews are not entirely\nreliable; that conflict and paradox arise when we compare two or more\ninterviews; and obviously they are not under the same authorial control\nthat a novel is.\n\nI couldn't find the energy to mention all of this before because, as I\noutline above, the whole thing is tangential to my interests, and I don't\nwant to be seen as raining on anybody's parade. But now that someone else\nhas introduced the problem, I find myself spending all this time to\nagree--go figure!\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "2000-11-06T13:06:37+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: geography and interviews", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The other difficulty with using Wolfe's interviews is that, while they\nare useful in a general way, Wolfe is, I think, intentionally gnomic\nand tricky. Recall the answers to the question list for LONG SUN, and\nthe fact that THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER did suprisingly little to clear\nup some things about NEW SUN (it gave two different explanations of\nwhere the idea came from, for Pete's sake)." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32\n--\nAlex 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.cm\nu.edu/~agroce" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net" }, "date": "2000-11-06T15:42:30+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: geography and interviews", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Alex David Groce\" \nThe other difficulty with using Wolfe's interviews is that, while they\nare useful in a general way, Wolfe is, I think, intentionally gnomic\nand tricky. Recall the answers to the question list for LONG SUN, and\nthe fact that THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER did suprisingly little to clear\nup some things about NEW SUN (it gave two different explanations of\nwhere the idea came from, for Pete's sake)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I think that's often true, and I wondered what kind of interview I'd get\nfrom him when I did it. But, he had been very forthright in letters to me\npreviously, had thanked me warmly for my use of his writings in my own\ntheological work, and had also said kind things about one of my books that I\nsent him.\n And, in the interview, he seemed almost always to be very frank and\nopen. At one point, I noticed he became coy, or seemed to. This was when I\nasked about Severian's adultery with the angel in *Urth of the New Sun*\n(Apheta? was that her name?). His smile indicated to me that I'd missed\nsomething. Maybe that at this \"time,\" Severian's wife was long dead? At any\nrate, I got the distinct impression that he was giving very straight answers\nto my questions. He had earlier written to me that he was disappointed at\nhow many people did not understand Severian (i.e., making him a \"Christ\nfigure\" instead of a \"Christian figure,\" a man struggling with his\nsanctification to become more Christ-like), and I got the impression he was\ntrying to \"set the record straight.\"\n At any rate, obviously I can never be sure if he was always being\ncompletely straightforward, but I do have the strong impression that in my\ninterview, at least, he was.\n Without being critical of any other interviewer, I think Wolfe assessed\nme not as an \"SF\" interview, whether \"literary\" or \"groupie,\" but as a\n\"fellow Christian\" interviewer, and responded somewhat differently.\n I also wonder if earlier interviews are more coy, and later ones more\nstraightforward. I tend to think that the Silk narrative is something of an\nanswer to those who got the Severian narrative wrong. (Not that any of us\nhave got it RIGHT!)\n\nNutria\nJames B. Jordan\n(Interview is at Paul Duggan's Wolfe website)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "2000-11-06T18:55:05+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: geography and interviews", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nutria said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " I also wonder if earlier interviews are more coy, and later ones more\nstraightforward. I tend to think that the Silk narrative is something of an\nanswer to those who got the Severian narrative wrong. (Not that any of us\nhave got it RIGHT!)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think Wolfe is fairly straightforward in that interview, but I also\ndon't recall a lot of the kinds of questions he tends to be devious\nabout (\"who killed who?,\" \"which egg was drugged,\" \"what does Silk see\nwhen he thinks he sees Pike's ghost\"). Wolfe seems to answer these\nthings sometimes, but really regard them as \"cheating\" on our part if\nwe have to go to him." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32\n--\nAlex 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": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net" }, "date": "2000-11-06T18:30:07+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: geography and interviews", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Nutria said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": " I also wonder if earlier interviews are more coy, and later ones\nmore\nstraightforward. I tend to think that the Silk narrative is something of\nan\nanswer to those who got the Severian narrative wrong. (Not that any of\nus have got it RIGHT!)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think Wolfe is fairly straightforward in that interview, but I also\ndon't recall a lot of the kinds of questions he tends to be devious\nabout (\"who killed who?,\" \"which egg was drugged,\" \"what does Silk see\nwhen he thinks he sees Pike's ghost\"). Wolfe seems to answer these\nthings sometimes, but really regard them as \"cheating\" on our part if\nwe have to go to him.\n\nAlex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Just so. Good point.\n\nNutricious" } ] } ] }