{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2490", "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": 2490, "subject": "Making sense of Castleview", "messages": 6, "voices": 4, "first": "2000-12-07T10:39:37+00:00", "last": "2000-12-08T14:10:29+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "2000-12-07T14:48:32+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Making sense of Castleview", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam Stephanides wrote:\nafter all, he's written one novel and\na number of shorter works which nobody, AFAIK, has yet made any sense\nof)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And when questioned, clarified:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "CASTLEVIEW (I had expected that would be obvious)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hmm. Anyone else a trifle surprised by Adam's choice? Obviously the book\nhas its fair share of opaque passages, but I had always put the lack of\ndiscusion of Castleview down to its relative straightforwardness." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Tony Ellis\nOn-line Editor, PC Format magazine\n01225 442244 x2349\nhttp://www.pcformat.co.uk" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2000-12-07T10:39:37+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Making sense of Castleview", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Tony Ellis wrote:\nHmm. Anyone else a trifle surprised by Adam's choice? Obviously the book\nhas its fair share of opaque passages, but I had always put the lack of\ndiscusion of Castleview down to its relative straightforwardness." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I immediately thought of Castleview when I read Adam's post.\n\nI'd love to see you're \"straightforward\" summary of how it ends.\n\nI remember one reviewer writting something like \"Gene Wolfe stands at the\nbridge as the critics come by one by one to try to figure out Castleview,\nand all are knocked into the moat.\" (The reviewer's sentence was much\nbetter than that.)\n\n-Rostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "2000-12-07T18:34:49+00:00", "subject": "re: Re: (urth) Making sense of Castleview", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rostrum said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'd love to see you're \"straightforward\" summary of how it ends." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": ":-)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I remember one reviewer writting something like \"Gene Wolfe stands at\nthe\nbridge as the critics come by one by one to try to figure out\nCastleview,\nand all are knocked into the moat.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "LOL!\nNo mere summary of mine can hope to create such an amusing mental\npicture as that, alas.\n\nBut surely “how it ends” is just your good old-fashioned pagan fertility\nritual, as documented in everything from ‘The White Goddess’ to ‘The\nWicker Man’? Winter (old king Geimhreadh ) kills the year (the Green\nMan) so that it can be reborn in the spring. Shields is the\nfool-hero-king who had to be sacrificed to bring this about.\n\nIf it seems confusing, it’s because we’ve approached it through the\nmedium of (mostly) Arthurian mythology. At the last moment the Arthurian\nbattle between ‘good and evil’ is revealed as the cyclic mystery of the\nseasons. But there’s actually nothing revolutionary in this - the pagan\nfertility ritual subtext of the Arthurian story ‘Sir Gawain and the\nGreen Knight’ has been the subject of a thousand undergraduate Eng. Lit.\nessays." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Tony Ellis\nOn-line Editor, PC Format magazine\n01225 442244 x2349\nhttp://www.pcformat.co.uk" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Westlake", "address": "peter at harlequin.co.uk" }, "date": "2000-12-07T23:17:47+00:00", "subject": "re: Re: (urth) Making sense of Castleview", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "At 18:34 2000-12-07 +0000, Tony Ellis wrote:\n..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But surely “how it ends” is just your good old-fashioned pagan fertility\nritual, as documented in everything from ‘The White Goddess’ to ‘The\nWicker Man’? Winter (old king Geimhreadh ) kills the year (the Green\nMan) so that it can be reborn in the spring. Shields is the\nfool-hero-king who had to be sacrificed to bring this about." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Fair enough (I found out that Geimhreadh meant Winter and felt\nvery pleased with myself, though all I did was a web search),\nand the idea of rebirth explains what that's for nicely.\nBut the details are still somewhat obscure. Is Shields really\nkilled? He does wake up, after all, and there's no mention of\nhim being a ghost or zombie like Jim Long. Admittedly the text\ndoes say that the connection between the fairies and the spirits\nof the dead is obscure.\n\nBut what about the rest of the details? Who is Liam Fee, and\nwhy does he want to buy the house? Is he really an alien or\nmonster, as he appears to be when Hwan Lee stuns him?\nAt least we know that he killed Tom, and his immediate\nreason, if not his ultimate motives.\n\nAre Jose Balanco and Hwan (which sounds a lot like \"Juan\") Lee\nthe equivalent of Balin and Balan? There's the names and the\nkilling of a brother.\n\nWho is Lucie? Why is she pretending to be French, or if she\nreally is French, why does she sound American for a while\nto Sally? Do we agree that she appears and disappears a lot,\nand doesn't show up in mirrors? She's afraid of water too,\nlike a cat, and her name, Carabas, is from Puss in Boots.\nI can't buy Robert Borski's theory that she is the same as\nG. Gordon Kitty, though!\n\nG. Gordon Kitty is great fun, and one of the most explicable\nfigures. I take him to be just what he seems, Judy's cat\ntransformed by the magic of the fairy realm.\n\nWhat's all the business with the organ playing in the museum?\nThere are hints in it of trolls, which tells us who took the\ndiary, but why? Why play the music?\n\nViviane Morgan appears to be Vivian *and* Morgan le Fay.\nHow does she manage to be both?\n\nDoes Sally really take up with von Madadh at the end?\nHow does Mercedes feel about that, if he killed her father?\n\nVon Madadh is King of Hounds or Wolves, and he's the dog\nthat Sally thinks is Rexy. But what's he doing? Is he just\nthere to lure everyone to the Castle?\n\nIs all the trouble at Meadow Grass to do with the attempts\nto kill Wrangler? It all seems rather indirect if so. If\nnot, what is it about?\n\nWhat is Sally doing in the wagon with the wild horsemen?\nWe see Sissy join them and enter Castleview, but it isn't\nclear how Sally comes to be there.\n\n\nThere were probably other questions too, but that's all off\nthe top of my head. Castleview is one of my favourites, and\nprobably the book of Wolfe's I've read most often, simply\nbecause it's very easy to read, makes sense bit by bit (if\nyou see what I mean; it's only when you try to work out\nwhy things happen that you realize the simplicity of the\nstyle is so deceptive!) and is chock full of unanswered\nquestions. There's also some remarkably good characterisation,\nwhich is particularly clever given the almost comic-book\nsurface style. I'm halfway through reading \"Idylls of the King\",\nbut it hasn't been much help so far :-)\n\nSpectacled Bear." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net" }, "date": "2000-12-07T21:56:35+00:00", "subject": "Re: Re: (urth) Making sense of Castleview", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " It has been a long time since I read this, but my take on it then was\nthe it was to a large extent about perception. Note the title: Castle VIEW.\nThe same objects are perceived in different contexts at different times by\ndifferent people: A winnebago is a spaceship is a castle, e.g.. The same\npeople have different names. The situation may be SF one minute, Dracula the\nnext, Arthur the next, Charlemagne the next, something Chinese the next,\nancient Egypt the next, etc. (I don't mean all these specifically; I don't\nrecall which I thought were there and which weren't. But you get the idea.)\n My thought was that *Castleview* is not SF or fantasy, but \"mainstream,\"\nbut that the events were being constantly cast/perceived/described in mythic\nterms, shifting mythic terms. Thus, the key would be to figure out what\nactually is happening at the everyday-world level, and then explore how\nthese mundane events might be also \"participating\" in those mythic\narchetypes which the narrator has superimposed on them. As with the Emerald\nCity (in the Baum book), Wolfe is giving us colored glasses with which we\nare looking at quite ordinary events, so that the ordinary world becomes a\n\"castle\" in this \"view.\" Thus, something ordinary is going on in the \"wild\nride\" sequence, but various people see different \"wild rides\" going on; one\nsees cowboys, as I recall.\n But I may be COMPLEATLY WRONG about this. I've never returned to it for\na later reading.\n\nPatera Nutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2000-12-08T14:10:29+00:00", "subject": "Re: Re: (urth) Making sense of Castleview", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, James Jordan wrote:\n My thought was that *Castleview* is not SF or fantasy, but \"mainstream,\"\nbut that the events were being constantly cast/perceived/described in mythic\nterms, shifting mythic terms. Thus, the key would be to figure out what\nactually is happening at the everyday-world level, and then explore how\nthese mundane events might be also \"participating\" in those mythic\narchetypes which the narrator has superimposed on them. As with the Emerald\nCity (in the Baum book), Wolfe is giving us colored glasses with which we\nare looking at quite ordinary events, so that the ordinary world becomes a\n\"castle\" in this \"view.\" Thus, something ordinary is going on in the \"wild\nride\" sequence, but various people see different \"wild rides\" going on; one\nsees cowboys, as I recall." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As much as I like this idea, I don't think it's the book Wolfe wrote. \nI've seen a couple interviews with him about it and he always talks about\nthe joke of Morgan seeking an heir of Arthur and it turning out that\neveryone alive is an heir of Arthur. I'd think if what you suggest is\ntrue he would have at least hinted that everyone seems to be missing the\nreal-world mundane thing going on.\n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }