{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/408", "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": 408, "subject": "Digest urth.v008.n003", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-03-10T07:42:43+00:00", "last": "1998-03-10T11:07:52+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Paul C Duggan", "address": "pduggan at world.std.com" }, "date": "1998-03-10T07:42:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Digest urth.v008.n003", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The best advice I can give you re your Porchnus review falls in three:\nFirst, are you sure you shouldn't be writing about the Long Sun series,\nwhich is richer religious fodder since, in additions to all its own twists,\nit brings the NS in via the Outsider? Second, better than asking us to\nrehash material we've covered pretty extensively, you should go over the\nArchives. Pay particular attention to Jim Jordan (Nutria) and his posts.\nThird, do a search for Jordan's website (I don't have the address at hand,\nbut my own search found it easily) and read his essay in this very subject." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hey, that's *my* web site. :-) Jim graciously let me put his interview up.\nOr are you refering to something else?\n\nhttp://world.std.com/~pduggan/wolfe.html\n\n\"I am an impure thinker. I am hurt, swayed, shaken, | paul + | +\nelated, disillusioned, shocked, comforted, and I | --|--\nhave to transmit my mental experiences lest I die.\" | + | +\n -- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy | pduggan at world.std.com" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan Parmenter", "address": "dan at lec.com" }, "date": "1998-03-10T11:07:52+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Digest urth.v008.n003", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: Peter Stephenson " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A clearer reference is the episode when he is taken by Typhon up Mt. Typhon\nand shown things he shouldn't be able to see. This must be a\nreference to Christ in the wilderness being tempted by the Devil,\nwhere he is shown all the countries in the world and offered them as a\nreward." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, but I think Wolfe will allow for (perhaps inisit on!) multiple\ninterpretations, and the one that came to mind immediately for me was\nthis:\n\nOzymandius P.B. Shelley 1818\n\nI met a traveler from an antique land\nWho said: \"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone.\nStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,\nHalf sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,\nAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,\nTell that its sculptor well those passions read\nWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,\nThe hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.\nAnd on the pedestal these words appear:\n`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:\nLook upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'\nNothing besides remains. Round the decay\nOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare\nThe lone and level sands stretch far away.\"\n\nI like this one because it also provides a nice little link to one of\nmy other favorite super dense popular fictions: namely Alan Moore's\nWATCHMEN comic book series from 1986. Although quite different in\nfeel from BOTNS, WATCHMEN nonetheless had a similar multi-layered and\nsemiotically charged approach to plot, character and theme. Moore's\nown statement was \"Everything means something, but not everything\nmeans much.\" which applies nicely to Wolfe's stuff too. WATCHMEN had\na character called Ozymandias, \"the smartest man in the world,\" who\nhad his own ideas about his place in the scheme of things and his\nimpact on it. I won't spoil the story if you haven't read it, but the\npoem seems to comment on the character very nicely." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm sure there must be other such. I hope someone can wax lyrical on\nthe relationship of the Pancreator, the Increate, the Conciliator,\netc. etc., which I've never quite got straight." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In one of his essays or interviews, from OTTER or maybe somewhere else\nhe mentions the concept of the Increate as the self-created one; the\nthing that is not the result of some previous state on the assumption\nthat the current state of the universe can be \"unwound\" back to some\ninitial state and that the Increate is in some sense that thing that\nbegan the process, itself not being the result of some previous state.\nHe considered this an argument for God, though he stated it somewhat\nmore eloquently than I just did.\n\nD" } ] } ] }