{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2493", "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": 2493, "subject": "Wolfe a conservative writer? (was Re: (urth) Grounded in the text?)", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2000-12-08T12:37:25+00:00", "last": "2000-12-08T13:22:19+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2000-12-08T12:37:25+00:00", "subject": "Re: Wolfe a conservative writer? (was Re: (urth) Grounded in the text?)", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\n\nAdam Stephanides wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I think that Wolfe's concern to \"deconstruct\" the act of\nnarration, which you touch upon below, makes him a radical writer,\nalthough he's not as flashy as some self-consciously pomo writers (and\nalthough he sometimes affects an aggressively antimodernist,\nwe-don't-need-no-steenking-critics stance). I think PEACE in particular\nis a very radical, even experimental novel." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Oddly, I don't want to argue this point: but see below.\n\nI also question whether Wolfe is so much deconstructing as\nreconstructing the act of narration, by (for example) insisting on\na particular time and place of narration that affect the manner and\ncontent of the narration. This is not a particularly radical\ngesture; in fact, it's a standard pulp trope. H.P. Lovecraft used\nit (badly) all the time (\"They are right outside the door...\" or\n\"Ia! Ia! Shub-Niggurath, the Goat with a Thousand Young...\" or \"That\nhideous, three-lobed eye...\")." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "By \"deconstructing the act of narration,\" I don't mean just that Wolfe\nspecifies the circumstances of narration, which as you point out is\ncommonplace. I mean that he also uses this specification to call into\nquestions the conventions for reading narrative which I referred to in\nmy original post. Aside from PEACE, examples I'm thinking of are the\npoint in TBotNS where Severian says to his readers words to the effect\nof \"no doubt you're wondering how I'm able to repeat all these\nconversations verbatim,\" when of coulse we haven't been wondering\nbecause one of the conventions is that narrators can do this; and the\nrevelation at the end of TBotLS. While I haven't read a lot of\nLovecraft, I doubt that he does this; I doubt, for instance, that he\nexpects his readers to ask how his narrator can produce a full and\naccurate account when in imminent danger from unspeakable monsters.\n\nAnd, to anticipate a point you may be about to make, I'm aware that\nthere are a few mystery novels in which what appears to be a reliable\nnarrator is ultimately revealed as unreliable. But in the examples I\nknow of, the conventions are \"recuperated\" by having either the same or\nanother narrator correct the first narration and give a reliable\naccount. Wolfe doesn't offer such reassurances in the examples I give. \n(Severian, of course, gives an explanation for why he can repeat\nconversations verbatim, but this doesn't (shouldn't) put the reader\nfully at ease, because now he/she has to wonder if Severian's\nexplanation is true, especially with the other funny things going on in\nhis narrative.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I agree with this; I think it's another way of approaching the same basic\nthing I am saying: that PEACE is not about the surface events of Weer's\nlife so much as it is about the process of\nrecollection/reliving/reconstruction/falsification (mix 'em and match\n'em, kids! The first one's always free!) by which those events are\nrelated." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Which, to return to an earlier point, is not something a \"very\nconservative writer\" would be likely to do; in fact, it's exactly the\nsort of thing the modernist authors of the early twentieth century were\npreoccupied by. Nor is it generally the sort of thing people mean when\nthey talk about \"putting the story first.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This is the \"see below\" above.\n\nYou seem to be pointing at a kind of \"experimental\" that was very\nexperimental indeed in the 1920s, and that most of the pomos would\nsniff at as mere \"modernism.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "While in some circles the modernists may be considered passe, their aims\n(as opposed to isolated techniques) are still not accepted by the broad\nreading public, and even the average \"literary\" novel published today, I\nwould suspect, is closer in aims and technique to Balzac or George Eliot\nthan to THE SOUND AND THE FURY or ULYSSES. In any case, a \"very\nconservative\" writer (your words) would reject the modernists, rather\nthan imitating them. And I think that in some ways PEACE goes beyond\nthe modernist works of the 1920s." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And it is indeed putting the story\nfirst: but the story being put first is not necessarily the story\nthat the reader immediately thinks it is. The process by which some\nevents are related is every bit as legitimate a \"subject\" for a\nstory as the process by which they occurred." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If this counts as \"putting the story first,\" then the contrast between\n\"putting the story first\" and postmodernism disappears. Indeed, one of\npostmodernism's characteristic features is to emphasize \"the process by\nwhich some events are related\" over \"the process by which they\noccurred.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Another way of taking this: the _Thousand Nights and a Night_ is\nabout the process by which Scheherazade tells a series of stories;\nfurther, some of those stories are themselves about the telling of\nstories. I do not think I am calling Wolfe terribly radical if I\nsuggest he may have adopted this as a model, particularly given\nthe \"Nights\" references in the novel." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And for this very reason, that prototypical postmodernist John Barth has\nalso adopted the _Thousand Nights and a Night_ as a model. Not to\nmention the postmodernist tour de force THE ARABIAN NIGHTMARE by Robert\nIrwin (whose book on _The Thousand Nights and a Night_, entitled\nsomething like THE ARABIAN NIGHTS: A COMPANION, I highly recommend). \n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "2000-12-08T13:22:19+00:00", "subject": "Re: Wolfe a conservative writer? (was Re: (urth) Grounded in the text?)", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam wrote:\nAnd for this very reason, that prototypical postmodernist John Barth\nhas also adopted the _Thousand Nights and a Night_ as a model. Not\nto mention the postmodernist tour de force THE ARABIAN NIGHTMARE by\nRobert Irwin (whose book on _The Thousand Nights and a Night_,\nentitled something like THE ARABIAN NIGHTS: A COMPANION, I highly\nrecommend)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hmmm... This seems to bring us back to the whole question of how to\nknow postmodernism (and without the aid of a SF oracle like Damon\nKnight's finger). Barth I will agree is postmodernist. But notice\nthat Wolfe, while he write about stories being told, telling\nthemselves, etc., never (AFAIK) does the kind of metafictional\nintroduction of himself that Barth does (in _Chimera_, for example).\nWolfe's stories and novels are often, like Nabokov's, \"the documents\nin the case,\" with internal discussion of how they came to be written.\nBut Nabokov is more often, in my experience, considered a modernist\nthan a postmodernist. Use of the 1001 Nights does not a postmodernist\nmake--Proust and R. A. Lafferty are both frequent travelers to that\nterritory, and Proust is a modernist and Lafferty is whatever on earth\nLafferty is. I'll agree that THE ARABIAN NIGHTMARE and PEACE have a\n_lot_ in common (though aiming at rather opposite visions, I think).\nWhat makes THE ARABIAN NIGHTMARE postmodernist rather than modernist?" }, { "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" } ] } ] }