{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2495", "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": 2495, "subject": "Scattered Shot", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "2000-12-08T12:41:04+00:00", "last": "2000-12-08T18:39:22+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2000-12-08T12:41:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Scattered Shot", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Mass responses to the digest; I'm on deadlines & don't have\ntime for close argument.\n\nDavid aka viscacha:\n\nIf you're going to make Monty Python references around here,\noughtn't they at least to involve Dennis Moore?\n\n\"This is the Lupine Express, is it not...?\"\n\n *\n * *\n\nSpectacled Bear:\n\nThanks for the list of CASTLEVIEW questions. I'll have to \nreread it soon and look at them again. (Meanwhile my STRANGE \nTRAVELLERS finally arrived in the mail -- I didn't advance \norder, because I usually prefer to buy from \"The Other Change \nof Hobbit,\" but somehow every time I went there they were sold \nout, so I finally gave in and had them ship me one. \n\nWhat a neat cover! Think I'll save it for holiday reading...)\n\n *\n * *\n\nDavid Duffy:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think _Peace_ is definitely _modern_ in that sense. The logic,\nsuch as in the example above, is dream logic, and the modernists\nwere all influenced by psychoanalysis. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good point -- but then, \"dream logic\" leads straight to Lewis \nCarroll and FINNEGANS WAKE..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Who knows what dreams may come\" is relevant to the common model\nof confused ghosts working through all that difficult material\nbefore they \"wake up\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"In death, what dreams may come:\" Hamlet's soliloquy on the \npossibilty of kakking himself. My PEACE is not handy; does he \nquote it in there somewhere...\n\n *\n * *\n\nWilliam Ansley:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I can't let this pass without comment. I am sure I won't change\nyour mind Dan'l, " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "... it's a poor sort of a mind that can't be changed ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "but as far as I am concerned, the only reasonable choice from\nyour list of who Weer could be addressing when he says \"ladies\" \nin the passage you quote above is number 3 [ladies at the party]. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I thought all three possibilities were reasonable but not equally\ncoherent." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I really have no idea what you mean when you say choice number\n1 is the most 'coherent.'" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I meant that it seemed to involve the smallest amount of assumption\nand contradiction. In fact, you have convinced me that #3 does." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We have a book written by a dead man who doesn't know he is dead, " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Doesn't know\" is ex hypothesi but may be too strong: \"doesn't seem\nto know.\" In fact, I'd be equally willing to posit \"knows but refuses\nto admit even to himself.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and who seems to believe that he can send his mind back into the past\nto earlier parts of his life and yet doesn't seem to think that this\nis at all unusual. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Does Weer ever seem to think that _anything_ is unusual... (Serious\nquestion; with the text not before me, I don't recall.) I mean Weer-\nthe-narrator, not Weer-the-memory. This is one of the reasons I vaguely\nsuspect that PEACE is a stage in a longer cycle of remembering and\nreconstructing/repenting: he seems almost affectless _about_ the things\nhe remembers/reexperiences/whatever." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There are two or three short passages I have left out where \nWeer's attention returns to the \"present,\" as if he is just \nreminiscing about his past. But the idea that we are just \nreading reminiscences seems to be contradicted when the Weer \nin the past talks as if he is a visitor from the future." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think this is remarkably important, & have commented on it before.\nNot only is Weer not _just_ remniscing, he _knows_ that he is not \njust remniscing. Possibilities:\n\n1. He imagines going back in time and talking to these people.\n I find this a dull option.\n2. He hallucinates same. Duller still.\n3. He actually does do this. Certainly interesting, a time-\n travelling (or -unstuck) ghost; but can it be supported?\n If he does travel back in time and take control of his\n earlier self the way he seems to several times, I think he'd\n have been committed.\n4. Variant on above (and on \"Chinese pillow\" interpretation of\n PEACE): throughout his life he has had \"flashforwards\" to the\n time when he needs to consult a doctor though dead; rather than\n later-Weer \"possessing\" younger-Weer, younger-Weer \"channels\"\n for later-Weer.\n5. He is _presented_ with the appearance of going-back and interacting\n with his past. This is the \"Purgatory\" option in full bloom, and\n my first choice." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But, leaving all this aside, I think there is textual evidence that \nWeer is addressing the ladies at his fifth birthday party. On p. 5 we \nsee this: \"There is a white Pekinese as big as a spaniel at her feet, \nand it snarls when anyone comes too near. (Laugh, ladies, but \nMing-Sno will bite.)\" " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That is sufficient for me, and I am embarassed not to have caught it\nmyself; I've certainly noticed the passage before.\n\nI guess I got carried away -- I'm semi-desperate to work out\nwhy and for whom Weer (believes he) is writing. I think this\nis as important as the \"Time of Narration,\" which I hold as\nsettled beyond reasonable argument: He's narrating From Beyond \nThe Grave.\n\n\n *\n * *\n\nAdam Stephanides:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would analyze it a bit differently. I think that when Weer's\nmind is in the \"past\" he remains aware of his \"present\" situation; " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Actually his \"past\" seems to somewhat influence the structure of\nhis \"present,\" so that his childhood memories are remembered on the\nporch and his presidency in the office. Where in the \"memory house\"\nhe is seems to flow with when in his life he is mostly remembering.\nOr maybe the other way around -- when he's in the office, it's \neasiest for him to remember his presidency?\n\nWell, that's another point to investigate further -- purely from\na memorious overview of the book, though, it seems to work; porch\nand outdoors for childhood, various hallways and rooms for main \nadult life, office for presidency/older age. Something like that, \nwith variations and elaborations.\n\n *\n * *" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam Stephanides also wrote:\nBy \"deconstructing the act of narration,\" I don't mean just that\nWolfe specifies the circumstances of narration, which as you\npoint out is commonplace. I mean that he also uses this \nspecification to call into questions the conventions for reading\nnarrative which I referred to in my original post. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Even that is not quite how I understand \"deconstruction\" -- I would\nunderstand it to mean using those conventions precisely in a way \nthat they call their own constituion into question, i.e., letting \nthe construction to de-construct itself: but my understanding of\n\"deconstruction\" is largely based on the Derridean non-synthesis,\nso I tend to look for hinges and difference-deference and the like." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Aside from PEACE, examples I'm thinking of are the point \nin 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 \nthe revelation at the end of TBotLS. While I haven't read a lot \nof Lovecraft, I doubt that he does this; I doubt, for instance, \nthat he expects his readers to ask how his narrator can produce a\nfull and accurate account when in imminent danger from unspeakable\nmonsters." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No; he seems to take it for granted (and expect us to) that his\nnarrators stick to their desks, writing to the end, even when the\nwriting turns into gibbering. Really, now, has anyone in the history \nof the Universe gibbered hysterically in writing? Pfui! Even as a \ntwelve-year-old, when I first encountered HPL, it bothered me; I \ncouldn't believe then and can't believe now that he actually intended \nus to _believe_ this. Yet every bit of evidence says that he did." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And, 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. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Wouldn't think of evincing these; that's a mystery convention in itself \nand not relevant outside the over/under-defined bounds of the crime \n\"genre.\" It's basic to the mystery genre that when the story is over\nall is revealed at least semi-openly, at least to the reader; that is \nclearly not Wolfe's technic." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "You 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": "quote", "depth": 1, "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. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think I disagree but I would not care to mount an argument for either\nside without more research than I am prepared to go into for this side\ndiscussion." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In any case, a \"very conservative\" writer (your words) would reject\nthe modernists, rather than imitating them. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I do not suggest that Wolfe imitates the modernists; I suggest that\nhe grabs their tools where he finds them useful, and ditto the pomos,\nand uses them for his own, fundamentally conservative, purposes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And I think that in some ways PEACE goes beyond the modernist works\nof the 1920s." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, since FW has a date in the '30s, and I believe Beckett got going\nthen too, I won't disagree..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "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": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If this counts as \"putting the story first,\" then the contrast \nbetween \"putting the story first\" and postmodernism disappears. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "... and your point is? I tend to think the actual radicalism of\npomo is highly overstated and overrated; they have some cool tools\nbut no really new ideas. \"Truth is socially constructed.\" Now *there*\nis an original idea... Someone please contact Pontius Pilate..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Indeed, one of postmodernism's characteristic features is to\nemphasize \"the process by which some events are related\" over\n\"the process by which they occurred.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "See previous message re: the Nights... Nothing new here..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And for this very reason, that prototypical postmodernist John\nBarth has also adopted the _Thousand Nights and a Night_ as a\nmodel. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Someone wrote to me offline, who seemed to think that Barth does \nnot qualify as pomo. I shall let that individual step forward and \ndefend this strange idea him or herself if s/he chooses; I mention \nit only to emphasise, I don't think there's a clear meaning for\neither word (\"modernist\"/\"pomo\") -- it might even be fun to, ah,\ndeconstruct the permeable bar between the two words... But not for\nme...\n\n *\n * *\n\n... or as AD Groce writes," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This seems to bring us back to the whole question of how to\nknow postmodernism (and without the aid of a SF oracle like\nDamon Knight's finger). " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now *that* is a strange image... (Yes, yes, I know what you're\nreferring to, but Damon's finger as an oracle... Shudder...)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But notice that Wolfe, while he write about stories being told,\ntelling themselves, etc., never (AFAIK) does the kind of\nmetafictional introduction of himself that Barth does " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Alec, may I refer you to \"The Last Thrilling Wonder Story\" or\n\"The Sister's Tale\"?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Wolfe's stories and novels are often, like Nabokov's, \"the\ndocuments in the case,\" with internal discussion of how they\ncame to be written." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "... which is why, btw, I so desperately want to figure out the\nwho and why of PEACE's narration. It seems unlikely, given Wolfe's\nother first person work, that this *isn't* important." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Use of the 1001 Nights does not a postmodernist make--Proust\nand R. A. Lafferty are both frequent travelers to that territory,\nand Proust is a modernist and Lafferty is whatever on earth\nLafferty is. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "How about \"Science Fiction's other weird literary Catholic\"?\n\n *\n * *\n\nHappy Friday, everyone!\n\n--Dan'l/Blattid" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "2000-12-08T15:55:00+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Scattered Shot", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l/Blattid wrote (among other things):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Alec, may I refer you to \"The Last Thrilling Wonder Story\" or \"The\nSister's Tale\"?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good point. Still, it's not something he does very often. Certainly\nWolfe's works on the whole do not tend to attack the underlying\nreality of the worlds created in the narrative (thier epistemology and\nmetaphysics, maybe, but in an almost Newman-esque way that is hardly\n\"socially constructed reality\")." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "... which is why, btw, I so desperately want to figure out the who\nand why of PEACE's narration. It seems unlikely, given Wolfe's other\nfirst person work, that this *isn't* important." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Agreed. I'm shoring up my comments till I can get through a PEACE reread.\n\nAnd, as to what Lafferty is:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "How about \"Science Fiction's other weird literary Catholic\"?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I repectfully submit that Lafferty is a good bit weirder than Wolfe." }, { "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": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2000-12-08T18:39:22+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Scattered Shot", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nDoes Weer ever seem to think that _anything_ is unusual... (Serious\nquestion; with the text not before me, I don't recall.) I mean Weer-\nthe-narrator, not Weer-the-memory." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He thinks his the elm tree falling is unusual, I think; he thinks his\n\"stroke\" is unusual; he thinks coming across the Persian room is\nunusual. And he is definitely agitated when he thinks he hears a door\nclose, at the point where he breaks off retelling Julius Smart's story\n(162 in H & R)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Actually his \"past\" seems to somewhat influence the structure of\nhis \"present,\" so that his childhood memories are remembered on the\nporch and his presidency in the office. Where in the \"memory house\"\nhe is seems to flow with when in his life he is mostly remembering.\nOr maybe the other way around -- when he's in the office, it's\neasiest for him to remember his presidency?\n\nWell, that's another point to investigate further -- purely from\na memorious overview of the book, though, it seems to work; porch\nand outdoors for childhood, various hallways and rooms for main\nadult life, office for presidency/older age. Something like that,\nwith variations and elaborations." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nice call." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " *\n * *\n\nAdam Stephanides also wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "By \"deconstructing the act of narration,\" I don't mean just that\nWolfe specifies the circumstances of narration, which as you\npoint out is commonplace. I mean that he also uses this\nspecification to call into questions the conventions for reading\nnarrative which I referred to in my original post." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Even that is not quite how I understand \"deconstruction\" -- I would\nunderstand it to mean using those conventions precisely in a way\nthat they call their own constituion into question, i.e., letting\nthe construction to de-construct itself: but my understanding of\n\"deconstruction\" is largely based on the Derridean non-synthesis,\nso I tend to look for hinges and difference-deference and the like." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Truth to tell, I haven't read Derrida. I was using the word\n\"deconstruction\" in the loose way it's used by people who haven't read\nDerrida--slipshod of me, but I couldn't think of anything better at the\ntime." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "No; he seems to take it for granted (and expect us to) that his\nnarrators stick to their desks, writing to the end, even when the\nwriting turns into gibbering. Really, now, has anyone in the history\nof the Universe gibbered hysterically in writing? Pfui! Even as a\ntwelve-year-old, when I first encountered HPL, it bothered me; I\ncouldn't believe then and can't believe now that he actually intended\nus to _believe_ this. Yet every bit of evidence says that he did." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \"The Grail lies in the aaaarrrggh....\"\n \"In the aaaarrrggh....\"\n \"He must have died while he was writing it.\"\n \"Don't be ridiculous. If he was dying, he wouldn't write aaaarrrggh,\nhe'd just say it.\"\n \"Maybe he was dictating.\"\n(Sorry, couldn't resist.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "In any case, a \"very conservative\" writer (your words) would reject\nthe modernists, rather than imitating them." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I do not suggest that Wolfe imitates the modernists; I suggest that\nhe grabs their tools where he finds them useful, and ditto the pomos,\nand uses them for his own, fundamentally conservative, purposes." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "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": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "If this counts as \"putting the story first,\" then the contrast\nbetween \"putting the story first\" and postmodernism disappears." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "... and your point is? I tend to think the actual radicalism of\npomo is highly overstated and overrated; they have some cool tools\nbut no really new ideas. \"Truth is socially constructed.\" Now *there*\nis an original idea... Someone please contact Pontius Pilate..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, you were the one who contraposed \"using pomo tools\" with \"putting\nthe story first.\" At any rate, I'm now more confused than ever about\nwhat point you were making in asserting the Wolfe is a conservative\nwriter and \"puts the story first.\" If postmodernists put the story\nfirst to, and are really conservative, what writers do you consider to\nnot put the story first and to not be conservative?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Indeed, one of postmodernism's characteristic features is to\nemphasize \"the process by which some events are related\" over\n\"the process by which they occurred.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "See previous message re: the Nights... Nothing new here..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "While I left this out of my earlier post, because I'm not an expert on\nthe subject, I disagree with you about the Nights. I don't think the\ncompiler or compilers were primarily interested in the process of\nScheherezade telling stories; I think they were interested in telling a\nlot of stories, and the frame-tale and stories within stories are\nlargely pretexts to tell lots of stories.\n\n--Adam" } ] } ] }