Hanging Out with the Dream King The Urth list — 5 messages, 2 voices, 11 Feb 2005 https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4367 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. ============================================================================== Adam Stephanides — 11 Feb 2005, 17:10 A book that just came out, _Hanging Out with the Dream King: Conversations with Neil Gaiman and His Collaborators_ by Joseph McCabe (pub. by Fantagraphics Books) has a six-page interview with Gene Wolfe (and a photo!). The interview doesn't confine itself to Gaiman or his collaboration with Wolfe (_A Walking Tour of the Shambles_, iirc), but discusses Wolfe's own writing. The most interesting thing Wolfe said, to me, was "It seems to me that it is wrong to write propaganda that is not clearly propaganda." This in response to a question on Wolfe's use of religious themes, iirc. --Adam ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ maru — 11 Feb 2005, 17:27 in reply to Adam Stephanides Could you give some context there Adam? I'm not quite sure how to take that comment: does it mean he regrets even a little not making it glaringly obvious the religious content, and his fringey religious beliefs in particular (I think I'm justified in saying fringy; I've heard time and again that his Catholic viewpoints are practically pre-Vatican II. But I haven't gleaned enough on my own to appraise this view, so if someone wants to correct me, go ahead.) Or should I take it as a barb against the C.S. Lewis type writers? ~Maru > Adam Stephanides wrote: > A book that just came out, _Hanging Out with the Dream King: Conversations > with Neil Gaiman and His Collaborators_ by Joseph McCabe (pub. by > Fantagraphics Books) has a six-page interview with Gene Wolfe (and a > photo!). The interview doesn't confine itself to Gaiman or his collaboration > with Wolfe (_A Walking Tour of the Shambles_, iirc), but discusses Wolfe's > own writing. The most interesting thing Wolfe said, to me, was "It seems to > me that it is wrong to write propaganda that is not clearly propaganda." > This in response to a question on Wolfe's use of religious themes, iirc. > > --Adam > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Adam Stephanides — 13 Feb 2005, 08:01 in reply to maru > on 2/11/05 7:27 PM, maru at marudubshinki at gmail.com wrote: > Could you give some context there Adam? The interviewer mentions Wolfe's use of the "concept of the messiah" as a theme, and asks him how he has been able to keep his "emotions ... [from] block[ing] the intellectual examination [of the concept] ... where so many other writers failed to do so." Wolfe answers in part: "I'm not sure that it's anything that I have done; I think it's part of my character. It's innate. It seems to me that it is wrong to write propaganda that is not clearly propaganda. I teach writing from time to time, and you get a certain number of people who basically want to write what's basically propaganda for some cause or other. Or some church or other -- I have a Mormon friend, and when he tries to write fiction, his characters lecture on Mormonism when the lectures on Mormonism have nothing to do with the story, frankly. Someone asked Avram Davidson, 'Why aren't any of your characters Jewish?' ... He said, 'They all are.' He wasn't pushing Judaism, but he was writing with what he was, which was a Jew. And I think I write as what I am." While his meaning isn't totally evident, he's drawing a distinction between writing as a Catholic (for example), which is desirable if you're a Catholic, and writing Catholic propaganda in the guise of fiction. I'd say his practice as a writer bears this out as far as religion is concerned, except for a couple of short stories where the devotional aspect is pretty obvious: I've never been convinced by claims that his novels are intended to illustrate or proselytize for Catholic doctrine. On the other hand, when it comes to politics it's a lot harder to reconcile his practice with what he's saying here. > I'm not quite sure how to take that comment: does it mean he > regrets even a little not making it glaringly obvious the religious > content, and his fringey religious beliefs in particular (I think > I'm justified in saying fringy; I've heard time and again that his Catholic > viewpoints are practically pre-Vatican II. But I haven't gleaned enough > on my own to appraise this view, so if someone wants to correct me, go > ahead.) He has said that his Catholicism is pre-Vatican II, iirc, but I wouldn't say that makes him fringey. That's the Catholicism he was raised in, after all, and I would imagine that even today there are a substantial number of Catholics who by and large prefer the pre-Vatican practices. (There's a book called _The Smoke of Satan_, iirc, which is an entertaining look at some genuinely fringey Catholics: people who believe that the popes from John XXIII on have been illegitimate, for example.) > Or should I take it as a barb against the C.S. Lewis type writers? You could certainly convict Lewis of "writ[ing] what's basically propaganda," at least in some of his novels. But it's not clear to me that this is any less true of Chesterton, whom Wolfe admires. --Adam ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maru Dubshinki — 13 Feb 2005, 08:57 in reply to Adam Stephanides Sounds like he's thinking of Orson Scott Card there. Or at least, that's the only prominent Mormon writer who brings his religion into discussion that i can think of, anyway. But when I said 'fringe-y' I was thinking Mel Gibson & pater type. Incidentally, what do you mean by: > On the other hand, when it > comes to politics it's a lot harder to reconcile his practice with what he's > saying here. ~Maru On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 10:05:40 -0600, Adam Stephanides wrote: .... snippity.... > Wolfe answers in part: "I'm not sure that it's anything that I have done; I > think it's part of my character. It's innate. It seems to me that it is > wrong to write propaganda that is not clearly propaganda. I teach writing > from time to time, and you get a certain number of people who basically want > to write what's basically propaganda for some cause or other. Or some church > or other -- I have a Mormon friend, and when he tries to write fiction, his > characters lecture on Mormonism when the lectures on Mormonism have nothing > to do with the story, frankly. Someone asked Avram Davidson, 'Why aren't any > of your characters Jewish?' ... He said, 'They all are.' He wasn't pushing > Judaism, but he was writing with what he was, which was a Jew. And I think I > write as what I am." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Adam Stephanides — 16 Feb 2005, 20:22 in reply to Maru Dubshinki > on 2/13/05 10:57 AM, Maru Dubshinki at marudubshinki at gmail.com wrote: > Incidentally, what do you mean by: > > On the other hand, when it > > comes to politics it's a lot harder to reconcile his practice with what he's > > saying here. I was thinking of stories like "The Blue Mouse," "Bluesberry Jam," and the fairly recent one, whose title I forget, where the protagonist is on the run from a female IRS agent. --Adam ------------------------------------------------------------------------------