Subject: (urth) Barton, Barrington, and Pandora's Plato

From: Nigel Price <nigel.a.price at virgin.net>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 12:52:25 +0000

Prompted by Alex's recent contribution to the list, I'm currently rereading
"Pandora by Holly Hollander". I'd forgotten just how much fun it is. The
authorial voice is very well judged, and the picture of Holly which emerges
is both affectionate and amusing. Lot's of nice local detail, as well, from
the area where Wolfe lives.

I noticed with pleasure that the technique of translating Classical place
names into English which Wolfe uses in the Latro novels also seems to
feature here in a minor way. Would I be right to assume, for instance, that
"Dawn", the town in which the genteel nursing home for the
wealthy-but-criminally-insane is situated, is actually a pseudonym for the
real Ilinois town of "Aurora"?

I've looked at my road atlas of the United States to check and, yes, indeed,
Aurora is situated out on the western side of the Chicago conurbation.

I've assumed, like others, that the fictional town of "Barton" in the novel
is really Wolfe's own home town of Barrington. Holly states early on that
most of the rich people live to the west of Barton in a place called "Barton
Hills". Sure enough, my map of the real Chicago area shows that, to the
southwest of Barrington, there is a place called Barrington Hills. There's
also a place called South Barrington marked (to the south, of course!), and
another (to the north) called Lake Barrington.

Holly states that Barton is "a town of about 10,000". Is that the size of
the real Barrington?

She also says that it's "65 miles by car from the Loop."

Do any list members live in or know the greater Chicago area well? Is that
the real distance from Barrington to the city centre? It doesn't look that
far on my map - it looks more like 30 miles. And, for the record, why is
that area of central Chicago called "The Loop"?

Could she in real life have made the journey to Aurora by getting a train
into Chicago and then a Greyhound Bus out to Aurora? How long would it have
taken her?

(Like it matters!)

I was also delighted to see that when (chapter 7, "How War Came to Barton",
p56 in the NEL paperback edition) Aladdin Blue explains the myth of Pandora
to Holly at the book sale, he offers an explicitly Platonic interpretation:

    "In the first place," Blue lectured, "it's a commentary on Platonism -
the idea that each real thing is an imperfect attempt to duplicate an ideal
one. Epimetheus had made mankind like the gods, so the gods made Pandora
like a goddess. The Greeks were saying that real people are carricatures of
ideal people - their gods."

Now, this is gold dust to me, because I've been asserting for some time that
the rationale behind Wolfe's use of symbolism is essentially Platonic,
particularly in The Book of the New Sun. I even pestered people (sorry,
Potto) with questions about where they thought Wolfe got his Platonism
from - primary or secondary sources? Here, at least, is a direct reference
to a philosopher whose ideas (or do I mean "Ideas"?) are, I believe, central
to Wolfe's work.

An interesting comment on the significance of myth in general occurs on the
next page (p57), where Aladdin Blue explains the difference between history
and myth:

    "But the real difference is that the events that make up history are
over and done with, while myth continues, circling our earth forever, like
the chariot of Helios."

I suspect that Wolfe would probably categorise Biblical events as myths in
this sense (which is no comment on their historicity or otherwise), and
that's one reason why their patterns keep re-occuring in his novels, even
when those novels are set in the distant future.

Aladdin Blue interprets Pandora's Box as, "the part of the human brain
that's suppressed in the interests of society." That seems to give us the
other part of the puzzle when it comes to grappling with the rationale
behind Wolfe's use of symbollism: the psychological. Myths deal with
archetypes of human thought and behaviour. All very traditional, in fact,
and fully in accord with ideas that were floating around in Classical
thought, became highly fashionable in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance
with the "Ovide Moralisee" and the various psychomachias and
allegorisations, and regained renewed impetus at the end of nineteenth
century from the theories of Freude and Jung, when, for example, the myth of
Oedipus gained, shall we say, a new complexity...

So: the physical world as a reflection of divine reality, myths as the
recurring patterns whereby the physical world reflects that greater reality,
and myths as symbollic statements of enduring psychological truths.

Excellent! All grist to the Lupine literary critical mill....

Nigel
Minety, Wiltshire
England

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at home.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 11:40:39 +0000

>to a philosopher whose ideas (or do I mean "Ideas"?) are, I believe, central

         Well, considering Wolfe's study of ancient Greece for his 
"Soldier" series, it's not surprising that we get references to Plato and 
Epithemeus, and others, in his other works. But how central, I'm not sure. 
Wolfe read his Aquinas as part of his conversion to Roman Catholicism, and 
indicated to me that Thomism is basically his outlook. That points more to 
Aristotle than to Plato. Not that he can't have both, but how "central" is 
the question.

>when those novels are set in the distant future.

         In theology this is called "typology," that basic patterns recur 
in the course of linear history, which is really a spiral. Of course, here 
it becomes just a matter of terminology: what do we mean by "myth"?
         In Genesis 1, and following throughout the Bible, God creates 
"heaven" as an archetype of "earth." The earth begins formless and empty, 
and moves toward the heavenly model progressively through typological 
spirals. That is, earth is gradually "ouranified" toward an eschaton. This 
is formally similar to Platonism and Aristotelianism (Plato: archetypes 
above; Aristotle: archetypes embedded in the world). For that reason, 
Christians have often used platonic/aristotelian terminology, but invested 
it with more Biblical meanings.
         For this reason, I'd challenge the idea that the Book of the New 
Sun is essentially Platonic in its construct. Plato's archetypes are mere 
ideas, because an ideal chair, line, circle, person, cannot really "exist." 
Biblical archetypes (i.e., the angelic realm) actually exist; just as a 
father is an archetype for a son, a mother for a daughter, etc. Yesod and 
Briah exist much more like the Biblical heaven and earth than like Platonic 
forms and the world. Moreover, I don't think Yesod is more "real" than 
Briah, on some "scale of being." It is just a higher plane in a created 
universe.
         Wolfe often uses "pagan" myths in his stories, as in Pandora. It 
is interesting to me that detective fiction is usually regarded as a rather 
uniquely "Christian" form of literature, in that human beings are 
responsible (guilty) for what they do (contrast, say, Oedipus, fated by the 
gods), and in that history can be at least partially decyphered (i.e., the 
detective can figure it out; as opposed to random chaos of events). For 
Wolfe to put such mythic elements into a "Christian" literary frame is 
pretty much what he always does.
         I think you are onto good stuff in how Wolfe uses myth in Pandora. 
I hope this provides a bit more grist for your own mill.

Nutria

---

From: Joshua A. Solomon <j.a.solomon at city.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 13:56:26 +0000

> From: "Nigel Price" <nigel.a.price at virgin.net>
> Subject: Barton, Barrington, and Pandora's Plato
> Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 13:52:25 +0100
>
> Do any list members live in or know the greater Chicago area well?

Me.

> Holly states that Barton is "a town of about 10,000". Is that the size of

Sounds right.

> Is that
> far on my map - it looks more like 30 miles.

Barrington is about 30 miles from the Loop. All suburbanites use this
metric.

> And, for the record, why is

It's encircled by The El. Don't ask me to define The El, for God's sake! :-)

> into Chicago and then a Greyhound Bus out to Aurora?

Probably the only way to do it without a car.

> How long would it have

Several hours.

> OK, so when Holly is injured, she is taken to a hospital in a "Palestine",
> which she says is between "Barton" and Chicago. From the map, this would
> seem to be a reference to a place called Palatine, which is indeed between
> Barrington and Chicago.

For more on Palatine, see the Long Sun Series.

> I've got to the place in the book where the thick-set policeman, Lt Sandoz,
> makes his appearance, ready to play Lestrade to Aladdin Blue's Holmes.

It's been a long time since I read Pandora. Sandoz was famous for marketing
LSD in the late '50s.

bee