Subject: (urth) Sulpicius

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:39:19 +0000

In the early hours of Severian's autarchy he was told by the aquastor
Malrubius that his immediate predecessor,  the Old Autarch Appian, had been
the only ruler since the first autarch, Ymar, to represent Urth at trial in
Yesod. (IV, p.214)

At another time, when Sev was trying to recall something, he began "to
search those veiled lives that lie behind the last, memories that I have
scarcely mentioned in this narrative, that dim as they grow stranger and
stretch backwards, perhaps, to Ymar, and behind Ymar to the Age of Myth."
(V, p.294)

I am interested here only in the thousand years between Ymar and Appian.
Appian, just before his death, told Sev that he contained "hundreds of
personalities. . . .We are many lives." (IV, p.202)

Now to my point: Ultan spoke to Sev of ". . . the room we of the library
have maintained for three hundred years against the return of the Autarch
Sulpicius (and into which, in consequence, no one ever comes) . . ." (I,
p.47)

So, where did he go? Elsewhere on Urth? Off planet? The Corridors of Time?
We know from the above that he didn't go to Yesod. The only things that are
clear are that when he left he was autarch and that he didn't come back. Had
he come back, there would have been no point in preserving the room for
three centuries and, anyway, he should have been long dead. In any event,
the autarchy survived him. Even if we posit that he just disappeared
inexplicably, dead or alive, how was the chain of autarchial succession
maintained and, more importantly, the seemingly unbroken links of memories
that stretched from Ymar to Sev?

It would be easiest to assume that Wolfe just screwed up somewhere, but I
doubt that he did. Of the relatively few things that Ultan might have said
or did say in his only scene in the Urth Cycle, why did Wolfe put those
words in his mouth? It doesn't serve the larger plot in any way that I can
see, but G.W. must have had an answer. I don't.

-Roy

---

From: Andrew Bollen <abollen at internode.on.net>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:11:40 +0000

> the only ruler since the first autarch, Ymar, to represent Urth at trial 

I don't have the books handy, but I have a vague recollection that Ymar 
doesn't get distinguished as the *first* Autarch until UOTNS. (Or no?) If 
that's right, then I think this is just another place in which UOTNS is a 
new story, "based on" but not exactly a direct extension of, or intended to 
be totally consistent with New Sun.

---

From: Nathan Spears <spearofsolomon at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 06:48:36 +0000

I wish I could say something really intelligent, but I just googled this guy's name.

Here's a couple interesting excerpts from the second link:

"Sulpicius Severus was an aristocrat of Aquitaine intended for an administrative
career and educated in the classical manner who, after the early death of his wife,
renounced his career and entered the monastic life."

"Sulpicius wrote a world chronicle . . ."

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 08:42:20 +0000

Nathan Spears wrote:

> http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14332a.htm
> http://www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/s/su/sulpicius_severus.html
> 

Could it be that Sulpicius ordered that the room be kept for him until 
he came back, as long as necessary, and they have simply followed the 
order, since no other Autarch has bothered to withdraw it?

Or perhaps it foreshadows the memory-transfer, since Sulpicius live on 
in his successors?

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Lead Playtester, GURPS Ultra-Tech for 4/e
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

---

From: Jason Willard <funesmem6 at msn.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 09:43:04 +0000

Hello!  I've been lurking here for a while:  but as most here have re-read all of Wolfe _at least_ once, whereas I've only read most of Wolfe _once_, (and my science skills are non-existent) I've been shy about writing.  But, I've just finished re-reading SotT and CotC and have been doing a lot of research.  A lot of it into dead ends, I'm sure.

But I was struck by the passage in Ultan's library about Sulpicius as well, and as there is/was a Sulpicius Severus (as well as another Sulpicius, a saint, with whom Sulpicius Severus, from my understanding, is confused), and as as Severian means a follower of Severus (although OED refers to "the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch (early 5th c.)"), I have thought for a while that there must be a connection between these two autarchs, Sulpicius and our hero Sev.  I have also wondered if Wolfe hasn't set up some elaborate verbal joke on the Pelagian heresy.  According to W2, 'Pelagian' is "a follower of Pelagius";  'pelagian' (little 'p') is either an adjective meaning "pelagic" ("the pelagic argosy sights land!") or a noun:  "A pelagic animal."  (Like an undine, or something bigger?)  Also, as the Oxford Classical Dictionary notes in its entry for Severus, Sulpicius, "In old age he seems to have passed through a period of Pelagianism."  Could it be said that Severian has passed through a similar period in his allegiance to Vodalus?

I'm also intent on reading (Time!  I need more Time!!!) Severus's history.  (Yes, he is, importantly, an influential writer, as Severian is.)  His history, again according to the OCD, is "a universal chronicle to AD 400 which is an important source for the history of 4th-cent. events ... The whole book is an interesting attempt to present a 'breviarium' of history from the Christian point of view:  it uses Christian chronographers ... but also pagan writers."  I'd be very surprised it Mr. Wolfe hasn't come across this work at some point.  Or, perhaps, this is yet another dead end.

Jason
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Roy C. Lackey<mailto:rclackey at stic.net> 
  To: urth<mailto:urth at urth.net> 
  Sent: Monday, October 04, 2004 1:38 AM
  Subject: (urth) Sulpicius

  -Roy

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 11:20:38 +0000

H'mmm. I had never thought to connect "pelagic" with "pelagian," but
there is a kind of sense to it - the Pelagian heresy is, at root, the
ideal of self-sufficiency. Rejecting Augustine's doctirne of Man's
inherent sinfulness and the resultant absolute need for grace in order
to be saved, Pelagius taught that humans had the ability to absolutely
reject evil of their own free will, and so be saved.

It occurs to me that there is a certain analogy here to the Vodalarian
belief (the Vodelarii being the users of the "pelagic" password) that
humanity can pull itself up by its bootstraps and return to their days
of glory. (It is in this context not insignificant to note that this
belief is encouraged by the demons of the posthistorical period, Abaia
and his ilk.)

Cheers,

--Dan'l 

-- 
www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
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say he wants to put anyone on a leash. That's all.
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---

From: mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 12:44:13 +0000

>>From Jeff Wilson:

<Could it be that Sulpicius ordered that the room be kept for him until he 
came back, as long as necessary, and they have simply followed the order, 
since no other Autarch has bothered to withdraw it? Or perhaps it 
foreshadows the memory-transfer, since Sulpicius live on in his successors?>

Agree, but with some modification.

Perhaps Sulpicius, knowing what lays ahead of him (he will be eaten by his 
successor, though his memories will survive), has merely sought to ensure 
that one of the places he likes most in the world will survive and that he, 
via his new host, will still be able to visit it and savor his favorite 
books post-corporally. Thecla, after all, "returns" to the House Absolute 
and at times her presence is so dominant she takes over the narrative as 
well as Severian's body language (iirc he's mistaken for a woman a number of 
times). Sulpicius may thus be hoping he'll be able to return to the library 
and even be recognized as Sulpicius if he can channel himself through 
strongly enough. Ultan's riff about how this is not yet happened may speak 
to the ill-fated poignancy of this notion. Nevertheless, his 
300-year-old-edict remains still operational.

There's also a nice bit of irony here: Severian, as Sulpicius's future host, 
*has* come to the library, foreshadowing both Sulpicius's return and 
Severian's own rise to the Phoenix Throne. Plus the entire notion of the 
Autarchy as a huge collective volume of personalities, with each chapter 
representing a different Autarch's life.

msg

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From: Seth Lombardi <sethlombardi at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 19:57:10 +0000

>There's also a nice bit of irony here: Severian, as Sulpicius's future 
>host, *has* come to the library, foreshadowing both Sulpicius's return and 

I've always wondered: aren't there WAY more subsumed personalities in the 
personage of the Autarch than there have been Autarchs? Don't know what to 
do with that. Unless Ymar or someone requested a democratic buffet of brains 
in order to best serve his subjects.

seth

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 20:36:04 +0000

There's a lot more to be troubled about in this. Because at least one of the 
previous Autarchs bouncing around in there is Severian himself, who at that 
point would have already been through all of the events described in the New 
Sun and also have (within his own memories) the echoes of all the other 
autarchs.

This is not necessarily a complete snake-eating-its-tale scenario, however. 
We know that Severian's memory causes him to get a deeper effect from the 
alzabo. My guess is that everyone else, having a normal human memory, would 
not receive or transmit a precise copy of the memories picked up from their 
predecessor. As a result, what ends up coming to Severian by way of Appian 
is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy... what he perceives of the traces 
of his own memory in this is faded and confusing; events which he knows have 
already happened take on the appearance of having been through them more 
than once (case in point is the scene at the beginning where he almost 
drowns, and his later reflections on it), and events which haven't happened 
yet seem to him to be presentiments of what's to come.

Another possibility that has occurred to me is that perhaps his memory has 
never been perfect at all. He has perhaps been given the illusion of perfect 
memory by having received an infinite number of very-faded copies. For this 
time travelling thing involves an infinite regress - however many copies of 
his own memories he receives from Appian, he ends up transmitting that 
number plus one to one of his predecessors earlier on in the timeline. An 
infinite number of imperfect copies laid on top of each other may appear to 
have perfect clarity, and yet contain errors...

Just dabbling with ideas a bit,
Civet

>do with that. Unless Ymar or someone requested a democratic buffet of 
>brains in order to best serve his subjects.
>
>seth
>
>
>To post, write urth at urth.net
>Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 21:58:50 +0000

>be totally consistent with New Sun.

If you're looking for internal inconsistencies in the Urth Cycle, here's
another. Aquastor Malrubius told Sev, "If you pass -- if our race is judged
ready to reenter the wide seas of space -- such a white fountain will be
created in the heart of our sun." (IV, p.214)

That's not the way it happened in Book V, where a white fountain was created
at an unknown distance from Urth and took thousands of years to _travel_ to
the Old Sun. It was the passage of this heavenly mass close enough to Urth
on its journey to the sun to cause geological upheavals and massive tidal
waves, resulting in the inundation of low-lying Nessus two days before
reaching its destination.

-Roy

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 22:24:28 +0000

>Sun and also have (within his own memories) the echoes of all the other

Okay, I'll bite. Which of the previous autarchs was Severian, and when?

If you're referring to the "first Severian" scenario outlined by Sev on
p.270 of CITADEL, that doesn't count. That Severian was replaced at some
point by our Sev, and history was rewritten, so to speak. Sev _did not_
contain the memory of that "first Severian" becoming autarch and receiving
the memories of Appian and the rest.

-Roy

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 22:46:19 +0000

It could be that, considering the white fountain as an "anti-black-hole" and 
some of the odd statements about time made by the cacogens, that Wolfe is 
attempting to describe the white fountain as coming into being *in* the sun 
at that moment, and then travelling out and away but in a backwards-time 
direction, ie, from the point of view of someone from Urth, it would start 
from far away and then proceed in toward the sun.

This is a little pseudoscientific and based off the quirky observation that 
anti-particles can be described as particles travelling backward in time. 
But I don't think it's beyond the realm of what Wolfe might do, especially 
since he's not writing hard sci-fi anyway.

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From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 22:57:06 +0000

Well, a couple things. The first is the tomb that Severian plays in as a 
child, which he later finds out is his own (from one of his many lives as 
the Conciliator in and out of time). I believe that somewhere it's stated 
that this is the tomb of an autarch. Secondly, I think Severian himself 
makes the conjecture that he's been autarch more than once, in UotNS, though 
I don't have a copy to go looking.

Not to be confused with whoever's theory it was that Ymar was actually 
Severian, which I never really bought into (or the theory that he was 
Severian's clone).

The only place that the passing from Citadel you're referring to comes into 
play is that I think that perhaps Severian comes up with the *idea* of there 
having been another Severian from the fact that he had these echoed 
memories, and had no way at hand to explain them otherwise.

---

From: Tony Ellis <tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com>
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 08:04:40 +0000

Jason McCready wrote:
> I've been reading the short stories in Endangered Species. Could 
> anyone give me some hints on even beginning to understand 
> the three Procreation stories... 

The Procreation stories are among my all-time favourite Wolfe short
stories (admittedly, it's a long list). They're funny, inventive,
moving, and wonderfully concise - all things I love about Wolfe's
writing. Apologies in advance if I'm just stating the obvious, but: 

'Creation' is a jokey skit on Genesis. A scientist accidentally creates
a universe, and each day of its evolution corresponds to a stage in the
Bible story: the land separating from the waters, life, Adam, Eve etc.
The fly is the introduction of evil. Is this perhaps 'our' universe? 

Most writers would have been happy enough with a story like 'Creation'.
Wolfe, and this is absolutely characteristic of the man, takes the idea
and runs with it. 'Re-creation' introduces the idea that maybe a second
universe was created at the same time as the first, but one that has
evolved backwards through time. Sure enough, as it propagates back
through his life, the scientist suddenly finds himself 'remembering'
encounters with it.

Finally, 'The Sister's Account' ups the ante again. We witness the
birth, flowering and death of one of the worlds of this backwards
universe - in barely three pages. But we're no longer in the realm of
shaggy-god jokes and scientists. There's something very poignant about
these little glimpses of a paradise now lost forever, and it's no
coincidence that Wolfe makes our narrator a spinster. "When Gene had
married and it was clear I never would" is an incredible line - it tells
you so much about Sis in so few words, and where she stands in relation
to this world. As does the image of all the little rockpools on a shore
teeming with new life, each one reflecting her empty spinster's bed. 

The final sentence raises the bar again, and never fails to send a
shiver down my spine. Have we been listening all the while to the
thoughts of a woman who lived and died a whole universe ago?

One rabbit after another, all pulled from the same unremarkable-looking
hat. Irreverent tall story; beguiling could-it-work-like-that SF idea;
elegiac meditation on the mystery and transient nature of life. That's
how I understand Procreation, anyway.

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:02:10 +0000

The fantasy anthology FLIGHTS, which contains a novella by Wolfe (at least
according to the editor, though the boundary between a novella and a
novelette has never been clear to me) also contains a short story by Neil
Gaiman, called "The Problem of Susan." In general I'm not keen on Gaiman as
a writer, either of comics (I regard SANDMAN is overrated) or prose, but I
think this story is a good one, though it functions more as a critique of
the Narnia books than as a work of fiction in its own right. As it deals
with issues which I know are of interest to several people on this list, I'm
curious if anyone else has read it; and if so, what did you think about it?

--Adam

---

From: Charles Reed <cmreed at link.com>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 06:57:26 +0000

I've read Gaiman's THE PROBLEM OF SUSAN and have a few thoughts to share.  

SPOILERS abound, so be warned.

My initial reaction to the story was one of anger and disappointment, 
not so much at the story's visceral imagery as at Susan's lack of 
hope/redemption/salvation at the end.  The visceral imagery I mentioned 
was something that I actually liked quite a bit.  Well, "liked" isn't 
quite the right word.  Let's say I thought it was very effective in its 
attempt to pull the reader into the story.  The descriptions of the 
battlefield, of Aslan's copulation with the White Witch, and especially 
of what Susan endured after the train crash (and what she thought about 
it afterward) are all disturbingly powerful scenes.  Of course, it helps 
if you already have an emotional investment in the character, which I 
do, having been a big fan of the Narnia books ever since my fourth grade 
teacher -- Mrs. Pixler from Jane Long Elementary in Abilene, Texas if 
anyone's interested -- read THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE to 
us.  I don't know how emotionally resonant those scenes would be to 
someone not familiar with Susan Pevensie.

[Side note on Mrs. Pixler:  In addition to introducing me to Narnia, she 
also read parts of Stephen King's THE SHINING to us, which literally 
gave me nightmares and which planted within me a deep-seated distrust of 
topiary that I still can't quite shake.  All in all, though, Mrs. Pixler 
was cool, even though I'm sure if she were to read such stuff as obvious 
Christian allegories and nightmare-inducing horror to fourth graders in 
today's public schools, she'd have her pants sued off. :-) ]

Anyway.  Gaiman does a good job of using that pre-existing emotional 
investment to create a grown-up Susan that I was really interested in 
and cared about.  I think, however, that he (or more accurately, the 
grown-up Susan) misinterprets Lewis's (or Aslan's) reasons for not 
allowing Susan to go higher up and higher in.  Susan wasn't denied 
heaven because she liked lipstick and boys.  She was denied heaven 
because she turned her back on and denied the existence of the living 
God.  I desperately wanted some kind of redemption for her at the end, 
which I suppose is a testament to how much the story affected me.  I 
certainly can't say that I liked it, and its nightmarish bitterness 
really left me down in the dumps after reading it, but it is certainly a 
valid "take" on Susan.  All stories can't end happily and hopefully, and 
a consequence of Christian belief is the idea that some people will 
accept God's love and be saved while others will deny God's love and be 
damned.  Seeing that damnation in practice is a bitter thing, even when 
it applies to a person who exists nowhere but in the minds of those who 
have read about her.

Charles

---

From: Michael Straight <mfstraight at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 09:48:54 +0000

> Susan wasn't denied
> heaven because she liked lipstick and boys.

Funny how so many people don't understand this.

For Lewis,

Wonder/Adventure of Narnia:Wonder of Knowing and Loving God::lipstick
and boys:dull grey mundane world of ignoring God

Lewis (following Chesterton) sees the Christian worldview as an
exciting Romance (in the old sense), like reading Narnia.  He sees the
atheistic worldview as dull, like reading a modern romance (in the new
sense) novel.

-- Rostrum

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:07:00 +0000

I've been been slowly plodding through FLIGHTS for the past few weeks.
I'm finding most of it dull: fantasy mostly doesn't work for me at short 
lengths, except for contemporary/dark/urban fantasy, and only about half 
of _that_ in this book is actually any good. So I've avoided this thread 
until I got to the Gaiman story. I generally like Gaiman's work, from 
_Black Orchid_ and _The Sandman_ to _American Gods_ and 
_Coraline_, so I was looking forward to this story & didn't want to know
anything about it in advance.

Well, I read it this morning, and did not like it at _all_. I'm not really
surprised; it's currently fashionable to trash Lewis and especially the
Narnia books, and Gaiman is nothing if not fashionable. In this case,
I wish he hadn't been.

Charles and Rostrum are quite right in their interpretation of Susan's
obsession with "lipstick, boys, and invitations," but they miss 
something even more important - Susan is most emphatically _not_ 
"denied Heaven." This is the "Pullman Heresy" that is, I think, at the
heart of the trash-Lewis fad.

Susan is not damned; she simply doesn't die in the train crash. The 
books neither say _nor imply_ anything about her eternal fate, and 
in the one place that I know of where Lewis had anything to say 
about it - in a letter to a child - he was of the opinion that God kept
her alive so that she could come back to Him by some other route.
(That's from memory, so the wording is probably nowhere near 
CSL's.) 

Lewis was not a Universalist, but he was (by the standard of most
orthodox Christians) almost unbelievably optimistic about God's
will that "all the world be saved" and His ability to do so; cf. _The
Great Divorce_, in which he suggests (albeit in a fictional form
that allowed him to avoid, at some level, responsibility for the
idea)  the possibility that even those already in Hell might be 
saved. The assumption that he fated Susan for damnation would 
almost cetainly offend him deeply. Like near-'bout eveyrthing else
in Narnia, the "lipstick" bit is there for a polemic point - a point
further driven in by the statement that Susan is "no longer a
Friend of Narnia," that she regards Narnia as a "game we used
to play." 

Perhaps that last point is the most telling, but it's also one that 
is too easily overinterpreted. The heart of Edmund's betrayal
in _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ is his pretending,
after getting into Narnia, that he and Lucy were "playing." Then,
too, in _The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader"_, Eustace believes 
that the Pevensie children "play games about Narnia" until he 
winds up there himself. So it's easy to see Susan's dismissing 
Narnia as a "game" as a sign of ultimate rejection, of damnation.

But in terms of such symbols, the Narnia books are (to be quite
frank) written very sloppily. There is very little real consistency
from one book to the next; each has its own set of polemic
points to make, and its own set of allegorical symbols to make
them. The only really constant symbol is Aslan himself. 

Heck, I'm just sort of wandering on here. The point is, that
Gaiman bases his story on an interpretation of Susan's fate 
that I believe would be far from the intentions of Susan's 
creator. I'm sorry he didn't take Lewis's own beliefs into 
account in writing "The Problem of Susan," because there is
a very real question about Susan's fate; a talented writer who
wasn't kneejerkingly hostile to Christianity might make an 
interesting story about what Aslan/God does to bring Susan 
back to Himself, now that Narnia is gone.

But Gaiman is clearly not the writer to do it.

-- 
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of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off."
     -- The Forty-Third President, 10/8/04

---

From: David Duffy <davidd at qimr.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 15:27:11 +0000

On Wed, 3 Nov 2004, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> ... it's currently fashionable to trash Lewis and especially the

I am irresistibly reminded of Luther explaining how dogs also go to
heaven:  "Be comforted, little dog, thou too in the Resurrection shalt
have a tail of gold." ;)

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 16:58:10 +0000

You know, this is almost the only thing I've ever heard about Luther that
I liked...

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 14:23:56 +0000

I'll confess that when I started this topic I was being a bit of a
provocateur (though there's at least one person on the list who iirc shares
Gaiman's view), so I appreciate both Charles and Dan'l's thoughtful
responses.

Spoilers follow.

I see Gaiman as making two criticisms of the Narnia books. The first is that
Lewis casually consigned Susan, a major character in the series, to a cruel
ordeal (by which I'm referring to what would happen to her on Earth after
her family's death, rather than her eternal fate--see below), seemingly
without being aware that he had done so; or if he was aware, no trace of
this awareness appeared in the books. Hence Lewis here displayed a lack of
imagination and empathy. This criticism hadn't occurred to me before, but
now it seems obvious.

The second is that the books perpetuate views of men and women that are
psychologically damaging to both sexes. Gaiman doesn't make this criticism
explicitly; it's implicit in the reference to "the role of children's
fiction in creating the belief systems we adopt as adults" (398), and in
Greta's dream, in which the girls are eaten while the boys are transformed
into a "twisted thing" (401). Whether this criticism is true or fair, I
couldn't say without rereading the Narnia books, but it's a powerful image
at any rate.

Charles Reed wrote:

> God.

That interpretation is consistent with the theological allegory, and it may
be what Lewis intended, but it's not what the text says. None of the
characters say that her fault is to have denied Aslan, but Jill and Lady
Polly, who have the last words on the matter, do say that her fault is to be
interested in "'nothing ... except nylons and lipstick and invitations'"
(End of ch. 12, in THE LAST BATTLE). In any case, it's because Susan is too
interested in nylons and lipstick and invitations that she's turned her back
on Narnia.

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> it's currently fashionable to trash Lewis and especially the
> Narnia books,

Is it? I know Pullman ciriticized them prominently; I'm not aware of any
other prominent figures who have done so recently.

> and Gaiman is nothing if not fashionable.

Again, I hadn't particularly noticed this. He writes in popular genres, but
so does Wolfe (not that Gaiman is anywhere near Wolfe's level as a writer).
In any case, I think Gaiman's critique of Lewis here is too deeply felt to
be just an effort to be "fashionable."

> Susan is most emphatically _not_

If I give all your brothers and sisters candy, and I don't give you any,
then I've denied you candy, even though I still have the option to give you
candy later.

> (That's from memory, so the wording is probably nowhere near
[snip] 
> Like near-'bout eveyrthing else

I, and I suspect most others who criticize Lewis, certainly "get" Lewis's
point. Our point is that as his exemplar of someone who had turned their
back on God, Lewis chose a girl whose "fault" is to be preoccupied with just
those things that most adolescent girls in his society were preoccupied
with. No doubt you'll retort that it was just by chance that his exemplar
was a girl, and has no larger significance; I'm not so sure.

> creator.

Though Greta does use the word "damned" at one point, that's not what the
story turns on. It's the naive Greta who is preoccupied with Susan's eternal
fate; Gaiman himself places much more emphasis upon the cruelty of what
would happen to Susan on Earth.

> I'm sorry he didn't take Lewis's own beliefs into
> account in writing "The Problem of Susan,"

Actually he does incorporate Lewis's belief, though he may not have been
aware it was Lewis's: "She [Greta's English teacher] said that even though
Susan had refused Paradise then, she still had time while she lived to
repent."

 because there is
> wasn't kneejerkingly hostile to Christianity

Because Gaiman is hostile to the Narnia books, it doesn't follow that he's
hostile to Christianity as such, let alone kneejerkingly so.

--Adam

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 15:16:48 +0000

On Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:27:31 -0600, Adam Stephanides
<adamsteph at earthlink.net> wrote:

> into a "twisted thing" (401). 

This is, for me, probably the single thing I found most distasteful about
the entire story: it is based on an actual scene in _LW&W_ in which (as
I imagine you can guess) neither Aslan nor Jadis destroy any of the 
children, nor do they have sexual relations. The scene in question is
the one in which Aslan offers his life for Edmund's, which would be in
many ways the most important scene of the entire book; rewriting it in
this way is one of my reasons for claiming that it is simple Lewis-bashing.

> other prominent figures who have done so recently.

If I had to name the three "big hot" names in fantasy right now, they'd
be Pullman and Gaiman and Mieville. Mieville has also dumped on
Lewis (though not as deeply as Tolkien "the wen on the arse of 
fantasy literature" Tolkien).  "The Problem of Susan" makes the
trifecta.

> Again, I hadn't particularly noticed this. 

You have not, I take it, seen him or read much in the way of
interviews. He has the post-punk all-in-black too-cool-for-school 
bit down to a tee. Mind you, I still think he's one hellofa writer.

> be just an effort to be "fashionable."

I think you misunderstood. I don't mean that he makes efforts
to be fashionable. I meant that he is a character from the
Dreaming: the Fashion Thing. He _is_ fashionable, he doesn't
have to make efforts for it.

> then I've denied you candy, even though I still have the option to give you

The analogy is badly flawed. If you give my brothers and sisters 
candy, and I'm not there, but you give me some when I show up,
you haven't denied me anything. Susan won't "show up" until
she's dead.

> I, and I suspect most others who criticize Lewis, certainly "get" 
> Lewis's point. Our point is that as his exemplar of someone who 
> had turned their back on God, Lewis chose a girl whose "fault" 
> is to be preoccupied with just those things that most adolescent 
> girls in his society were preoccupied with. 

Oh, my. You mean a Christian writer illustrated the idea that
excessive concern with Things Of The World [tm] is Not 
Necessarily A Good Thing? How shocking! What a sexist!

> No doubt you'll retort that it was just by chance that his exemplar

No, I don't think it's a coincidence; I think it was a necessary 
outcome of the nature of his characters. There are in all
eight children who've visited Narnia that he could choose 
from. 

o Two (Polly and Digory) are no longer children and so not 
   well-suited for example-making in a children's book.

o Two (Eustace and Pole) are the onely ones currently allowed
   to visit Narnia, and so neither can be the one who has 
   turned away from Narnia.

This leaves the Pevensies.

o Peter is the High King and symbolically tied up with Peter
   the Apostle. Not a good choice.

o Edmund might be a candidate, but he's been singled out
   for special salvation and deep conversionin the very first 
   book, so it would be very problematic.

o Lucy is the series' primary POV character and the one most
   loved by readers (and CSL himself).

This leaves Susan as pretty much Hobson's Choice, if  
there's to be an example of turning away.

> Though Greta does use the word "damned" at one point, that's not 
> what the story turns on. It's the naive Greta who is preoccupied with 
> Susan's eternal fate; Gaiman himself places much more emphasis 
> upon the cruelty of what would happen to Susan on Earth.

Okay, and that's fair. 

> Susan had refused Paradise then, she still had time while she lived to

I said "beliefs" and I meant "beliefs," not this one limited matter. 
There is room for an interesting story about Susan's life after the
accident that would remain within the orthodoxy of Lewis' "mere 
Christianity," and I for one wish someone had written that instead
of this. (Not necessarily a "how Susan was saved story," btw; I
would be quite content with one, like O'Connor's _Wise Blood_,
that depicts Susan's spiral into damnation, if it were done well
and honestly. Though I know a lot of readers wouldn't. . . )

> hostile to Christianity as such, let alone kneejerkingly so.

No, that statement was a result of reading quite a bit more of
Gaiman than this one story.

--Dan'l

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 15:57:15 +0000

I haven't read "The Problem of Susan", but I have read "Narnia" several
times so I will butt in on only one point.

>was a girl, and has no larger significance; I'm not so sure.

The point about the "lipstick and nylons" was that she turned her back on
all things of childhood - such as Narnia (which, in life, only children
could enter). "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a child shall
not enter in at all" (Mark 10:16). This it the reference Lewis seemed to be
reaching for.

Susan, most significant among all the Narnian heroes as especially
beautiful, was an obvious choice for this type of temptation: to reject
childhood for the *trappings* of adulthood. Had C.S. Lewis chosen Peter for
this role instead, he would doubtless have had him all wrapped up in
"business" or "science". But these are less elegant symbols than "lipstick"
(remember that Susan's rejection of Narnia is explained in 3 or 4
sentences), and anyway the lure of adulthood is profoundly different for
boys than it is in girls and so I would say that Susan was simply the better
choice. She just was. It wasn't misogynistic.

~ Crush

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 18:11:42 +0000

Thanks for your courteous reply; I'll try to keep my answer in kind.

> this way is one of my reasons for claiming that it is simple Lewis-bashing.

In fact, I remembered that scene. I was a fan of the Narnia books as a child
and read them all, most of them more than once.

> fantasy literature" Tolkien).  "The Problem of Susan" makes the

Undoubtedly you're more in touch with the current fantasy scene than I am,
but are these really the three hottest names in fantasy right now? Hot, no
doubt; but hotter than anyone else? (And shouldn't Susanna Clarke be on the
list?)

I wasn't aware that Mieville had criticized Lewis (or Tolkien); I've never
read anything by him, fiction or nonfiction. For that matter, I've never
read Pullman's notorious attack on Lewis: anybody have a citation?
 
> interviews.

You are correct. As I said, I'm not much of a Gaiman fan.

> you haven't denied me anything. Susan won't "show up" until

Well, I'd been taking it for granted that the other "friends of Narnia"
didn't just "show up" in the afterlife: Aslan caused the railway accident.
Does your reading differ?
 
> Necessarily A Good Thing? How shocking! What a sexist!

To be frank, I threw in the paragraph you quoted at the last minute; and the
issue as a whole is not something I'd given much thought to until reading
Gaiman's story. I'll try to make my point clearer. The stereotype of
adolescent girls when Lewis was writing, and to a large part today, is that
they are preoccupied with "nylons and lipstick and invitations." To the
extent that a reader accepts in this stereotype (which, like many
stereotypes, has an element of truth in it), she could reasonably conclude
from THE LAST BATTLE that most teenage girls had, at least temporarily, shut
themselves out of Heaven. On the other hand, there is as far as I know
nothing in any of the Narnia books to suggest that adolescent boys, by
following their usual interests, are shutting themselves out of Heaven.
Hence, it's easy to see how a female reader might conclude that the Narnia
books denigrate her sex--whether or not that was Lewis's conscious intent.

In any case, I don't believe that Gaiman's implied critique of the sex roles
in the Narnia books is based solely upon Susan's temporary or permanent
exclusion from Heaven (which, as I said in my last post, is not what Gaiman
is most concerned with). Greta's dream, which expresses this critique most
vividly, is based on a scene from the first of the books, as you point out;
and the cover of the Narnia book the professor sees in her dream is also
based on a scene from one of the earlier books, iirc.

> Gaiman than this one story.

I've read all of Gaiman's adult novels as well as SANDMAN (for a review of
AMERICAN GODS, which may or may not ever appear), and I don't recall any of
them being hostile to Christianity. Written from a non-Christian viewpoint,
to be sure, but that's not the same thing. But, as I said, I've only read a
couple of his interviews.

--Adam

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 12:18:07 +0000

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 20:15:03 -0600, Adam Stephanides
> Thanks for your courteous reply; I'll try to keep my answer in kind.

Looks like you did a better job of it than I; I've been grumpy of late.

> doubt; but hotter than anyone else? (And shouldn't Susanna Clarke be on 
> the list?)

I think it's a bit soon for that. One hot book does not a hot name make; 
I hesitated even about Mieville. 

> read anything by him, fiction or nonfiction.

Mieville is a very political socialist. That he would diss old religious 
righties (though not what we would call the Religious Right today)
such as the core Inklings really isn't all that surprising. He's pretty
much following in the feetstep of Michael Moorcock here, down to
touting Mervyn Peake as the guy who should have got the props
Tolkien did get. (And Peake certailny did deserve more than he got
in his lifetime.)

>  For that matter, I've never

http://books.guardian.co.uk/guardianhayfestival2002/story/0,11873,726818,00.html
might be of some use.

> Does your reading differ?

Let me put it this way. If I tell you that seven people have died and
gone to Heaven, and one is still alive, do you think that the one has
been punished in some way? To equate a young and violent death
with candy strikes me as just a bit wonky.

Again, I think Lewis was in many ways a sloppy writer. The ending of 
_The Last Battle_ is actually one of the weakest parts of the whole series, 
because Lewis clumsily wrapped things up with an "and they all got run 
over by a truck" ending.  Gaiman _is_ right to point out that, because it 
utterly ignores the effect of the trainwreck on the survivors, this is a bad 
way to pull a happy ending ouf of a hat; I've thought so myself for years. 

My basic problem with it, and I stand by this, is that Gaiman doesn't
deal with the problem of Susan at all; Susan Pevensie lived in a 
particular world where a particular set of things were true, even if she
came to deny some of them. Gaiman has written about a vaguely 
similar character in a completely different world where those things 
are not true, and so it does not (in my opinion) provide any real
conclusion to, or even any real commentary upon, "the problem of
Susan." 

This is vaguely similar to Delany's very apt criticism of Robert 
Heinlein's _Starship Troopers_: It posits a universe with certain 
basic moral and ethical postulates, and the rest of the book follows
pretty logically from those postulates. But if you don't accept the
postulates, the whole thing falls apart.

Gaiman doesn't accept the fundamentally Christian postulates of
the Narnia books, which is absolutely his right. But if you can't
accept the postulates of a world, you shouldn't write a story set
in that world. "The Problem of Susan" falls apart because it 
simply doesn't fit logically with the texts to which it nominally 
a coda.

> > Necessarily A Good Thing? How shocking! What a sexist!

Please forgive my sarcasm. As I said, I've been rather grumpy
lately.

> [...] I'll try to make my point clearer. The stereotype 
> of adolescent girls when Lewis was writing, and to a large part today, is that
> from THE LAST BATTLE that most teenage girls had, at least temporarily,
> shut themselves out of Heaven.

I have to disagree strenuously. "Most teenage girls" have not had the 
experience of Narnia to turn their backs upon. Since the story does not,
in any case, address the situation of "most teenage girls," but one 
particular girl, the question then is whether Susan has "at least
temporarily shut [herself] out of Heaven."

Frankly, we know almost nothing about Susan at the time of the series,
_except_ 

(a) that she has ceased (or claims to have ceased)  to believe that 
her adventures in Narnia ever actually happened, and 

(b) that she's become a bit of a social butterfly - something, by the way, 
clearly foreshadowed at the beginning of _The Voyage of the "Dawn 
Treader"_, when Lewis explains why Lucy and Edmund are at the 
Scrubbs' house without their older siblings.

(a) Not believing in Narnia anymore, while it may be foolish, even 
delusional, does not seem to me to automatically mean that Susan had 
abandoned the Christian faith (which is clearly what the children are 
expected to follow in the "real" world: viz. Aslan's words at the end of 
_Dawn Treader_, to the effect - since I don't have the text at hand I'm 
quasi-quoting from memory - that "I brought you here so that you would 
know me better when you met me in your world.") 

(a.1) Since Narnia is not their world, Aslan is not, in that name, their 
savior; their path to Heaven is through "the name of Christ Jesus." (That 
this name is never directly invoked at any point in the books is part of 
Lewis's overall plan and intent, which was to sneak Christian ideas and 
imagery past children's intellectual cynicism and into their imaginations.) 

(a.2) Further, it's clear that Aslan isn't the only path into Heaven, given
that the Pevensie parents, who (so far as we know) never met Aslan, are 
waiting for them in Heaven at the series' end.

(a.3) At any rate, Susan at the end of the Narnia books for all we know be 
a completely faithful,churchgoing Anglican. 

(b) Which leaves the question of whether being a social butterfly is a vanity
sufficient (in Lewis's mind) to shut oneself out of Heaven, an idea I find 
extremely dubious, and which I very much doubt you could support from 
the text. 

As a final note on the "lipstick and invitations" thing - it should be 
noted that the remark is made by a younger child, who seems to 
rather resent the older child's having abandoned their clique, and
while Lewis was a rather sloppy writer, he was .generally pretty good
about keeping straight the points of view of his various characters.

> On the other hand, there is as far as I know nothing in any of the Narnia 
> books to suggest that adolescent boys, by following their usual interests,
> are shutting themselves out of Heaven.

This would be relevant only if. I might add, however, that if we had a
picture in the series of an adolescent boy following "their usual interests" 
- which, based on my own experience as an adolescent boy, are mostly 
sex - it would doubtless be, ah, rather problematical whether that boy
was Heaven-bound.

> books denigrate her sex--whether or not that was Lewis's conscious intent.

H'mmm. "You forgot Poland" - or in this case, Lucy, who is far and away 
the series' most important child-character, the most identified-with of the
eight children who visit Narnia. She is also the most loved of Aslan. If
Susan is a "problem," Lucy is almost the opposite problem, a woman-on-
a-pedestal. Fortunately, we have the additional cases of Polly and 
Pole, both of whom are quite normal, if a bit tomboyish, girls, neither
as allfired holy as Lucy nor "taken up with lipstick" like Susan - though
Polly, at least, is likely to have gone through that phase, and still winds
up in Aslan's Paradise.

> based on a scene from one of the earlier books, iirc.

Unfortunately, by completely reimaging the scene, Gaiman makes any
critique of Lewis based on that dream problematic. If he had stuck to
what actually happened in that scene, and shown how it was "sexist" -
which it is not, really, though the book as a whole _is_, rather - he'd
have been playing a bit more fairly. But the scene he chose to present
simply has no real bearing on what Lewis actually wrote.

--Dan'l

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 17:52:03 +0000

Sorry it's taken so long to reply; I was out of town. Actually, on the
question of sex roles in Narnia, either in general or as regards "the
problem of Susan" in particular, I don't really have anything else to add.
But there are a few things in Dan'l's last post that I wanted to respond to,
if only for clarity's sake.

on 11/8/04 8:17 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes at danldo at gmail.com wrote:

> To equate a young and violent death

Not the way Lewis depicts the "young and violent death."

> conclusion to, or even any real commentary upon, "the problem of

But Gaiman isn't interested in discussing "the problem of Susan" in Lewis's
terms. He's rejecting these terms, and in so doing criticizing Lewis. I
don't think this is necessarily an illegitimate thing to do.

> But if you can't

I'm a bit confused now. Do you believe that the professor is Susan or not
(as the paragraph I quoted earlier seems to imply)? I lean towards the view
that she isn't. To be sure, there are obvious hints (too obvious, I'm
tempted to say) that she is. But afaik, there's nothing in the professor's
thoughts, as we're shown them, to indicate that she's Susan (I could be
wrong about this, since it's been a long time since I read the Narnia
books.) And of course, there's the problem of how, if the Narnia books are
true, did Lewis know about the events in The Last Battle, since all the
witnesses died without returning to Earth? No, I think that for once in
Gaiman's work, the professor is just who she seems to be: a woman who, as a
child, went through a few of the mundane experiences that Susan did, and who
later came to dislike the Narnia books.

If you do think that the professor is Susan, then your dislike of the story
is more understandable. While I don't think, as you apparently do, that it
would be illegitimate for a writer to try and continue Susan's story while
rejecting Lewis's Christian worldview, I agree that "The Problem of Susan,"
if read as such, doesn't continue Susan's story in an interesting way.

> a completely faithful,churchgoing Anglican.

Of course, if Susan's denying Narnia is not meant to be equivalent to
rejecting Jesus, then there is no "problem of Susan." But, as I said before,
that doesn't seem to fit with the quotation from Lewis you gave earlier. It
also leaves Susan's absence without an allegorical interpretation, in a book
in which (even more than in the other Narnia books iirc) everything is
allegorical.

> about keeping straight the points of view of his various characters.

But it's seconded by Polly.

> simply has no real bearing on what Lewis actually wrote.

I see I expressed myself poorly. I didn't mean to imply that Gaiman was
basing his critique on that particular scene from LtWatW, which, as you
point out, is radically different from what Gaiman wrote. I just meant that
the fact that the dream refers to other books besides The Last Battle
indicates that Gaiman's complaint is not solely with The Last Battle, even
though that's what Greta and the professor discuss. And it was probably
misleading to call Greta's dream a critique of the Narnia books, even an
implied one. It's a metaphorical representation of a certain response to the
Narnia books.

--Adam

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 16:11:57 +0000

Adam -

I too have been travelling & so have a HUGELY full in box & not much
time in which to reply ... but ...

Yes, I did take it as NG's intent that "the Professor" was Susan. I
can't see how the story makes _any_ sense at all otherwise. And
certainly that's the only element that would give it any legitimate
place in a collection of fantasy stories.

> [...] there's nothing in the professor's
> books.) 

I read it thus: The Professor has continued in the line of denial 
that some think is the only meaningful interpretation of the last
we hear of her in _TLB_. Because she still denies Narnia there
would be no such hints in her thoughts.

> And of course, there's the problem of how, if the Narnia books are
> witnesses died without returning to Earth? 

That's pretty much true for all the Narnia books ... nothing in them
suggests that any of the children ever talked to Lewis at all...

> if read as such, doesn't continue Susan's story in an interesting way.

H'mmmph.  Not what I said. I said 

> Gaiman doesn't deal with the problem of Susan at all; Susan Pevensie
> lived in a particular world where a particular set of things were true, even
> if she came to deny some of them. Gaiman has written about a vaguely
> similar character in a completely different world where those things are
> not true, and so it does not (in my opinion) provide any real conclusion
> to, or even any real commentary upon, "the problem of Susan."

Note that I did not say it would not be acceptable to reject the Christian
worldview in such a sequel - but if you are to reject it, you must 
acknowledge and deal with its influence on what has gone before, not
simply decide that Aslan and the White Witch were lovers with no 
explanation offered at all. (Yeah, yeah, I know, it's a dream sequence.
It's also the most blatant example of what I'm talking about.)

> Of course, if Susan's denying Narnia is not meant to be equivalent 
> to rejecting Jesus, then there is no "problem of Susan." But, as I 
> said before, that doesn't seem to fit with the quotation from Lewis
> you gave earlier. 

To be sure, I agree; and I therefore think that the "problem" at that
level is somewhat exaggerated _to begin with_. Nonetheless, it is
there and is a real problem: but a writer who wants to deal with the
"problem of Susan" needs to deal with the problem in the rules in 
which it was stated (so to speak), or else they're simply waving a
wand and saying "Here's a problem I like better."

--Dan'l

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 07:01:52 +0000

A couple of comments before we lahy this to rest (as we seem to have reached
the point of talking past each other):

> would be no such hints in her thoughts.

But Gaiman could have figured out some way to have the Professor's thoughts
reveal that she had been to Narnia without admitting to herself that Narnia
was real; after all, he's a clever writer, and likes to do that sort of
thing. Or he could have put some other sort of clue in her thoughts that
would show she was Susan, which again he didn't, as far as I can tell. His
not doing either of these is, to my mind, indirect but fairly strong
evidence that the Professor is not intended to be Susan.
 
>> to, or even any real commentary upon, "the problem of Susan."

Apologies for misinterpreting you; I took the "particular set of things"
that Gaiman denies to be the Christian world-view, and Aslan as the
equivalent of Christ. If that isn't what you meant, it's not clear to me
what you did mean.
 
> It's also the most blatant example of what I'm talking about.)

Whether or not the Professor is Susan, Greta's dream is not real. If Narnia
isn't real in Gaiman's story, then of course Greta's dream isn't real; and
if the Professor is Susan, then Greta's dream can't be real, because in it
Susan gets eaten as a child (I take it we can exclude the possibility that
Narnia being real but the professor isn't Susan.) The dream is a
metaphorical "critique" (see my last post) of the Narnia books, not Gaiman's
version of "what really happened in _TLtWatW_."

--Adam

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 12:18:01 +0000

Adam wrote:
> A couple of comments before we lahy this to rest (as we seem to have
> reached the point of talking past each other):

Yeh, I think you're right.

> But Gaiman could have figured out some way to have the
> Professor's thoughts reveal that she had been to Narnia without
> admitting to herself that Narnia was real; after all, he's a clever
> writer, and likes to do that sort of thing. 

H'mmm. No doubt _Wolfe_ could have done so; but I can't see
Gaiman doing it. I've only read four novels, a scattering of
shorts, and some funnybooks, but I've never seen anything in 
Gaiman's work that suggested he was capable of the kind of 
subtlety required to pull off this kind of "unreliable point of 
view" trick. (Note that I said the _kind_ of subtlety, not the 
_degree_; there is some very subtle stuff in his work, but of a 
different sort.)

> Or he could have put some other sort of clue in her thoughts 
> that would show she was Susan, which again he didn't, as far His
> as I can tell. not doing either of these is, to my mind, indirect but 
> fairly strong evidence that the Professor is not intended to be
> Susan.

Or, perhaps, that he intended the reader to make up his or her
own mind on that question (that being another "problem of
Susan," so to speak). One thing Gaiman clearly _does_ do in 
a lot of his work is leave certain matters open to contradictory
interpretations.

> equivalent of Christ. If that isn't what you meant, it's not clear to me

Well, you're within an inch but a very important inch of what I meant.
The inch of difference is this: within the fictional construct up to the
point at which Lewis left off, the evidence appears to point to this
being a world in which (a) basic ("mere") Christianity is true and 

> > It's also the most blatant example of what I'm talking about.)

further, it would be possible, for example, to write a perfectly 
acceptable sequel in which it turns out that Aslan's claims to be
Christ - well, he never direclty claims it, but he hints at it very 
strongly in several places - are _lies_, and that the various other
bits of the text that point to this interpretation are part of his
overall deception. (Indeed, one of the "Narnia is evil!" type 
Christians could write a very interesting book in which Susan is
the _only_ one saved because Aslan is a lying demon... though 
that book would have to somehow deal with the apparent ascent
into Heaven at the end of _TLB_.) But what you can't reasonably 
do is simply ignore those claims and other bits of the text; you
can't simply start with another interpretation and leave the
existing meaning-structure lying on the floor. Which in the end
is what it seems to me Gaiman has done, and I respect him the
less as a writer for it.

To put it in somewhat more concrete terms: one of the things 
the British comic writers were famous for was reinventing 
moribund characters - Alan Moore was the best at this, but 
Gaiman, Delano, and Morrison all did it, Moore most famously
with the Swamp Thing (which included reinventions of Cain and
Abel, the Geek, and others), Gaiman with Black Orchid and
others, Morrison with Animal Man and the Doom Patrol, etc.
But what was important, and what Moore was especially good
at, was maintaining and even respecting the existing continuity.
His most spectacular job of this was _Miracleman_, which 
turned Captain "Shazam!" Marvel inside out but kept the 
entire mythology intact (with, to be sure, the serial numbers
filed off for legal reasons) even while wiping it out. 

Gaiman proved himself able to do this on some occasions,
notably with his reworkings of Matthew Cable, the Witches
Three, Hector and Lyta Hall, and ... oh, hell, what was her
name, the Element Girl ... but at times he utterly refused to
acknowledge what had gone before. And that is more or less
what I'm complaining about with "The Problem of Susan."

I think it's necessary for the Professor to be Susan for the 
story to make any sense _as fantasy_.

But if the Professor is Susan, then the whole thing fails for
me, because it ignores the existing continuity.

> Whether or not the Professor is Susan, Greta's dream is not real. 

Okay, we can agree on that. What I can't agree with is that this
takes it out of the center of the story's meaning.

--Dan'l

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 07:05:17 +0000

on 11/29/04 2:17 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes at danldo at gmail.com wrote:

> view" trick.

Upon thinking about it some more, Gaiman doesn't do it as often as I'd had
the impression he did. In fact, the only real example I can think of is
"Murder Mysteries," which is in his collection "Smoke and Mirrors." But that
story does show that Gaiman is capable of doing it.

--Adam