Subject: (urth) tease me?

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 18:11:10 +0000

Just a brief comment.  
It is obvious that Wolfe is teasing either myself or the member of the list 
who confirmed that his statement was a jest.  We can't say with any certainty 
who Wolfe would be more likely to tease.  Let's define my correspondence with 
Wolfe in terms of how we speak to one another.  I have not asked him any 
questions about Short Sun since last January, when he declined to answer a 
whole slew of them.  I haven't talked about my interpretations to him since 
then, because he says he doesn't like tromping out the definitive answer 
because it kills discussion and the magic of the work.  I haven't mentioned my 
questions for about a year.  
I sent him a Christmas card this year with a Spruce tree and a man with a 
staff.  I drew a little smiley face on the staff, and I put teeth in the 
trees.  Then I put  a PS that said I liked the card because of the spruce and 
the staff.  Then I asked in my PPS if the narrator traveled through the short 
sun so that blue could be Urth.  As far as I know, that's all Mr. Wolfe knows 
of my theories.  I don't bombard him like I do the list.  
His reply: "I like the spruce and the staff, TOO".  On the back of the card: 
"No, No, NO!  Green is Urth."

The question - does he remember my conjecture from, no joke, a year ago?  Why 
would he tease me about it?  Mostly we talk about books we've read in common 
and the daily grind of life - not his work, except for my copious praise of 
his genius (and therefore I vicariously praise my own appreciative genius for 
having the sublime intellect to savor his work).

Marc Aramini

--

---

From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 10:59:28 +0000

>"No, No, NO!  Green is Urth."

But Urth is not Ushas.

Matthew

--

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 21:06:57 +0000

on 12/24/02 6:11 PM, maa32 at maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu wrote:

> who Wolfe would be more likely to tease.
[snip]
> On the back of the card:

I have no access to Wolfe's motives, of course, but my money is on Wolfe's
original comment to you being the joke, for several reasons:

1) While I don't believe Blue is Urth, I'll admit that there are several
correspondences between Blue-Green and Urth-Lune which give the theory a
certain coloring of plausibility: the pair of a blue and a green planet, the
green planet being lighter than the blue planet, the underwater city on
Blue, the Scylla-Mother relationship.  If the pairings are switched, none of
these correspondences apply, and the "evidence" you gave for Green being
Urth seems quite weak to me.

2) Conversely, all the objections to Blue = Urth apply just as well to Green
= Urth.  I realize you aren't convinced by any of them, but I for one find
at least Wolfe's interview statement very hard to explain away.

3) As you say, Wolfe doesn't like "tromping out the definitive answer," so
it would be uncharactistic of him to do so in this case.  It seems more
likely to me that he would have assumed his answer was an obvious joke when
it wasn't.

4) If Wolfe is your friend, that makes it all the more likely that he would
"tease" you a bit, and all the less likely that he would destroy your theory
with a one-sentence, minimally informative answer.  And to follow up by
telling a third party that he'd deceived you when he actually hadn't would
be a deliberate act of malice at the expense of both you and the third
party.

> would he tease me about it?

He wouldn't need to remember your whole elaborate conjecture.  Your question
made it clear that you thought Blue was Urth (which may have reminded him of
the relevant portions of your earlier questions).  And he's no doubt aware
that there are other people who think that Blue is Urth

--Adam

--

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 22:41:42 +0000

> "No, No, NO!  Green is Urth."

I think this most likely means:

1.  A joke.  Like if Tolkien, tired of being asked for the umpteenth time
whether The Ring represents The Bomb had replied, "No, no, NO!  Gollum
represents the Atom Bomb."

or

2.  Wolfe is saying that, of the two planets, Green, with its decaying
cities and ancient horrors is more like Urth than Blue is.  Like one might
say, if asked whether Severian is Aragorn, "No, no, NO!  Severian is
Gollum."

-Rostrum

--