{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4910", "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": 4910, "subject": "Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "messages": 49, "voices": 18, "first": "2007-09-18T17:45:03+00:00", "last": "2007-09-28T17:29:41+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Stephen Frug", "address": "sfrug at post.harvard.edu" }, "date": "2007-09-18T17:45:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Greetings Urthlings. I've read this message list before, but never \nposted to it. (Unless this message is itself a duplicate... the \nfirst time seems to have gotten lost...) But I just wrote a long \nreview of Wizard Knight which I posted to my blog \n(http://stephenfrug.blogspot.com), and I thought that readers here \nwould be interested in it -- and I am definitely interested in \nresponses -- so I am cross-posting it. Hope that's okay. If my \nlinks & block-quote formatting don't come through, you can go to the \nblog-version to get them.\n\nI just finished reading Gene Wolfe's two-volume novel, The Wizard \nKnight, made up of The Knight (2004) and The Wizard (2005). The \nfollowing is a long essay reviewing (in some sense) the work, \nfocusing on what I found problematic about it, rather than the (quite \nconsiderable number of things) I liked in it. This review-essay will \nhave spoilers -- not major ones, but existent ones -- for the \nentirety of the work. Now, I'm not spoiling, I don't think, any of \nthe Big Secrets from the book -- certainly not from the second half, \nwhere the cluster. So, in my opinion, there's nothing here that would \nreally \"spoil\" a first reading of the work if you haven't read it \nyet. But if you want to approach it with no knowledge whatsoever, you \nshould stop reading here. (Oh, and I guess there are spoilers for The \nLord of the Rings too.)\n\nI think my most basic reaction is that it's good but not Wolfe's best \n-- not up there with The Book of the New Sun or The Fifth Head of \nCerberus, say. That it's well written is not in doubt: it's by Wolfe, \nafter all. But I had some problems with it -- some of which are \nprobably in my head, some of which are in the work, and some of which \nare in the chemical mixture of the two.\n\nIt's hard to criticize Wolfe, though, because of his reputation as a \ntrickster: if you present a negative opinion of anything the man \nwrites, you instantly lay yourself open to the charge that you just \ndidn't get it. And not infrequently the charge will be valid. But it \nwon't always be valid: Wolfe is human, humans are imperfect, and even \nShakespeare wrote some clunkers. And while a lot of aspects of \nWolfe's fiction are far more complex than they appear even at third \nglance, other aspects are, finally, not: they are straightforward, \ndespite the efforts of Wolfe's more serious fans (an overlapping but \nnot identical group to Wolfe's more serious readers) to try and make \nthem so.\n\nAnd, for me at least, it's even more intimidating when the backs of \nthe books are filled with breathless praise from some of my other \nfavorite writers: Neil Gaiman! Kim Stanley Robinson! Everyone seems \nto agree that this is the very best book since Wolfe's last very best \nbook, and you just have to love it!\n\nWell, I didn't. I liked it, but also had some real problems with it. \nSo at the risk of derision for missing the point, I'm going to begin \nwith some straightforward critiques of a writer who (in John Clute's \napt words) \"has never in his life told a straightforward tale\".\n\nI think the first half of The Knight was slow. There were a number of \nplaces where, if the book hadn't said Gene Wolfe on the cover, I \nwould have given up. Partly this was because the book, while being \nslow, presented itself mostly as an adventure book: it was not slow \nin the good way that, say, Proust is. It was slow where it shouldn't \nhave been. For me, at least, this lessened as I went along, and by \nthe end of The Knight I was fully gripped, and stayed so through The \nWizard.\n\nIn a related criticism, the book was unevenly paced. This is related, \nnot identical, because I'm not just referring to the first half of \nvolume one. The rest of volume one and the first two-thirds or so of \nvolume two, while never (for me) dull, proceeded at a stately pace \nthrough the events of the tale -- leaving the ending to be told at \nbreakneck speed and with more-than-usual abridgement. Parts of this \nare due to Wolfe's habit of telling the most serious parts of his \nstories by indirection -- but only, I think, parts.\n\nWolfe's uneven pacing is actually habitual for him -- there are \ntraces of it in The Book of the New Sun, and it's a more serious \nproblem in The Book of the Long Sun. And at this point I'm coming \naround to the belief that while this is partly due to careful \nauthorial craft, it is also partly a failure of it: Wolfe simply gets \ntoo wrapped up in the early stages of some of his adventures and \ntells them at (at times) tedious length.\n\nWolfe, as has been frequently noted, writes puzzles, works which hint \nat stories and cosmology and theology which are only partly and \nobscurely visible on the surface. But he also writes (and clearly \nlikes to write and, from what he's said of his reading tastes, likes) \nadventure stories which form the surface under which those puzzles \nmove. And while Wolfe is a genius at writing puzzles, he is, I think, \nuneven at writing adventures. He likes it more than he's good at it. \nAnd I find that my favorite Wolfe works are often those where he \ndoesn't try -- in his short stories, for instance, in which he is \noften simply doing something else.\n\nThere are a lot of interpretive puzzles in The Wizard Knight, as \nthere are in all of Wolfe's work. Some of them I got the first time \naround. Others I didn't; still others I probably even missed the \nexistence of. And I feel that if I reread it -- particularly, if I \nreread it right now, with the first reading fresh in my mind -- I \nwould probably get a lot more of them -- might understand, to pick \none example out of many, what the complex relationship between \nMythgarthr and America was supposed to be, a relationship (along with \nthe relationship of parallel or crossing characters) which Wolfe \nhinted a lot about but did not make clear -- at least to me -- on the \nfirst reading.\n\nBut, frankly, I didn't like it enough to want to reread it -- \ncertainly not now. (Other Wolfe works I have liked enough to reread \nthem, whether I found time to or not.) I'd rather read something else \n-- even something else of Wolfe's. Wolfe's puzzles are marvelous, but \nif the supporting structure isn't good enough, I don't want to take \nthe time to figure them out. And at least in the case of The Wizard \nKnight, I didn't.\n\nOn to other topics.\n\nI think Wolfe's writing of Abel's voice was profoundly uneven. \nUsually in a high and archaic register, it would lapse at times into \nslang -- into (to my ear) outdated slang, slang that uneasily mixed \ncontemporary life (macs) with some sort of parody of fifties usage \n(swell!). The slang itself was jarringly inconsistent; and the \nmixture of slang into otherwise unbroken pages of high-register \nspeech (both dialogue and the narrator's voice) was frequently \nawkward in the extreme. Wolfe has said in an interview that he didn't \nhave any trouble writing a modern teenager, since he knows them and \nlives near them; but I think there was a real failure of tone here. \nNow, maybe, this is all part of some complex Wolfean trick, some \ndeliberate mixture of tone which served some thematic, portraiture or \nother purpose... but I sure didn't see it. Until someone convinces me \notherwise, I think this is simply a failure on his part.\n\nI should perhaps mention that there was a lot to like here, since \nI've so far been mostly negative. It is, as I said, well-written \n(save for the -- thankfully not all that frequent -- lapses in tone \njust noted); it is mostly exciting. The cosmology was fascinating, \nthe magic mysterious, many of the characters quite interesting. The \nreinvention of by-now standard fantasy elements -- the Norse mythos, \nelves, and lots more -- was refreshing and fun. There's a lot to like \nhere.\n\nBut I think my biggest complaint -- my biggest stumbling block -- was \na pair of intertwined issues: the character of Abel, and the ethics \n(even, politics) of the book.\n\nFirst off, I found Abel frequently insufferable. Pompous, \nself-righteous, frequently a bully, he also came off as a Mary Sue \n(at least in one sense of that polyvalent term of fan critique): not \nonly was he the most courageous and noble person about, but he also \nhad the writer stacking the deck for him at every turn. He had more \nmagical allies, artifacts, assistants, companions, than you could \nshake a stick at: an invisible ogre doing his bidding! A sky-wolf who \nhappened to be totally loyal! Elves (called Aelf) who were his slaves \n(yes, not always reliable, but often enough). A magic sword, the \nblessing and friendship of Odin, various other magic devices he got \nat the end (the helmet, another sword). Heck, he even becomes a god \nhalfway through the work! Talk about favoritism!*\n\nThis sort of stacking the deck is hard enough to take when the writer \nhas some self-consciousness about what he's doing, but I didn't see \nany sign that Wolfe did. He simply loved his creation, and showered \nhim with so many cheats and advantages that any honor he might have \naccrued felt like a cheat.\n\nAbel adjusted with damning speed to the hierarchy of a medieval \nsociety. Here his American origins were least convincing, if not \ndownright morally foul. It's natural for those raised in a profoundly \nhierarchical society to accept it as normal, to expect deference from \nthe lower-born and give it to the higher. But it's inexplicable for \nan American -- even an American boy. It makes Abel seem like a deeply \nimmoral man -- in a way that no one else in the novel seems immoral, \nsince after all, no one else in the novel ought to have a cultural \ngrounding in notions of equality and the malevolence of fixed class. \nOh, sure, this is not absolutely true: Abel makes no effort to hide \nhis peasant ancestry, and seems to think it doesn't matter, so he's \ncertainly less class conscious, more egalitarian, than most of the \npeople he meets. But he also expects an enormous level of deference \nfrom his \"inferiors\", and seems to regard his \"superiors\" has being \ndue a great deal of it. And yes, he was frequently kind, even \ngenerous to those below him -- but in such a way that their status \nwas perfectly clear.\n\nFor me, the incident that stuck with me was the one early on in The \nKnight where Abel went to get a sea-berth on a ship. Quoted a price \nby the captain, he insisted on having the best cabin (turning the \ncaptain out) at less than half the price quoted... and to get it, he \nliterally threatened the man's life. He acted, in short, like the \nbrigands whose thievery he used to justify their slaughter not a few \nchapters before, taking what he wanted because he wanted it, and -- \nand in some sense this was, to me, even more damning -- because he \nclearly felt that it was his due as a knight.\n\nAgain, if there was any sign that all of this that Wolfe was \npresenting a critique of Abel, that would be fine. If he was being \npresented as a boy who hadn't learned better, or a man trying but \nfailing to be good... but while Wolfe's reputation as a subtle writer \nmight make one reach for such an interpretation, I didn't see any \nreal signs of it in the text. I got the impression that we were \nsimply supposed to think Abel was a good and admirable person, that \nWolfe certainly thought so, that he was blind to all his (quite \ndamning) flaws.\n\nAdam Stephanides, who hated The Knight (which, I hope I have made \nclear, I didn't), nevertheless has a passage in his self-described \n\"rant\" about it that strikes me as sadly on the mark:\n\n Sir Able of the High Heart, the Uberknight who his inferiors \nwillingly submit to (if not, they're treacherous curs, whom he \nrightfully punishes), not any of the other characters, not the world, \nand not the plot, such as it was. Able doesn't behave like an \nadolescent, magically given an adult body or not: what he does behave \nlike is an adolescent boy's fantasy of how he would behave if given a \npowerful adult body. Nor does he sound in the least like an \nadolescent, contemporary or otherwise. When Able talks to other \ncharacters, he sounds like the generic Wolfe Competent Male; when \nhe's narrating, he mostly sounds like Hoof, except when Wolfe throws \nin some incongruous \"poetic\" passages, or remembers that Able is \nsupposed to be a modern teenager and tosses in a reference to Macs or \nbaseball.\n\nOverly-strongly put. But not, I think, fundamentally mistaken about \nthe problems of the book.\n\nAnd Wolfe's apparent (and, I believe, genuine) fundamental admiration \nfor Abel connects to the deeply problematic ethics of the work as a \nwhole -- and, finally, to its politics.\n\nOne of modernity's powerful cultural changes was the rotting of the \nchivalric code. It's crucial to remember that this happened, not due \nto our inability to live up to, but to historical events' revealing \nof its essential malevolency -- at least in the context of a \n(technologically, socially) modern society, if not in general. The \nmost famous articulation of this point, I believe, is Hemmingway's, \nin A Farewell to Arms:\n\n Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were \nobscene beside the concrete names of villages, the names of roads, \nthe names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.\n\nWhat I found most profoundly disturbing was the sense that what Wolfe \nwas ultimately trying to do was to redeem words such as glory, honor, \ncourage or hallow -- words that, for inescapably important moral \nreasons, have indeed become (if indeed they were not always) obscene.\n\nAnd this, at least, I don't think was my simplifying the work of a \ncomplex writer. (Rather, I think this was my (liberal) reaction to an \nessentially very conservative writer.) For Wolfe said as much in an \ninterview he did with Neil Gaiman. -- True, he can be as cagey and \nmysterious in interviews as he is in fiction... sometimes. But not \nalways: and I submit that anyone who sees the following as other than \nstraightforward is probably over-reading. Here is the exchange (I've \nabridged Gaiman's question):\n\n Gaiman: [A] hundred years from now... a teenager [reads The \nWizard Knight]. Where do you hope The Knight and The Wizard will take \nher?\n\n Wolfe: To a country where honor, courage, and fidelity actually \nmean something. The whole knightly ideal came into being because the \nfighting was so close. Ordinary people saw who defended the castle \nand who hid in the wine cellar, who went for the enemy while his \nfollowers, well, actually followed instead of doing all the fighting \nfor him. Communities were small; everybody knew how everybody else \nbehaved. I want her to see what those qualities can mean to the \nperson who has them and to those around him.\n\n Gaiman: That's really cool. And, for want of a better word, noble.\n\nActually, I don't think it's cool. And I certainly don't think it's \nnoble. I think it's, at a minimum, profoundly disturbing... arguably \neven, in Hemingway's word, \"obscene\".\n\nAnd along with honor and glory and fidelity come hierarchy, and \nservitude, and subservience, and caste: all right there in Wolfe's \nbook, just like the world. Along comes all the horrors of pre-modern \nsociety that were destroyed by it, even as it introduced new horrors \nof its own.\n\nNow a great deal of fantasy -- not all of it, but a lot of it -- is \nwritten in a spirit of nostalgia for the pre-modern world. This \nnostalgia takes different forms and has different (moral, literary, \npersonal) meanings. But I must admit I've never found it as \ndisturbing as in Wolfe's Wizard Knight. For comparison, let me talk \nabout Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, not only the inescapable point of \ncomparison for almost any high fantasy work (at least in a basic \nsense, i.e. a fantasy work set in a world different from our own), \nbut as a book which Wolfe and I (and half the reading world) share a \nlove for. Because, despite Tolkien's clear nostalgia for pre-modern \ntimes, I didn't, and don't, find it nearly as problematic as I did \nWolfe's Wizard Knight. Why?\n\nWell, first off, Wolfe brings a purportedly modern voice and \nperspective into his pre-modern times... and has it swallow them \nwhole. Tolkien, of course, sets his work wholly within a different \ntime, so the lack of a modern ethical perspective is reasonable, even \nessential. But for Wolfe not to confront these issues implicitly \nratifies things that Tolkien needn't deal with.\n\nMore importantly, for Tolkien, the good is more complex than it is \nfor Wolfe, at least for Wolfe here. While Tolkien's characters strive \nto do right, The Lord of the Rings is above all about the corruption \nof power, the corruptibility of good intent, and the terrible dangers \nfor even those who strive to do right. I don't see any of that in \nWolfe's Wizard Knight. As my favorite reader of Tolkien, T. A. \nShippey, has noted, the ring and its thematic motif of the corrupting \nnature of power bring into Tolkien the one modern element in an \notherwise pre-modern work. That is, Tolkien brought into his work \nsome of the complexity from the pre-modern world -- and it made his \nwork as rich as it is. Wolfe brought in a modern element, seemingly \njust to show that nothing from America really needed saving or really \nhad any valuable perspective lacking in the pre-modern world.\n\nSimilarly, for Tolkien, the evil seems far more evil than it does for \nWolfe -- and far more tied to the basic issues of war and power. It \nis the desire for control, for gain, that is fundamentally wrong in \nTolkien's work... and we see, quite powerfully, their result in \nthings such as the powerful, Great War Trench-influenced depictions \nof the broken land of Mordor, and in the vivid depictions of the \nscouring of the shire.** Now, we see, at the end of The Wizard, some \nof the ruinous effects of war... but not with anything like the \nvividness and power in Tolkien. More to the point, Wolfe doesn't \nportray this as the outcome of war, but the outcome of the good guys \nloosing: you don't see any sense that if the humans had simply beat \nthe Osterlings (and we are told very specifically that this begun \nwith a raid on their lands for gain, something presented as \nstraightforward and not at all morally troubling) that there would be \nanything wrong. In Tolkien, war is shown as something necessary due \nto a fallen world, something which is itself part of the corruption \neven of the good: in Wolfe, it's only too bad when you loose, and all \nthe jousting and ridiculous fights of honor he portrays are simply \nsomething it would be jolly good to have back. (I exaggerate, but not \nas much as I wish I did.)\n\nAnd finally, of course, Tolkien was writing long before our time -- \nbefore my time. The Lord of the Rings was written, in significant \npart, during the Second World War; The Wizard Knight was written, in \nsignificant part, during the so-called War on Terror. The world is \ndifferent now. And that means I experience the works differently.\n\nAnd here we get to something which is probably more my failure than \nanything else.\n\nYou see, I am far, far more suspicious of \"words such as glory, \nhonor, courage, or hallow\" in the present -- say, the last six years \n-- than I am from before. And I think that is because so many \nAmericans experienced the attacks of September 11 as an immediate and \nunproblematic redemption of them. Yet it seems to me that one crucial \ncomponent of the horrible mistakes and unforgivable evils that our \ncountry has committed in the past six years was precisely that \nredemption: of our thinking, far too much, about glory and honor and \ncourage -- not to mention \"evil doers\" -- and far too little about \nthe names of villages.\n\nThe truth is, I read The Wizard Knight with these words -- Wolfe's \nreaction to the 9-11 attacks -- ringing in my ears:\n\n We will be told that the perpetrators (and only the perpetrators) \nmust be punished, and that the greatest pains must be taken to make \ncertain no innocent person suffers. That sounds much better than \nsaying no action should be taken, but it comes to the same thing. The \nperpetrators cannot be punished. They died in the planes they \nhijacked and are beyond our reach. It is not possible to fight a war \n(not even a losing war) without causing innocent people to suffer.\n\nAnd I thought a lot of things about them. For example, I thought that \nwith only the smallest tweaking, they could sound like the \njustifications that the 9-11 attackers might themselves have used: \noh, unlike what Wolfe is saying, the \"perpetrators\" that they would \nhave been talking about were probably not doing crimes that I would \nsay were clearly such. But the argument would have been the same: we \ncan't fight a war without causing innocent people to suffer. If we \naren't willing to kill the innocent, then we can't do anything. The \nactual perpetrators (say, the government of the U.S.) are beyond our \nreach, but that doesn't mean that no action should be taken. And so \nforth.***\n\n(I don't want to get too sidetracked here, but of course Wolfe's \ncomment makes an assumption, the basic mistake that has been at the \nroot of so much of our national crimes and mistakes and lost \nopportunities in the past six years: assuming that \"action\" means \n\"war\", and that no war means no action. After all, in the legal \nprosecutions of criminal gangs, it is quite possible to make sure \nthat only the guilty suffer -- or, at least, far, far more sure than \nin any war. That if we had responded to Al Queada not by comparing \nthem to the Nazis, but by comparing them to the Mafia, all might have \nbeen different.)\n\nBut hate it or not, the politics clearly effected me here. I'm sure \nthat the complexities in Tolkien that were lacking in Wolfe's Wizard \nKnight are a large part of my reaction to it. But the fact that \nWolfe, a conservative writing in my time, a time when conservatives \nhave done so much horrible damage to our country and the world, was a \nbig part too.\n\nAnd I hate this. I hate that my experience of what is, after all, a \nfantasy story unconnected to the present day, is colored by politics. \nI hate that my experience of the writer who, for all his failings, is \none of the best writers working today (in fantasy or out of it), is \ncolored by my knowledge of his politics.**** I hate that I can't just \nsee the dragons and The Knights, but instead see the calls for \nfurther U.S. crimes and blunders and wars.\n\nOne of the personal things I blame Bush and his followers for is that \nthey have created such a terrible, poisonous, and down-right evil \natmosphere that I am far less capable of seeing things in political \nterms than I used to be -- far less capable than I would like to be.\n\nI suspect that even in happier times I would have found The Wizard \nKnight flawed -- for its pacing, for its main character, and, yes, \nfor its deeply problematic medieval ethics. But only nowadays would I \nexperience this as finding it flawed for its politics.\n\nIn this sense, and this sense only, I guess I, too, wish I could go \nback to simpler times.\n\n_____________________________________\n* Other writers have complained about the split focus in The Wizard \nbetween Abel and Toug. I, actually, felt that that was one of the \nthings that The Wizard had going for it: it spent more time focusing \non people who were more complex, less Blessed by The Gods (i.e. \nWolfe), and thereby were, to me, far more sympathetic and \n(ultimately) admirable characters.\n\n** Not in the films: to me, this was the single least excusable \nchange in Jackson's adaptation.\n\n*** Well, if he was worried we wouldn't kill enough innocent people, \nWolfe can rest assured that we have done a bang-up job of it. \n(/political bitterness)\n\nI don't mean here to say that any support of a war is equivalent to \nterrorist thinking; I'm not a pacifist. (Why do we always feel we \nhave to say that? That must be one of the most repeated sentences in \nthe country in the last few years.) I don't think war is always \nwrong. But I don't think war should be used to punish; I think it \nshould be use to defend. And the latter involves not killing \ncivilians. I'm not talking about anything more complicated than just \nwar theory here -- a theory that the Catholic church has done a lot \nto develop, mostly (from what little I've seen of it) along extremely \nsensible lines. Wolfe, famously, is a Catholic; but I don't see the \ninfluence of Catholic thinking about war in this statement.\n\n**** Wolfe has said (I don't have the reference handy) that he used \nto be a Bucklean conservative, but that now his politics are unique \nand personal. Of course, there are a number of political positions in \nthis country -- minority positions, but ones with millions of \nfollowers -- whose adherents frequently view themselves as possessing \nunique, personal, non-partisan politics which they alone have the \nobjectivity and distance to see. Many of these are some variety of \nconservative; and I think there's plenty of evidence that Wolfe fits \ninto one of these camps. If someone wishes to correct me -- not by \nsaying I shouldn't use his politics to judge his works (I agree), but \nthat I've gotten his politics wrong -- then please do so." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Chris", "address": "rasputin_ at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-18T20:08:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The reviewer said:\n\"But I think my biggest complaint -- my biggest stumbling block -- was a pair of intertwined issues: the character of Abel, and the ethics (even, politics) of the book. First off, I found Abel frequently insufferable. Pompous, self-righteous, frequently a bully, he also came off as a Mary Sue (at least in one sense of that polyvalent term of fan critique): not only was he the most courageous and noble person about, but he also had the writer stacking the deck for him at every turn. He had more magical allies, artifacts, assistants, companions, than you could shake a stick at: an invisible ogre doing his bidding! A sky-wolf who happened to be totally loyal! Elves (called Aelf) who were his slaves (yes, not always reliable, but often enough). A magic sword, the blessing and friendship of Odin, various other magic devices he got at the end (the helmet, another sword). Heck, he even becomes a god halfway through the work! Talk about favoritism!* This sort of stacking the deck is hard enough to take when the writer has some self-consciousness about what he's doing, but I didn't see any sign that Wolfe did. He simply loved his creation, and showered him with so many cheats and advantages that any honor he might have accrued felt like a cheat.\"\nNot to put too fine a point on it but I think you have missed the point to a degree, on a very basic level.\n \nIf you found Able to be insufferable, it is very likely because the author wrote him in such a way as to convey that impression.\n \nIf you find the same devices frequently used in the fantasy genre present to an extreme that is pretty recognizable, then you were probably intended to take note of it - it is unlikely to be simple obliviousness.\n \nIf you found the ethics to be problematic then perhaps the situations were intended to cause the reader to reflect on those problems.\n \nI don't mean this to come across as hostile. But what I am saying here is that if you want to understand *any* of Wolfe's work as anything more than a rip-roarin' tale of Adventure, you have to approach it with such considerations in mind." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f7617370709181324x5af708c0j638c302f418f6667@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-18T20:24:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Stephen,\n\nFirst, thank you for posting this. It is a fascinating read.\n\nSecond, I would concur, though with a different spin, with Chris's\nresponse. My emphasis would be to remember that Able is a Wolfe\nnarrator -- that is, an *unreliable* narrator. He may well be telling\nthe truth as he sees it but he will betray by his words -- by his\ninconsistencies, his hesitations, and his omissions -- that the truth\nhe sees is not necessarily the truth that happens to be the case.\n\nThird, I wish (as a 21st-century liberal, more or less) to dispute\nthe idea that the words \"glory, honor, courage, or hallow\" are\nsomehow bad or disvalued in the modern or postmodern context.\n\nI agree that all four terms can be used in a way that causes Bad\nThings to happen. But because a thing can be abused does not\nmean that it has no legitimate use.\n\nWell: I will semi-grant you \"glory.\" Glory as a value is at best\nambiguous and dangerous; to seek after glory for its own\nsake almost inevitably leads to disastrous consequences for\n*someone*. But to glorify those who behave well and benefit\nothers strikes me as a good way to encourage that behavior.\n\n\"Honor\" is far less problematic. As something to fight for, it has\na dangerous aspect; but as something to behave with, it is\na desirable trait in all persons. The problem arises only when\nthe two are separated -- when one expects honor without\nbehaving honorably.\n\nBut where I really question your judgment is in disvaluing\ncourage. Courage is that trait that leads one to do what is\nright despite consequences to oneself, and should not be\nconfused with mere reckless physical bravery. It takes a\ngreat deal of courage to say \"no\" to injustice, and without\nit the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the\ngay rights movement, etc., would have achieved exactly\nnothing.\n\nAs for \"hallow,\" well, perhaps you should tell me what it is\nyou find so dangerous in the word. To me it is ... well, for\nexample, I consider both the US Constitution and the United\nNations Declaration of Universal Human Rights to be\nhallowed documents, and I utterly concur with Abraham\nLincoln in considering the battlefield at Gettysburg to be\nhallowed ground -- not because people died there but\nbecause of *why* they (at least the Union soldiers) died\nthere." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant\n-----\nhttp://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer\nhttp://www.danehyoakes.com\nI am miserable, he is miserable,\nWe are miserable.\nCan't we have a party? Would he rather have a party?" } ] }, { "message_id": "<855489.45058.qm@web81411.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Brent Dyer", "address": "brentdyer at sbcglobal.net" }, "date": "2007-09-18T20:32:21+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<1f7617370709181324x5af708c0j638c302f418f6667@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree with Chris and, at the risk of piling on, would amplify his point even a little more.\n\nUnlike many (most? almost all?) authors, Wolfe does not present his themes in a simple, didactic format designed to lead the reader to the answer. Most authors make it clear what behavior they approve or disapprove of by the ultimate outcome. If a character does something \"bad,\" that character will ultimately suffer as a result or, at the very least, the reader will see how that action causes misery to other, sympathetic characters. In Wolfe, on the other hand, \"bad\" behavior frequently goes unpunished or, even worse, it will only hurt unsympathetic characters. Personally, I think that this makes Wolfe's writing especially realistic because it reflects what really happens---bad people do go unpunished and bad acts frequently do seem to cause ambivalent results. I think that Wolfe is reflecting the real-life tension between ethics and reality and is challenging his readers to examine their own ideas and feelings on these issues rather than simply\n asking them to agree with his own.\n\nI also have to say that I disagree pretty strongly with Stephen on his argument that there is a tension between Abel as a \"modern American teenager\" and his ready acceptance of a rigidly hierarchical society. As the father of 5 budding pre-teens between the ages of 8 and 12, I think Wolfe has it exactly right. American teenagers live every day of their lives in a hierarchical society, albeit a society in which they sometimes have the ability to change classes. Abel did exactly what most American teenagers would do if they suddenly became the strongest, most talented, best looking person around--he stepped right up to try to join the top of the hierarchy.\n\nThank for sharing your review Chris, it's interesting to read the opinion of someone who didn't enjoy the books at much as I.\n\n\n----- Original Message ---- \nFrom: Chris \nTo: The Urth Mailing List \nSent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 3:08:37 PM \nSubject: Re: (urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight \n\nThe reviewer said: \n\"But I think my biggest complaint -- my biggest stumbling block -- was \na pair of intertwined issues: the character of Abel, and the ethics \n(even, politics) of the book. \n\nFirst off, I found Abel frequently insufferable. Pompous, \nself-righteous, frequently a bully, he also came off as a Mary Sue \n(at least in one sense of that polyvalent term of fan critique): not \nonly was he the most courageous and noble person about, but he also \nhad the writer stacking the deck for him at every turn. He had more \nmagical allies, artifacts, assistants, companions, than you could \nshake a stick at: an invisible ogre doing his bidding! A sky-wolf who \nhappened to be totally loyal! Elves (called Aelf) who were his slaves \n(yes, not always reliable, but often enough). A magic sword, the \nblessing and friendship of Odin, various other magic devices he got \nat the end (the helmet, another sword). Heck, he even becomes a god \nhalfway through the work! Talk about favoritism!* \n\nThis sort of stacking the deck is hard enough to take when the writer \nhas some self-consciousness about what he's doing, but I didn't see \nany sign that Wolfe did. He simply loved his creation, and showered \nhim with so many cheats and advantages that any honor he might have \naccrued felt like a cheat.\" \n\nNot to put too fine a point on it but I think you have missed the point to a degree, on a very basic level. \n\nIf you found Able to be insufferable, it is very likely because the author wrote him in such a way as to convey that impression. \n\nIf you find the same devices frequently used in the fantasy genre present to an extreme that is pretty recognizable, then you were probably intended to take note of it - it is unlikely to be simple obliviousness. \n\nIf you found the ethics to be problematic then perhaps the situations were intended to cause the reader to reflect on those problems. \n\nI don't mean this to come across as hostile. But what I am saying here is that if you want to understand *any* of Wolfe's work as anything more than a rip-roarin' tale of Adventure, you have to approach it with such considerations in mind. \n\n\n\nMore photos; more messages; more whatever — Get MORE with Windows Live? Hotmail?. NOW with 5GB storage. Get more!" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-18T21:09:19+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<855489.45058.qm@web81411.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sep 18, 2007, at 3:32 PM, Brent Dyer wrote:\nAbel did exactly what most American teenagers would do if they \nsuddenly became the strongest, most talented, best looking person \naround--he stepped right up to try to join the top of the hierarchy." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Compare with the movie \"Mean Girls\".\n\nWait, did I just admit to watching that?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Stephen Frug", "address": "sfrug at post.harvard.edu" }, "date": "2007-09-18T21:13:55+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks for the comments so far! I think I'll wait until I reply \nfully, hoping that there will be more of them.\n\nAnd don't worry about \"piling on\" -- I knew what I was doing when I \nposted a largely critical review of a Gene Wolfe to a Gene Wolfe \nboard. I expected disagreement -- in fact I hoped for it, since I'm \ncurious about other's views.\n\nBut I will ask responders to keep in mind two (related) things.\n\nFirst, please don't assume I've never read Wolfe before, and/or don't \nunderstand how complex his works can sometimes be. I worked hard to \nmake it clear that I have read a lot of Wolfe (not everything he's \nwritten, but a great many of his books), and that I *do* understand \nhow complex he can be. I know that Wolfe \"has never in his life told \na straightforward tale\" -- that's why I quoted John Clute to that \neffect.\n\nIt's simply that I don't think that *everything* about his work is \nthat complex; I would argue that there is a surface *as well as* \ndepth to his works.\n\nWhich leads me to point two: I don't think it's a sufficient answer \nto say that any criticism must *a priori* be wrong since this book is \nwritten by Wolfe. I made -- I trust -- a good prima facie case about \nsome problems in The Wizard Knight (problems that I *don't* think all \nhis work has -- thus my examples of The Book of the New Sun and The \nFifth Head of Cerberus as more complex and, I argue, ultimately more \nsuccessful works).\n\nThis, it seems to me, switches the burden of proof. I *acknowledge* \nthat Wolfe is a subtle, devious writer who uses unreliable narrators \nand tells his stories in oblique and hard-to-decipher ways. *Despite \nthis* I claim that the criticisms I made hold.\n\nThus it's not answer to say that \"perhaps something more complex is \ngoing on\", or \"Wolfe's narrators are sometimes unreliable\": I think \nthat you have to actually *argue* that in *this* case this is true \n*in ways relevant to my critiques*. Either make the case here, or \npresent a link to another case.\n\nI think this is true in all of the aspects of this argument.... but \nmost especially in terms of a sentiment like \"If you found the ethics \nto be problematic then perhaps the situations were intended to cause \nthe reader to reflect on those problems.\", where I not only made a \ntextual case, but also pointed towards a lot of extra-textual \nevidence about Wolfe's views and intents.\n\nNone of this is to say that I think my position is unassailable: on \nthe contrary, I posted the review here because I am interested in \ncounter-arguments. But I am interested in counter-*arguments*, not \nunsubstantiated claims that it is (or, worse, a priori must be) more \ncomplex than I am presuming.\n\nI look forward to more arguing against my position! (Or, heck, for \nit too. If people pile on great, but I wouldn't *mind* agreement. :> \n)\n\nStephen Frug\n\nPS: Oh, and remember that \"glory, honor, courage, or hallow\" is a \n*quote* -- from Ernest Hemingway -- not my words. I presented it as \nan exemplar of a broader change in attitude that occurred (in complex \nways at various times, but most especially) after the first world \nwar. If you think I'm wrong that this happened, or this attitude's \nwrong, then fine. But to nit-pick the choice of those four words is \nto miss the point: they weren't my words, it was my citation of \nanother's words.\n\n(The block-quote is clearer in the blog-version of this review, which \nyou can find here:\nhttp://stephenfrug.blogspot.com/2007/09/writer-as-werwolf-mixed-thoughts-on.html\n-- I apologize if my unfamiliarity with the formatting of the Urth \nlist made what was a quote and what wasn't less clear than it should \nhave been.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "<159981.15317.qm@web35910.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "stilskin", "address": "acronus at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2007-09-18T21:23:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "--- Stephen Frug wrote:\nIf people pile on great, but I wouldn't *mind*\nagreement. :> \n\n\nFor what it's worth, I agree with you Stephen on many\nof your points. Totally as far as Wolfe's inability\nto convincingly write dialogue for a modern teenager. \nAnd partially when it comes to Abel as an exemplar of\nsome really awful \"virtues\" -- I think that Wolfe does\nreally confuse a kind of mythical chivalry with what\nit must have been like in the real world, and his\nconservative religious beliefs make him yearn for a\nreturn to this mythical past which he believes was a\nfactual one. Abel is an unreliable narrator, but I\nthink he's a reliable guide to what Wolfe believes is\nnoble, heroic, courageous, etc. behavior. This is\neven more true, IMO, of Chris in Pirate Freedom, which\non the surface appears much more straightforward than\nWK but actually, at least from a moral or religious\nperspective, seems to me a far more troublesome book\n-- troublesome in the sense of its underlying argument\nbeing highly complicated and at odds with its surface." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Stephen Frug\n\nPS: Oh, and remember that \"glory, honor, courage, or\nhallow\" is a \n*quote* -- from Ernest Hemingway -- not my words. I\npresented it as \nan exemplar of a broader change in attitude that\noccurred (in complex \nways at various times, but most especially) after\nthe first world \nwar. If you think I'm wrong that this happened, or\nthis attitude's \nwrong, then fine. But to nit-pick the choice of\nthose four words is \nto miss the point: they weren't my words, it was my\ncitation of \nanother's words.\n\n(The block-quote is clearer in the blog-version of\nthis review, which \nyou can find here:" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "http://stephenfrug.blogspot.com/2007/09/writer-as-werwolf-mixed-thoughts-on.html" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "-- I apologize if my unfamiliarity with the\nformatting of the Urth \nlist made what was a quote and what wasn't less\nclear than it should \nhave been.)>" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f7617370709181513h59f6cc6fl717c8aa5c70e5de7@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-18T22:13:23+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<159981.15317.qm@web35910.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Stephen,\n\nI am not a scholar, nor do I portray one on this list. I'm this guy who\nwrites stuff. As such I take responsibility for what I write, and hope\nothers will do likewise.\n\nWhy did I pick on the four words you quoted from Hemingway?\nBecause you chose them to quote; I took it that you considered\nthat quote to make a point you wished to make, as well as or\nbetter than you could make it (the alternative assumption, that it\nwas an appeal to authority, would be uncharitable, not only\nbecause it's a bad form of argument, but because Hemingway is\na bad form of authority). That being the case, I went after the\nquote because I deeply disagree with the point it makes.\n\nI do not think that modernism involves some Nietzschean\n\"revaluation of all values.\" I think that courage and honor are still\nvalid and valuable in the modern world (I won't say the\npostmodern world; it is debateable whether the postmodern\nstance allows *anything* to be valid or valuable). I think that\nglory may be more ambiguous in the modern world than it was\nin the classical world, but that it was at least dangerous there,\nand that it has at least some potential value and validity here.\nAnd if you take Wolfe's formulation, which (if I recall) is honor,\ncourage, and fidelity, you have three things that I regard as\namong the most basic values of any civilized society.\n\nThus, a critique that seems to make the assumption that these\nvalues are dangerous -- indeed, to take this as a given that\nthe reader will inevitably agree with -- is going to receive from\nme a reaction somewhere on the scale from \"hostile\" to \"what\nthe *fuck*!??!\", no matter whether that critique is of Wolfe, of\nTolkien (who had seen on the battlefields of WWI the very\nthings that created Hemingway's alienation from these\nvalues), or of some writer I don't even *like*.\n\nIf you can't tell, I most assuredly don't disagree with you because\nyou are criticizing Wolfe. I've done so occasionally: for example,\nI find some of his more conservative values a bit distressing, and\nbecome frustrated with his assumption that his readers are as\nsmart as he is and can figure out his puzzles. Lord knows I'm not.\n\nNo; I disagree with you because I find the values you express\nin your critique distressing, much as you apparently do those\nWolfe expresses (or appears to express) in his novel. I therefore\naddressed your critique primarily at that level." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant\n-----\nhttp://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer\nhttp://www.danehyoakes.com\nI am miserable, he is miserable,\nWe are miserable.\nCan't we have a party? Would he rather have a party?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Chris", "address": "rasputin_ at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-18T22:32:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I would agree with what you are saying to a point - it is a dangerous practice to assume that simply every tiny detail is crafted and planned to have a deeper, inscrutable meaning.\n \nHowever the reason I pointed to the particular things that I did was that these are not items that are at all inscrutable or obscure. The problematic ethics are standard fare in Wolfe, and it's almost never safe to assume that they simply present straightforward mouthpieces for Wolfe's position on a given issue. (Even with characters like Silk who seem much more plausible \"heroes\" than Able).\n \nThe advantages heaped on Able are a transparent mirror to those that are really, really common in the fantasy genre. The fact that they usually do not appear in such a jarring, obvious way makes it less plausible, if anything, that Wolfe was unaware of what he was doing. And further, given how Wolfe exploits a number of disconnects, including the difference between the romanticized knight and what the knight, as described and put in context must have actually been like, it doesn't seem just \"possible\" but rather sort of glaringly obvious that genre conventions are going to be turned around.\n \nI did not point these things out to nitpick, or to claim to have some obscure mystical knowledge of Wolfe's master plan. I pointed them out because I feel they are very basic and not tremendously controversial or arcane. Whether it makes a big deal to your review I suppose depends primarily on how deeply these considerations affected your initial orientation when you set out to interpret the books.-- \"When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.\" -- Lin Yutang\n\n\nDate: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:13:55 -0400To: urth at urth.netFrom: sfrug at post.harvard.eduSubject: Re: (urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight\n\n\n\n\nThanks for the comments so far! I think I'll wait until I reply fully, hoping that there will be more of them.\n\nAnd don't worry about \"piling on\" -- I knew what I was doing when I posted a largely critical review of a Gene Wolfe to a Gene Wolfe board. I expected disagreement -- in fact I hoped for it, since I'm curious about other's views.\n\nBut I will ask responders to keep in mind two (related) things.\n\nFirst, please don't assume I've never read Wolfe before, and/or don't understand how complex his works can sometimes be. I worked hard to make it clear that I have read a lot of Wolfe (not everything he's written, but a great many of his books), and that I *do* understand how complex he can be. I know that Wolfe \"has never in his life told a straightforward tale\" -- that's why I quoted John Clute to that effect.\n\nIt's simply that I don't think that *everything* about his work is that complex; I would argue that there is a surface *as well as* depth to his works.\n\nWhich leads me to point two: I don't think it's a sufficient answer to say that any criticism must *a priori* be wrong since this book is written by Wolfe. I made -- I trust -- a good prima facie case about some problems in The Wizard Knight (problems that I *don't* think all his work has -- thus my examples of The Book of the New Sun and The Fifth Head of Cerberus as more complex and, I argue, ultimately more successful works).\n\nThis, it seems to me, switches the burden of proof. I *acknowledge* that Wolfe is a subtle, devious writer who uses unreliable narrators and tells his stories in oblique and hard-to-decipher ways. *Despite this* I claim that the criticisms I made hold.\n\nThus it's not answer to say that \"perhaps something more complex is going on\", or \"Wolfe's narrators are sometimes unreliable\": I think that you have to actually *argue* that in *this* case this is true *in ways relevant to my critiques*. Either make the case here, or present a link to another case.\n\nI think this is true in all of the aspects of this argument.... but most especially in terms of a sentiment like \"If you found the ethics to be problematic then perhaps the situations were intended to cause the reader to reflect on those problems.\", where I not only made a textual case, but also pointed towards a lot of extra-textual evidence about Wolfe's views and intents.\n\nNone of this is to say that I think my position is unassailable: on the contrary, I posted the review here because I am interested in counter-arguments. But I am interested in counter-*arguments*, not unsubstantiated claims that it is (or, worse, a priori must be) more complex than I am presuming.\n\nI look forward to more arguing against my position! (Or, heck, for it too. If people pile on great, but I wouldn't *mind* agreement. :> )\n\nStephen Frug\n\nPS: Oh, and remember that \"glory, honor, courage, or hallow\" is a *quote* -- from Ernest Hemingway -- not my words. I presented it as an exemplar of a broader change in attitude that occurred (in complex ways at various times, but most especially) after the first world war. If you think I'm wrong that this happened, or this attitude's wrong, then fine. But to nit-pick the choice of those four words is to miss the point: they weren't my words, it was my citation of another's words.\n\n(The block-quote is clearer in the blog-version of this review, which you can find here:\nhttp://stephenfrug.blogspot.com/2007/09/writer-as-werwolf-mixed-thoughts-on.html\n-- I apologize if my unfamiliarity with the formatting of the Urth list made what was a quote and what wasn't less clear than it should have been.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Stephen Frug", "address": "sfrug at post.harvard.edu" }, "date": "2007-09-18T23:39:09+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l,\n\nWhen I quoted Hemingway, I was not appealing to authority (which of \ncourse I agree is not a relevant mode of argument), but nor was I \nsaying that his every word was precisely what I would have written \nmyself; I was doing something else, namely, citing him as an example \nof a change in attitude, the general thrust of which I agreed with -- \nwhich doesn't mean that I agree with every word he wrote \n(particularly given that that quote is from a novel, etc.).\n\nAll of which is to say: if you disagree with this view, then fine: \nthat's a valid point of view. I might engage you on it later. You \nare certainly right that I more or less assumed that readers would \nagree with what I am calling the modern view, and that if you don't, \nWTF is a reasonable response.\n\nAs for the criticize me for criticizing Wolfe... remember that my \nearlier post was a general post: I don't think you were doing that.\n\nAnyway, let me reiterate that I am not trying to shut off criticism, \nand that I hope that this discussion can be conducted with mutual \nrespect on all sides.\n\nAs i said, I was writing in a way that assumed agreement... probably \nI unwise, but what can I say, I'm imperfect... and I'm not sure I \nwant to get into a meta-argument about the value of these values. \n(Though, again, it was certainly a reasonable line of critique for \nyou to make.)\n\nBut as a basic stab, let me try this. You rightly re-focus attention \non Wolfe's words rather than Hemingways, and cite the trio from the \nGaiman interview (which I also cited): \"honor, courage, and \nfidelity\". So I'll phrase my point using those words.\n\nWolfe says -- to put those words in a bit of context -- that he hoped \nThe Wizard Knight would take readers \"To a country where honor, \ncourage, and fidelity actually mean something\".\n\nI agree that honor, courage and fidelity are words that can have \nperfectly valid, worthy meanings -- in today's world, among others.\n\nBut I think that the specific meanings of those words that is implied \nnot only by their being used together, but also by the implication \nthat today's world is not one in which they \"actually mean something\" \n-- in other words, the meanings specified by an idea that it is the \nspecific meanings of the words that is absent in today's world but \npresent in the society portrayed in the Wizard Knight -- I think that \nthose specific meanings of those three words add up to a specific set \nof ideas -- an idealized version of a medieval knightly ideal -- \nwhich is basically the same set of ideas that Hemingway's quote was \npointing to.\n\nAnd I certainly will maintain that, in today's world, that idea -- \nthe one pointed to by both Hemingway's sentence (negatively) and \nWolfe's sentence from the Gaiman interview (positively), and which I \nargue is pointed to in Wolfe's Wizard Knight -- I think that that \nidea is, in fact, quite troubling and dangerous. Which, again, is \nnot to say that there aren't other types of honor, courage and \nfidelity which remain perfectly valid, indeed crucial, values.\n\nHope that clarifies.\n\nStephen" } ] }, { "message_id": "<11051.67.142.130.26.1190159229.squirrel@brunians.org>", "from": { "name": "brunians at brunians.org", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2007-09-18T23:47:09+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " I might engage you on it later. You\nare certainly right that I more or less assumed that readers would\nagree with what I am calling the modern view...." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not a good assumption, necessarily, with this audience.\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "<695994.55850.qm@web81415.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Brent Dyer", "address": "brentdyer at sbcglobal.net" }, "date": "2007-09-19T00:16:38+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<11051.67.142.130.26.1190159229.squirrel@brunians.org>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Stephen wrote:\n\n***\n\nBut I think that the specific meanings of those words that is implied not only by their being used together, but also by the implication that today's world is not one in which they \"actually mean something\" -- in other words, the meanings specified by an idea that it is the specific meanings of the words that is absent in today's world but present in the society portrayed in the Wizard Knight -- I think that those specific meanings of those three words add up to a specific set of ideas -- an idealized version of a medieval knightly ideal -- which is basically the same set of ideas that Hemingway's quote was pointing to. \n\n\nAnd I certainly will maintain that, in today's world, that idea -- the one pointed to by both Hemingway's sentence (negatively) and Wolfe's sentence from the Gaiman interview (positively), and which I argue is pointed to in Wolfe's Wizard Knight -- I think that that idea is, in fact, quite troubling and dangerous. Which, again, is not to say that there aren't other types of honor, courage and fidelity which remain perfectly valid, indeed crucial, values. \n\n\n***\n\nFirst, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit to being mostly ignorant about Hemingway and his work because I find him to be personally distasteful and his writing to be mind-numbingly boring. Others (many others, actually) certainly disagree with me, and, given his pretty well-established place in literature, I cannot be too derisive of their opinions. In other words, I can't discount the possibility that my problem with Hemingway is the result of my own flaws and not his.\n\nHaving said all that, I can't help but think that Stephen is overreading the quote from a Farewell to Arms:\n\n\" Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were \nobscene beside the concrete names of villages, the names of roads, \nthe names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.\"\n\nIt seems to me that Hemingway is not saying that the words \"glory, honor, courage, or hallow\" are inherently obscene. Rather, he seems to be saying that, in the context of WWI which was--in many ways--a rather nihilistic conflict, the use of those words to justify the fighting and destruction was obscene when considered next to the the things and people that were destroyed or damaged by the violence that they precipitated.\n\nI'm not sure Stephen is suggesting by saying that Wolfe's use of \"honor, courage, and fidelity\" in the Gaiman interview is \"dangerous.\" Are we to, instead, prefer a world that favors pettiness, cowardice, and betrayal? That seems dangerous.\n\nBefore I get accused of being a \"conservative,\" let me assure everyone that I am a moderate with liberal leanings. That does not mean, however, that I can't agree with Wolfe's principles on some of these things. What Wolfe seems to be doing in the Gaiman interview is bemoaning that perversion of those words in modern parlance.\n\nHow many times were the words \"honor\" and \"courage\" used to justify the invasion of Iraq? Quite a lot. How much did starting that war actually have to do with either of those things? In my opinion, they weren't even considerations for the Bush administration--they were just once-powerful, noble words that have been turned into props and propaganda for the brand of American political opportunism that, unfortunately and sadly, seems to be practiced equally by both liberals and conservatives.\n\nThere is nothing wrong with true honor, courage and fidelity. The real problem is with the people who have soiled those words with greed, deception, and hatred." } ] }, { "message_id": "<77a389ab0709181726w33a23270m7b3275523952c3af@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Spencer Hensley", "address": "spencer.hensley at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-19T00:26:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<695994.55850.qm@web81415.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thank you for posting this, Stephen.\n\nI'm glad to see a little criticism here, and in some ways it was, perhaps,\n*courageous* (GASP!) of you to make such a post and face what you must have\nknown would be nearly uniform disagreement. Though I count myself as a large\nfan of Wolfe (though, no where near as large a *reader* of Wolfe as I would\nlike to be, and as many of the other, more frequent posters, are), I am\nsometimes annoyed by the seeming tendency to respond to any criticism with\n\"obviously you just didn't get it,\" or to assume that there simply MUST be\nsome depth that remains unseen. Not that such responses aren't\nsometimes--even most of the time--suitable, but even Wolfe has his\nweaknesses, as do all writers.\n\nLike you, I liked The Wizard Knight. I really did! But, also like you, I\ntook issue with the problematic ethical stances taken by a modern character\nsuch as Abel. I have always been uneasy with the ethical behavior of Wolfe's\nheroes, but in every other case have been willing to write it off as a\nrealistic representation of behavior in the given environment. Abel,\nhowever, as a modern American teenager, should have, I felt, struggled to\nsome degree with the behavior he was exhibiting.\n\nI am actually willing to concede to the \"unreliable narrator\" argument,\nhere. It stands to reason that Able, as an adolescent boy, might want to\npresent himself in such a light. Here I agree with Adam Stephanides insofar\nas I think the novel reads like a \"boy's fantasy of how he would behave if\ngiven a powerful adult body.\" But at the end of the day... that's just not\nan interesting subject to me! It's an instance where I think Wolfe's\nunreliable narrator actually fails him in a fundamental way.\n\nAnyway, chalk one post up for \"support.\"\nThanks!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 9/18/07, Stephen Frug wrote:\n\n\nGreetings Urthlings. I've read this message list before, but never\nposted to it. (Unless this message is itself a duplicate... the\nfirst time seems to have gotten lost...) But I just wrote a long\nreview of Wizard Knight which I posted to my blog\n(http://stephenfrug.blogspot.com), and I thought that readers here\nwould be interested in it -- and I am definitely interested in\nresponses -- so I am cross-posting it. Hope that's okay. If my\nlinks & block-quote formatting don't come through, you can go to the\nblog-version to get them.\n\nI just finished reading Gene Wolfe's two-volume novel, The Wizard\nKnight, made up of The Knight (2004) and The Wizard (2005). The\nfollowing is a long essay reviewing (in some sense) the work,\nfocusing on what I found problematic about it, rather than the (quite\nconsiderable number of things) I liked in it. This review-essay will\nhave spoilers -- not major ones, but existent ones -- for the\nentirety of the work. Now, I'm not spoiling, I don't think, any of\nthe Big Secrets from the book -- certainly not from the second half,\nwhere the cluster. So, in my opinion, there's nothing here that would\nreally \"spoil\" a first reading of the work if you haven't read it\nyet. But if you want to approach it with no knowledge whatsoever, you\nshould stop reading here. (Oh, and I guess there are spoilers for The\nLord of the Rings too.)\n\nI think my most basic reaction is that it's good but not Wolfe's best\n-- not up there with The Book of the New Sun or The Fifth Head of\nCerberus, say. That it's well written is not in doubt: it's by Wolfe,\nafter all. But I had some problems with it -- some of which are\nprobably in my head, some of which are in the work, and some of which\nare in the chemical mixture of the two.\n\nIt's hard to criticize Wolfe, though, because of his reputation as a\ntrickster: if you present a negative opinion of anything the man\nwrites, you instantly lay yourself open to the charge that you just\ndidn't get it. And not infrequently the charge will be valid. But it\nwon't always be valid: Wolfe is human, humans are imperfect, and even\nShakespeare wrote some clunkers. And while a lot of aspects of\nWolfe's fiction are far more complex than they appear even at third\nglance, other aspects are, finally, not: they are straightforward,\ndespite the efforts of Wolfe's more serious fans (an overlapping but\nnot identical group to Wolfe's more serious readers) to try and make\nthem so.\n\nAnd, for me at least, it's even more intimidating when the backs of\nthe books are filled with breathless praise from some of my other\nfavorite writers: Neil Gaiman! Kim Stanley Robinson! Everyone seems\nto agree that this is the very best book since Wolfe's last very best\nbook, and you just have to love it!\n\nWell, I didn't. I liked it, but also had some real problems with it.\nSo at the risk of derision for missing the point, I'm going to begin\nwith some straightforward critiques of a writer who (in John Clute's\napt words) \"has never in his life told a straightforward tale\".\n\nI think the first half of The Knight was slow. There were a number of\nplaces where, if the book hadn't said Gene Wolfe on the cover, I\nwould have given up. Partly this was because the book, while being\nslow, presented itself mostly as an adventure book: it was not slow\nin the good way that, say, Proust is. It was slow where it shouldn't\nhave been. For me, at least, this lessened as I went along, and by\nthe end of The Knight I was fully gripped, and stayed so through The\nWizard.\n\nIn a related criticism, the book was unevenly paced. This is related,\nnot identical, because I'm not just referring to the first half of\nvolume one. The rest of volume one and the first two-thirds or so of\nvolume two, while never (for me) dull, proceeded at a stately pace\nthrough the events of the tale -- leaving the ending to be told at\nbreakneck speed and with more-than-usual abridgement. Parts of this\nare due to Wolfe's habit of telling the most serious parts of his\nstories by indirection -- but only, I think, parts.\n\nWolfe's uneven pacing is actually habitual for him -- there are\ntraces of it in The Book of the New Sun, and it's a more serious\nproblem in The Book of the Long Sun. And at this point I'm coming\naround to the belief that while this is partly due to careful\nauthorial craft, it is also partly a failure of it: Wolfe simply gets\ntoo wrapped up in the early stages of some of his adventures and\ntells them at (at times) tedious length.\n\nWolfe, as has been frequently noted, writes puzzles, works which hint\nat stories and cosmology and theology which are only partly and\nobscurely visible on the surface. But he also writes (and clearly\nlikes to write and, from what he's said of his reading tastes, likes)\nadventure stories which form the surface under which those puzzles\nmove. And while Wolfe is a genius at writing puzzles, he is, I think,\nuneven at writing adventures. He likes it more than he's good at it.\nAnd I find that my favorite Wolfe works are often those where he\ndoesn't try -- in his short stories, for instance, in which he is\noften simply doing something else.\n\nThere are a lot of interpretive puzzles in The Wizard Knight, as\nthere are in all of Wolfe's work. Some of them I got the first time\naround. Others I didn't; still others I probably even missed the\nexistence of. And I feel that if I reread it -- particularly, if I\nreread it right now, with the first reading fresh in my mind -- I\nwould probably get a lot more of them -- might understand, to pick\none example out of many, what the complex relationship between\nMythgarthr and America was supposed to be, a relationship (along with\nthe relationship of parallel or crossing characters) which Wolfe\nhinted a lot about but did not make clear -- at least to me -- on the\nfirst reading.\n\nBut, frankly, I didn't like it enough to want to reread it --\ncertainly not now. (Other Wolfe works I have liked enough to reread\nthem, whether I found time to or not.) I'd rather read something else\n-- even something else of Wolfe's. Wolfe's puzzles are marvelous, but\nif the supporting structure isn't good enough, I don't want to take\nthe time to figure them out. And at least in the case of The Wizard\nKnight, I didn't.\n\nOn to other topics.\n\nI think Wolfe's writing of Abel's voice was profoundly uneven.\nUsually in a high and archaic register, it would lapse at times into\nslang -- into (to my ear) outdated slang, slang that uneasily mixed\ncontemporary life (macs) with some sort of parody of fifties usage\n(swell!). The slang itself was jarringly inconsistent; and the\nmixture of slang into otherwise unbroken pages of high-register\nspeech (both dialogue and the narrator's voice) was frequently\nawkward in the extreme. Wolfe has said in an interview that he didn't\nhave any trouble writing a modern teenager, since he knows them and\nlives near them; but I think there was a real failure of tone here.\nNow, maybe, this is all part of some complex Wolfean trick, some\ndeliberate mixture of tone which served some thematic, portraiture or\nother purpose... but I sure didn't see it. Until someone convinces me\notherwise, I think this is simply a failure on his part.\n\nI should perhaps mention that there was a lot to like here, since\nI've so far been mostly negative. It is, as I said, well-written\n(save for the -- thankfully not all that frequent -- lapses in tone\njust noted); it is mostly exciting. The cosmology was fascinating,\nthe magic mysterious, many of the characters quite interesting. The\nreinvention of by-now standard fantasy elements -- the Norse mythos,\nelves, and lots more -- was refreshing and fun. There's a lot to like\nhere.\n\nBut I think my biggest complaint -- my biggest stumbling block -- was\na pair of intertwined issues: the character of Abel, and the ethics\n(even, politics) of the book.\n\nFirst off, I found Abel frequently insufferable. Pompous,\nself-righteous, frequently a bully, he also came off as a Mary Sue\n(at least in one sense of that polyvalent term of fan critique): not\nonly was he the most courageous and noble person about, but he also\nhad the writer stacking the deck for him at every turn. He had more\nmagical allies, artifacts, assistants, companions, than you could\nshake a stick at: an invisible ogre doing his bidding! A sky-wolf who\nhappened to be totally loyal! Elves (called Aelf) who were his slaves\n(yes, not always reliable, but often enough). A magic sword, the\nblessing and friendship of Odin, various other magic devices he got\nat the end (the helmet, another sword). Heck, he even becomes a god\nhalfway through the work! Talk about favoritism!*\n\nThis sort of stacking the deck is hard enough to take when the writer\nhas some self-consciousness about what he's doing, but I didn't see\nany sign that Wolfe did. He simply loved his creation, and showered\nhim with so many cheats and advantages that any honor he might have\naccrued felt like a cheat.\n\nAbel adjusted with damning speed to the hierarchy of a medieval\nsociety. Here his American origins were least convincing, if not\ndownright morally foul. It's natural for those raised in a profoundly\nhierarchical society to accept it as normal, to expect deference from\nthe lower-born and give it to the higher. But it's inexplicable for\nan American -- even an American boy. It makes Abel seem like a deeply\nimmoral man -- in a way that no one else in the novel seems immoral,\nsince after all, no one else in the novel ought to have a cultural\ngrounding in notions of equality and the malevolence of fixed class.\nOh, sure, this is not absolutely true: Abel makes no effort to hide\nhis peasant ancestry, and seems to think it doesn't matter, so he's\ncertainly less class conscious, more egalitarian, than most of the\npeople he meets. But he also expects an enormous level of deference\nfrom his \"inferiors\", and seems to regard his \"superiors\" has being\ndue a great deal of it. And yes, he was frequently kind, even\ngenerous to those below him -- but in such a way that their status\nwas perfectly clear.\n\nFor me, the incident that stuck with me was the one early on in The\nKnight where Abel went to get a sea-berth on a ship. Quoted a price\nby the captain, he insisted on having the best cabin (turning the\ncaptain out) at less than half the price quoted... and to get it, he\nliterally threatened the man's life. He acted, in short, like the\nbrigands whose thievery he used to justify their slaughter not a few\nchapters before, taking what he wanted because he wanted it, and --\nand in some sense this was, to me, even more damning -- because he\nclearly felt that it was his due as a knight.\n\nAgain, if there was any sign that all of this that Wolfe was\npresenting a critique of Abel, that would be fine. If he was being\npresented as a boy who hadn't learned better, or a man trying but\nfailing to be good... but while Wolfe's reputation as a subtle writer\nmight make one reach for such an interpretation, I didn't see any\nreal signs of it in the text. I got the impression that we were\nsimply supposed to think Abel was a good and admirable person, that\nWolfe certainly thought so, that he was blind to all his (quite\ndamning) flaws.\n\nAdam Stephanides, who hated The Knight (which, I hope I have made\nclear, I didn't), nevertheless has a passage in his self-described\n\"rant\" about it that strikes me as sadly on the mark:\n\n Sir Able of the High Heart, the Uberknight who his inferiors\nwillingly submit to (if not, they're treacherous curs, whom he\nrightfully punishes), not any of the other characters, not the world,\nand not the plot, such as it was. Able doesn't behave like an\nadolescent, magically given an adult body or not: what he does behave\nlike is an adolescent boy's fantasy of how he would behave if given a\npowerful adult body. Nor does he sound in the least like an\nadolescent, contemporary or otherwise. When Able talks to other\ncharacters, he sounds like the generic Wolfe Competent Male; when\nhe's narrating, he mostly sounds like Hoof, except when Wolfe throws\nin some incongruous \"poetic\" passages, or remembers that Able is\nsupposed to be a modern teenager and tosses in a reference to Macs or\nbaseball.\n\nOverly-strongly put. But not, I think, fundamentally mistaken about\nthe problems of the book.\n\nAnd Wolfe's apparent (and, I believe, genuine) fundamental admiration\nfor Abel connects to the deeply problematic ethics of the work as a\nwhole -- and, finally, to its politics.\n\nOne of modernity's powerful cultural changes was the rotting of the\nchivalric code. It's crucial to remember that this happened, not due\nto our inability to live up to, but to historical events' revealing\nof its essential malevolency -- at least in the context of a\n(technologically, socially) modern society, if not in general. The\nmost famous articulation of this point, I believe, is Hemmingway's,\nin A Farewell to Arms:\n\n Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were\nobscene beside the concrete names of villages, the names of roads,\nthe names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.\n\nWhat I found most profoundly disturbing was the sense that what Wolfe\nwas ultimately trying to do was to redeem words such as glory, honor,\ncourage or hallow -- words that, for inescapably important moral\nreasons, have indeed become (if indeed they were not always) obscene.\n\nAnd this, at least, I don't think was my simplifying the work of a\ncomplex writer. (Rather, I think this was my (liberal) reaction to an\nessentially very conservative writer.) For Wolfe said as much in an\ninterview he did with Neil Gaiman. -- True, he can be as cagey and\nmysterious in interviews as he is in fiction... sometimes. But not\nalways: and I submit that anyone who sees the following as other than\nstraightforward is probably over-reading. Here is the exchange (I've\nabridged Gaiman's question):\n\n Gaiman: [A] hundred years from now... a teenager [reads The\nWizard Knight]. Where do you hope The Knight and The Wizard will take\nher?\n\n Wolfe: To a country where honor, courage, and fidelity actually\nmean something. The whole knightly ideal came into being because the\nfighting was so close. Ordinary people saw who defended the castle\nand who hid in the wine cellar, who went for the enemy while his\nfollowers, well, actually followed instead of doing all the fighting\nfor him. Communities were small; everybody knew how everybody else\nbehaved. I want her to see what those qualities can mean to the\nperson who has them and to those around him.\n\n Gaiman: That's really cool. And, for want of a better word, noble.\n\nActually, I don't think it's cool. And I certainly don't think it's\nnoble. I think it's, at a minimum, profoundly disturbing... arguably\neven, in Hemingway's word, \"obscene\".\n\nAnd along with honor and glory and fidelity come hierarchy, and\nservitude, and subservience, and caste: all right there in Wolfe's\nbook, just like the world. Along comes all the horrors of pre-modern\nsociety that were destroyed by it, even as it introduced new horrors\nof its own.\n\nNow a great deal of fantasy -- not all of it, but a lot of it -- is\nwritten in a spirit of nostalgia for the pre-modern world. This\nnostalgia takes different forms and has different (moral, literary,\npersonal) meanings. But I must admit I've never found it as\ndisturbing as in Wolfe's Wizard Knight. For comparison, let me talk\nabout Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, not only the inescapable point of\ncomparison for almost any high fantasy work (at least in a basic\nsense, i.e. a fantasy work set in a world different from our own),\nbut as a book which Wolfe and I (and half the reading world) share a\nlove for. Because, despite Tolkien's clear nostalgia for pre-modern\ntimes, I didn't, and don't, find it nearly as problematic as I did\nWolfe's Wizard Knight. Why?\n\nWell, first off, Wolfe brings a purportedly modern voice and\nperspective into his pre-modern times... and has it swallow them\nwhole. Tolkien, of course, sets his work wholly within a different\ntime, so the lack of a modern ethical perspective is reasonable, even\nessential. But for Wolfe not to confront these issues implicitly\nratifies things that Tolkien needn't deal with.\n\nMore importantly, for Tolkien, the good is more complex than it is\nfor Wolfe, at least for Wolfe here. While Tolkien's characters strive\nto do right, The Lord of the Rings is above all about the corruption\nof power, the corruptibility of good intent, and the terrible dangers\nfor even those who strive to do right. I don't see any of that in\nWolfe's Wizard Knight. As my favorite reader of Tolkien, T. A.\nShippey, has noted, the ring and its thematic motif of the corrupting\nnature of power bring into Tolkien the one modern element in an\notherwise pre-modern work. That is, Tolkien brought into his work\nsome of the complexity from the pre-modern world -- and it made his\nwork as rich as it is. Wolfe brought in a modern element, seemingly\njust to show that nothing from America really needed saving or really\nhad any valuable perspective lacking in the pre-modern world.\n\nSimilarly, for Tolkien, the evil seems far more evil than it does for\nWolfe -- and far more tied to the basic issues of war and power. It\nis the desire for control, for gain, that is fundamentally wrong in\nTolkien's work... and we see, quite powerfully, their result in\nthings such as the powerful, Great War Trench-influenced depictions\nof the broken land of Mordor, and in the vivid depictions of the\nscouring of the shire.** Now, we see, at the end of The Wizard, some\nof the ruinous effects of war... but not with anything like the\nvividness and power in Tolkien. More to the point, Wolfe doesn't\nportray this as the outcome of war, but the outcome of the good guys\nloosing: you don't see any sense that if the humans had simply beat\nthe Osterlings (and we are told very specifically that this begun\nwith a raid on their lands for gain, something presented as\nstraightforward and not at all morally troubling) that there would be\nanything wrong. In Tolkien, war is shown as something necessary due\nto a fallen world, something which is itself part of the corruption\neven of the good: in Wolfe, it's only too bad when you loose, and all\nthe jousting and ridiculous fights of honor he portrays are simply\nsomething it would be jolly good to have back. (I exaggerate, but not\nas much as I wish I did.)\n\nAnd finally, of course, Tolkien was writing long before our time --\nbefore my time. The Lord of the Rings was written, in significant\npart, during the Second World War; The Wizard Knight was written, in\nsignificant part, during the so-called War on Terror. The world is\ndifferent now. And that means I experience the works differently.\n\nAnd here we get to something which is probably more my failure than\nanything else.\n\nYou see, I am far, far more suspicious of \"words such as glory,\nhonor, courage, or hallow\" in the present -- say, the last six years\n-- than I am from before. And I think that is because so many\nAmericans experienced the attacks of September 11 as an immediate and\nunproblematic redemption of them. Yet it seems to me that one crucial\ncomponent of the horrible mistakes and unforgivable evils that our\ncountry has committed in the past six years was precisely that\nredemption: of our thinking, far too much, about glory and honor and\ncourage -- not to mention \"evil doers\" -- and far too little about\nthe names of villages.\n\nThe truth is, I read The Wizard Knight with these words -- Wolfe's\nreaction to the 9-11 attacks -- ringing in my ears:\n\n We will be told that the perpetrators (and only the perpetrators)\nmust be punished, and that the greatest pains must be taken to make\ncertain no innocent person suffers. That sounds much better than\nsaying no action should be taken, but it comes to the same thing. The\nperpetrators cannot be punished. They died in the planes they\nhijacked and are beyond our reach. It is not possible to fight a war\n(not even a losing war) without causing innocent people to suffer.\n\nAnd I thought a lot of things about them. For example, I thought that\nwith only the smallest tweaking, they could sound like the\njustifications that the 9-11 attackers might themselves have used:\noh, unlike what Wolfe is saying, the \"perpetrators\" that they would\nhave been talking about were probably not doing crimes that I would\nsay were clearly such. But the argument would have been the same: we\ncan't fight a war without causing innocent people to suffer. If we\naren't willing to kill the innocent, then we can't do anything. The\nactual perpetrators (say, the government of the U.S.) are beyond our\nreach, but that doesn't mean that no action should be taken. And so\nforth.***\n\n(I don't want to get too sidetracked here, but of course Wolfe's\ncomment makes an assumption, the basic mistake that has been at the\nroot of so much of our national crimes and mistakes and lost\nopportunities in the past six years: assuming that \"action\" means\n\"war\", and that no war means no action. After all, in the legal\nprosecutions of criminal gangs, it is quite possible to make sure\nthat only the guilty suffer -- or, at least, far, far more sure than\nin any war. That if we had responded to Al Queada not by comparing\nthem to the Nazis, but by comparing them to the Mafia, all might have\nbeen different.)\n\nBut hate it or not, the politics clearly effected me here. I'm sure\nthat the complexities in Tolkien that were lacking in Wolfe's Wizard\nKnight are a large part of my reaction to it. But the fact that\nWolfe, a conservative writing in my time, a time when conservatives\nhave done so much horrible damage to our country and the world, was a\nbig part too.\n\nAnd I hate this. I hate that my experience of what is, after all, a\nfantasy story unconnected to the present day, is colored by politics.\nI hate that my experience of the writer who, for all his failings, is\none of the best writers working today (in fantasy or out of it), is\ncolored by my knowledge of his politics.**** I hate that I can't just\nsee the dragons and The Knights, but instead see the calls for\nfurther U.S. crimes and blunders and wars.\n\nOne of the personal things I blame Bush and his followers for is that\nthey have created such a terrible, poisonous, and down-right evil\natmosphere that I am far less capable of seeing things in political\nterms than I used to be -- far less capable than I would like to be.\n\nI suspect that even in happier times I would have found The Wizard\nKnight flawed -- for its pacing, for its main character, and, yes,\nfor its deeply problematic medieval ethics. But only nowadays would I\nexperience this as finding it flawed for its politics.\n\nIn this sense, and this sense only, I guess I, too, wish I could go\nback to simpler times.\n\n_____________________________________\n* Other writers have complained about the split focus in The Wizard\nbetween Abel and Toug. I, actually, felt that that was one of the\nthings that The Wizard had going for it: it spent more time focusing\non people who were more complex, less Blessed by The Gods (i.e.\nWolfe), and thereby were, to me, far more sympathetic and\n(ultimately) admirable characters.\n\n** Not in the films: to me, this was the single least excusable\nchange in Jackson's adaptation.\n\n*** Well, if he was worried we wouldn't kill enough innocent people,\nWolfe can rest assured that we have done a bang-up job of it.\n(/political bitterness)\n\nI don't mean here to say that any support of a war is equivalent to\nterrorist thinking; I'm not a pacifist. (Why do we always feel we\nhave to say that? That must be one of the most repeated sentences in\nthe country in the last few years.) I don't think war is always\nwrong. But I don't think war should be used to punish; I think it\nshould be use to defend. And the latter involves not killing\ncivilians. I'm not talking about anything more complicated than just\nwar theory here -- a theory that the Catholic church has done a lot\nto develop, mostly (from what little I've seen of it) along extremely\nsensible lines. Wolfe, famously, is a Catholic; but I don't see the\ninfluence of Catholic thinking about war in this statement.\n\n**** Wolfe has said (I don't have the reference handy) that he used\nto be a Bucklean conservative, but that now his politics are unique\nand personal. Of course, there are a number of political positions in\nthis country -- minority positions, but ones with millions of\nfollowers -- whose adherents frequently view themselves as possessing\nunique, personal, non-partisan politics which they alone have the\nobjectivity and distance to see. Many of these are some variety of\nconservative; and I think there's plenty of evidence that Wolfe fits\ninto one of these camps. If someone wishes to correct me -- not by\nsaying I shouldn't use his politics to judge his works (I agree), but\nthat I've gotten his politics wrong -- then please do so.\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f7617370709181811x21eb884ak5343d1274c4f63b@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-19T01:11:45+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<77a389ab0709181726w33a23270m7b3275523952c3af@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Stephen,\n\nAnd, of course, I did not believe you were appealing to authority.\n\nHemingway does, indeed, represent a kind of sea-change in attitude and\nvalues, which we might as well call \"modernism\" (though the application\nof that term to others, like Joyce and Proust, leaves me gaping, wondering\nif the term actually means anything at all!) But that change was not as\nuniversal, by any means, as academic modernists seem to believe; not\nonly is it generally untrue of conservatives (whom academic modernists\ntend to think of as ignorant and discount in any survey of attitudes), but\nof\na surprising number of folks who would identify themselves as liberal.\n\nIn this particular group, you've got everything from traditionalists to\nmodernists to some pretty serious pomos.\n\nI take Wolfe's comment -- \"a country where honor, courage, and\nfidelity actually mean something\" -- not as a general statement that\nthey do not in the here-and-now, but that they are disvalued by, well,\nmodernism. They do mean something in the here and now: try\nsuggesting to a United States Marine that they do not. (I promise to\nsend flowers.)\n\nBefore Hemingway, the medieval knightly ideal had been far better\ndissected and shown as flawed by other writers, notably Twain (who\nskewers it gorgeously in \"A Connecticut Yankee\") and Cabell (any\nnumber of his \"comedies\").\n\nBut the problem with the m.k.i. is not its failure as an ideal, but the\nfailure of humans to live up to it: in short, the same problem that\nany serious ideal tends to face. I believe that Wolfe, to his credit,\ndoes show Able at times in a light that suggests that, even with\nall the helps and cheat codes he's given, he is not able to live up\nto it. (Able believes he does, but that's a separate matter, and is\nthe reason I mentioned, earlier, the unreliability of Wolfe's\nnarrators. Of *course* Abel believes he is a parfit gentil knicht.\nBut he isn't.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And I certainly will maintain that, in today's world, that idea -- the one\npointed to by both Hemingway's sentence (negatively) and Wolfe's sentence\nfrom the Gaiman interview (positively), and which I argue is pointed to in\nWolfe's Wizard Knight -- I think that that idea is, in fact, quite\ntroubling\nand dangerous. Which, again, is not to say that there aren't other types\nof\nhonor, courage and fidelity which remain perfectly valid, indeed crucial,\nvalues." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "May I inquire, gently, _why_ you find the knightly ideal\n\"troubling\"?" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant\n-----\nhttp://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer\nhttp://www.danehyoakes.com\nI am miserable, he is miserable,\nWe are miserable.\nCan't we have a party? Would he rather have a party?" } ] }, { "message_id": "<3761.67.142.130.11.1190167094.squirrel@brunians.org>", "from": { "name": "brunians at brunians.org", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2007-09-19T01:58:14+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<1f7617370709181811x21eb884ak5343d1274c4f63b@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In this particular group, you've got everything from traditionalists to\nmodernists to some pretty serious pomos." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "California Indian nation, inhabiting Sonoma and Mendocino county?\n\nThey are pretty interesting folks, I'll grant you. I didn't know that we\nhad any here.\n\nThey're mostly Christians these days.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Stephen Frug", "address": "sfrug at post.harvard.edu" }, "date": "2007-09-19T02:36:56+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<3761.67.142.130.11.1190167094.squirrel@brunians.org>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "May I inquire, gently, _why_ you find the knightly ideal\n\"troubling\"?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I know that this opens me up to a (fully justifiable) charge of \nducking an issue that I myself raised, but I don't want to get too \nfar into this... largely because I don't think I can without getting \ninto broad political (if not historical and moral) questions that are \nreally off topic to Wolfe. I guess what I'd say is that my objection \n(or that objection) only stands to those who find the knightly ideal \n-- at least in the comparatively undiluted form that (if I'm right) \nis presented in Wizard Knight; to the degree it's present in Tolkien, \nas I said in my initial review, it doesn't bother me nearly as much \n-- and from others, a simple \"well, I like and approve of the \npolitics\" would be enough for us to agree to disagree.\n\nI also don't think my objections to the knightly ideal are \nparticularly original, nor for that matter particularly well \nthought-out (I do study history, but my focus is American history, so \nthe topic doesn't come up much).\n\nBut, all that said, the briefest version is that my objections to the \nknightly ideal are those which have been made frequently, those \ninherent in modern ideals and those portrayed from many different \nangles by many different authors (some of which you cite!). It's \nfundamentally hierarchical in a fixed, birth-by-class sense; it \nrelies on fidelity to persons (not simply family and friends, but in \nlarger, political senses) rather than ideals and institutions in a \nway that -- at least in the modern world -- becomes very destructive; \nit supports the use of violence as a legitimate means of settling \ndisputes in cases where it is not the last resort; and so forth.\n\n(On that last point, I'm now wishing I'd bookmarked a fascinating \npiece I read recently, summarizing a scholar's work, about how \ncultures of honor arise in places where there is no dependable rule \nof law, from the frontier to ineffectively policed urban settings to \ncriminal cultures, and therefore honor, backed up by a threat of \nviolence, arises as a substitute. But, of course, I didn't bookmark \nit, and probably couldn't find it again. Alas.)\n\nI think that, fundamentally, the knightly ideal is conservative -- in \none of the important senses of the term -- and I am not: I believe in \nliberal ideals such as the independent rule of law, democracy, the \nfundamental equality of all persons, etc, which arose as part of the \ntransition from the medieval to the modern world -- and the \nabandonment of the knightly ideal was part and parcel of that \ntransition.\n\nIt's certainly an open question for me whether the knightly ideal was \ngood in its time and place, or was always fundamentally problematic; \nI'd be open to the idea that when it arose and flourished it was an \nimportant, and indeed moral, value system. But in the modern world \nit tends to arise in fundamentally conservative realms where it is -- \nI would argue -- quite problematic, and frequently destructive.\n\nIn this regards, I would note that the American culture that was \nclosest to the knightly ideal -- which placed enormous value on the \nvirtues of honor, courage and fidelity, in knightly ways, and which \nhas in fact often been thought of as a chivalric culture -- was the \nculture of the upper classes of the antebellum white south, the \n\"aristocratic\" slaveholders.\n\nThere's a lot of nostalgia for that world in this country. (I think \nthat a lot of conservatives -- who aren't the least bit racist \npersonally, don't long for the restitution of slavery, or even Jim \nCrow, etc. -- don't realize the extent to which their values \noriginate, historically, in that culture. Doesn't mean it isn't \ntrue.) I don't share it.\n\n... And see, there, now I've gotten political. But that's the answer \nI can give you.\n\nSF" } ] }, { "message_id": "<6009.67.142.130.11.1190170023.squirrel@brunians.org>", "from": { "name": "brunians at brunians.org", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2007-09-19T02:47:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "May I inquire, gently, _why_ you find the knightly ideal\n\"troubling\"?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I know that this opens me up to a (fully justifiable) charge of\nducking an issue that I myself raised, but I don't want to get too\nfar into this... largely because I don't think I can without getting\ninto broad political (if not historical and moral) questions that are\nreally off topic to Wolfe." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's OK. We get off-topic all the time.\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "<002b01c7fa72$08eb42c0$ebca5a42@rclackey.stic.net>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2007-09-19T04:03:23+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<6009.67.142.130.11.1190170023.squirrel@brunians.org>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "First of all -- congratulations, Stephen! Such efforts are few and far\nbetween and too often get too little recognition. I liked the first\nthree-fourths or so of your essay. The last part is more personal political\nrant than appropriate for a review, perhaps. I think that part detracts from\nthe rest of it; but then it was written for a blog. Still, bravo!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Stephen Frug wrote:\nThus it's not answer to say that \"perhaps something more complex is\ngoing on\", or \"Wolfe's narrators are sometimes unreliable\": I think\nthat you have to actually *argue* that in *this* case this is true\n*in ways relevant to my critiques*. Either make the case here, or\npresent a link to another case.\n\nI think this is true in all of the aspects of this argument.... but\nmost especially in terms of a sentiment like \"If you found the ethics\nto be problematic then perhaps the situations were intended to cause\nthe reader to reflect on those problems.\", where I not only made a\ntextual case, but also pointed towards a lot of extra-textual\nevidence about Wolfe's views and intents." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Like you, I thought Able was an insufferable jerk, and said so a couple of\nyears ago here in a number of posts. It didn't go over any better then. I\npointed out even more instances than the captain's cabin bit where Able\nbehaved very badly towards those who were ranked below knights in the social\npecking order. Able never suffers any negative consequences for that\nbehavior. The only times Able is made to suffer sanctions is when he offends\nsomeone of higher rank. And you are right that Wolfe, in TWK, does not seem\nto find fault with this system. I also called attention to Wolfe's Tolkien\nessay \"The Best Introduction to the Mountains\", wherein Wolfe seems to\nendorse the medieval social order.\n\nMaybe we are both wrong on these points, but I have yet to see the proof.\n\nBtw, it is \"Able\" not \"Abel\". You might want to fix that on your blog.\n\nAgain, congratulations!.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<20070919101226.22D6EDA81F@mailserver7.hushmail.com>", "from": { "name": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com", "address": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com" }, "date": "2007-09-19T10:12:25+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<002b01c7fa72$08eb42c0$ebca5a42@rclackey.stic.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 03:45:03 +1000 Stephen Frug \n wrote:\nGreetings Urthlings. I've read this message list before, but \nnever \nposted to it. (Unless this message is itself a duplicate... the \nfirst time seems to have gotten lost...) But I just wrote a long \nreview of Wizard Knight which I posted to my blog " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nice piece, thanks!\n\nTo enjoy Wolfe I generally have to hold my nose & swallow his \npolitical & religious assumptions whole, and then grit my teeth to \ndeal with the crappy genre trappings - but having done that, it's \nusually worth it :)\n\nI guess for me the most interesting point you raise is the one \nwhere you say: OK, fine, Wolfe's heroes may be pretty good \ncharacterisations of what counts as heroic for the kinds of \nsocieties they find themselves in. But how can a modern kid be \nexcused for aspiring and acting as Able does? \n\nWithin the story, the answer is obvious. On one level, he's been \nprogrammed that way by Dsiri et al. They want him to win renown \nwithin the society of Celidon, where the martial virtues are \nabsolutely predominant, so he can meet the king on equal-ish terms \nand deliver the message. \n\nTo induce him into this, he's been enchanted so that Dsiri is \nabsolutely and entirely the most important thing for him, and to \nbelieve unquestioningly that gaining status in Celidon as a warrior \nis the only way to win her. He will stomp on anything which gets in \nhis way, without regret. They've harnassed his adolescent hormones \nto turn him into a Clockwork Orange Lout Knight Wannabe. \n\nSo is Wolfe really holding out the knightly ideal as being a Good \nThing? His hero character has been co-opted into following, without \nhis consent, it by a creature of mud and twigs who is less than a \ndream ..." } ] }, { "message_id": "<3180.67.142.130.45.1190198787.squirrel@brunians.org>", "from": { "name": "brunians at brunians.org", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2007-09-19T10:46:27+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<20070919101226.22D6EDA81F@mailserver7.hushmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You know, it's all very well to despise the martial virtues.\n\nBut the fact is that without them, you don't get to have any other virtues.\n\nWhat idiot said 'Violence solves no problems'? Violence solves most\nproblems, historically, and if it's mostly hidden away violence in modern\nsociety all that means is that people get to pretend that it isn't there,\nand indulge in fatuity.\n\n\n\n." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 03:45:03 +1000 Stephen Frug\n wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Greetings Urthlings. I've read this message list before, but\nnever\nposted to it. (Unless this message is itself a duplicate... the\nfirst time seems to have gotten lost...) But I just wrote a long\nreview of Wizard Knight which I posted to my blog" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Nice piece, thanks!\n\nTo enjoy Wolfe I generally have to hold my nose & swallow his\npolitical & religious assumptions whole, and then grit my teeth to\ndeal with the crappy genre trappings - but having done that, it's\nusually worth it :)\n\nI guess for me the most interesting point you raise is the one\nwhere you say: OK, fine, Wolfe's heroes may be pretty good\ncharacterisations of what counts as heroic for the kinds of\nsocieties they find themselves in. But how can a modern kid be\nexcused for aspiring and acting as Able does?\n\nWithin the story, the answer is obvious. On one level, he's been\nprogrammed that way by Dsiri et al. They want him to win renown\nwithin the society of Celidon, where the martial virtues are\nabsolutely predominant, so he can meet the king on equal-ish terms\nand deliver the message.\n\nTo induce him into this, he's been enchanted so that Dsiri is\nabsolutely and entirely the most important thing for him, and to\nbelieve unquestioningly that gaining status in Celidon as a warrior\nis the only way to win her. He will stomp on anything which gets in\nhis way, without regret. They've harnassed his adolescent hormones\nto turn him into a Clockwork Orange Lout Knight Wannabe.\n\nSo is Wolfe really holding out the knightly ideal as being a Good\nThing? His hero character has been co-opted into following, without\nhis consent, it by a creature of mud and twigs who is less than a\ndream ...\n\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<20070919120027.37BAB2E023@mailserver5.hushmail.com>", "from": { "name": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com", "address": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com" }, "date": "2007-09-19T12:00:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<3180.67.142.130.45.1190198787.squirrel@brunians.org>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:46:27 +1000 brunians at brunians.org wrote:\nYou know, it's all very well to despise the martial virtues.\n\nBut the fact is that without them, you don't get to have any other " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "virtues.\n\nWhat idiot said 'Violence solves no problems'? Violence solves \nmost\nproblems, historically, and if it's mostly hidden away violence in " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "modern\nsociety all that means is that people get to pretend that it isn't " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "there,\nand indulge in fatuity." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think a common theme in Wolfe has to do with the balance between \nthe virtues of Aphrodite and Ares. They are, I think, his prime \nvirtues, but an imbalance is a distortion. Aphrodite without Ares \nis ineffectual; Ares without Aphrodite is unjust.\n\nSilk: too much Aphrodite, not enough Ares, until his joinder with \nHorn. \n\nAble: too much Ares, not enough Aphrodite, until his ersatz love \nfor Dsiri transmutes into the real thing, and expands beyond her.\n\nI think TWK is quite clearly a critique of the ideal of chivalry to \nthe extent it has strayed from its (purported but anyway ...) \ntheoretical purpose of protecting the weak from oppression & become \njust an idealogy buttressing a parasitical, closed, warrior elite.\n\nWhen Able meets Uns and Duns, their mother (I think - don't have \nbook here) briefly sketches the origins of knighthood. The men got \ntogether to protect people from ogres, giants and dragons. Somebody \nwho did well at this was honored as a \"knight\". By the end of \nWizard, Able has restored this original conception. " } ] }, { "message_id": "<39ed084f0709191015g112102abl6fd9ce8f046e2952@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Matthew Groves", "address": "matthewalangroves at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-19T17:15:14+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<20070919120027.37BAB2E023@mailserver5.hushmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks, Stephen, for a thoughtful and honest post. I too welcome this\nsort of post, whether I agree or not, and I would like to see more of\nthis kind of thing on the list.\n\nI actually rejected The Knight in much stronger (and much simpler)\nterms the first time I read it. For some reason I didn't have the\nsame viscerally negative reaction to Able's behavior. I guess I felt\nthat the indistinctness of Able's memory of his pre-Mythgarthr self\nabsolved him from the concerns of modern morality.\n\nMy own reaction was that Wolfe 1) completely failed to adequately\nportray the voice of the modern American teenager, and 2) had\nsuccumbed to that most regrettable peccadillo of fantasy fiction:\nadolescent wish-fulfillment. \"How about I write a book about Conan,\nbut he hangs out with Arthurian knights and Norse gods, and fights\ndragons and giants, and he has sexy elf slaves, and a magic bow,\nsword, helmet, cat, dog, and horse.\" I have only recently decided to\ntake up Wizard Knight again, and I am really enjoying it at the level\nof the writing (as I always enjoy Wolfe), but I can't say that I've\nconclusively resolved any of the issues I had the first time." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Stephen Frug wrote:\nI think Wolfe's writing of Abel's voice was profoundly uneven." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As I said, I had the same reaction the first time I read it, but upon\nsecond reading, I don't know. It is so *blatantly* uneven and\ninconsistent. Surely anyone ought to know that no modern American\nteenager speaks like Abel. Either Wolfe is trying to say something\nabout the stability of Abel's identity, or we have lost Wolfe to the\nravages of senile dementia.\n\nI think it may be that Abel was a teenager in the 40s like Wolfe, and\nthat he grew up to live as an adult in the 21st century with Macs and\neverything (like Wolfe), before coming to Mythgarthr.\n\nI don't have a very good argument that it is not merely a failure on\nWolfe's part; my main argument is the patently inane and rightly\ndismissed, \"It's Wolfe.\" But Able is so unconvincing as a modern\nAmerican teenager, and Wolfe so flagrantly indulges Able in every\npossible magical friend, pet, adversary, and artifact, that it cries\nout for interpretation. I'm not saying I have an interpretation that\nresolves these problematic aspects, and honestly if it were anyone but\nWolfe I wouldn't waste my time.\n\nI didn't read the whole interview with Gaiman, but I note in the\nexcerpt you quoted that Wolfe doesn't explicitly argue that \"a country\nwhere honor, courage, and fidelity actually mean something\" would be\nsome kind of Utopia. He does certainly imply that it would be better\nthan things are now, and on that point I cannot disagree. Have you\nbeen out there recently? Talked to people? There's an insipid\nlowliness, a selfish meanness, and an absolving anonymity that pervade\nso much of our interactions and discourse at all levels. I think\n*these* obscenities are some of the things Wolfe is taking a stand on\nin WK.\n\nAlso, I think the world he proposes as an alternative to the modern\nview has less to do with actual historical medieval conditions and\nmore to do with the imagined world of sword and sorcery and (his\nversion of) *its* values.\n\nMatt G." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "mfstraight at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-19T17:28:34+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<39ed084f0709191015g112102abl6fd9ce8f046e2952@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 9/18/07, Stephen Frug wrote:\nhad the writer stacking the deck for him at every turn. He had more\nmagical allies, artifacts, assistants, companions, than you could\nshake a stick at: an invisible ogre doing his bidding! A sky-wolf who\nhappened to be totally loyal! Elves (called Aelf) who were his slaves\n(yes, not always reliable, but often enough). A magic sword, the\nblessing and friendship of Odin, various other magic devices he got\nat the end (the helmet, another sword). Heck, he even becomes a god\nhalfway through the work! Talk about favoritism!*" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "See, I think this is one of the more interesting things that Wolfe\ndoes with his protagonists. In most fantasy, the protagonist is weaker\nthan all his enemies and the drama comes from struggling to overcome a\nstronger foe.\n\nBut in Wizard Knight (and many other of Wolfe's books) the protagonist\nis stronger than most of his foes and the drama comes from the moral\ndilemnas of how to wisely and honorably use that strength. I'd think\nthis would be particularly compelling for someone who finds his\nreading colored by current geopolitical events, since is pretty much\nthe circumstance in which the United States finds itself as a nation.\n\nAs for the feudal / knightly society. I don't think Wolfe admires it\nuncritically nor intends the reader to. I think there are some things\nhe admires about that society and some things he doesn't, and that\nmany of the places where you feel uncomfortable with it, you are\nsupposed to.\n\nI'd be interested in a discussion of what people think are the\nspecific virtues that Wolfe does commend from that society which he\nthinks are lacking in ours and whether we agree with him about those\nvirtues. That's what I'm going to be trying to pin down when I\nre-read the books.\n\nRostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "<20070920025146.5F9CDC381C@mailserver10.hushmail.com>", "from": { "name": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com", "address": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com" }, "date": "2007-09-20T02:51:39+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 03:28:34 +1000 Michael Straight \n wrote:\n\nSee, I think this is one of the more interesting things that Wolfe\ndoes with his protagonists. In most fantasy, the protagonist is \nweaker\nthan all his enemies and the drama comes from struggling to \novercome a\nstronger foe.\n\nBut in Wizard Knight (and many other of Wolfe's books) the \nprotagonist\nis stronger than most of his foes and the drama comes from the \nmoral\ndilemnas of how to wisely and honorably use that strength. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "... which is probably one of the reasons why the stories sometimes \nmight not seem to work so well as adventure stories. You're right \nof course: the heroes usually have the deck massively stacked in \ntheir favor. (IMO, Wolfe even verges on self-parody with stacking \nthe deck for Able.)\n\nThe horns of the dilemma you mention are highlighted in a few \nplaces in TWK, I think.\n\n- Riding through the plains of Jotunland Able has fantasies of \nleading a force of knights to make the place giant-rein.\n- On Glas, he dreams of riding down from the sky to bring justice \nto Mythgathr (presumably by force), then being swallowed up by the \nearth.\n- Setr tempting him with offers of crowns and empire.\n\nThis reminds me of one of the little puzles we're left with: who \nactually does end up being King? " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Bob Miller", "address": "bob_bageera at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-20T12:59:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay --Able's character", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But I think my biggest complaint -- my biggest stumbling block -- was\na pair of intertwined issues: the character of Abel, and the ethics\n(even, politics) of the book.\n\nFirst off, I found Abel frequently insufferable. Pompous,\nself-righteous, frequently a bully, he also came off as a Mary Sue\n(at least in one sense of that polyvalent term of fan critique): not\nonly was he the most courageous and noble person about, but he also\nhad the writer stacking the deck for him at every turn. He had more\nmagical allies, artifacts, assistants, companions, than you could\nshake a stick at: an invisible ogre doing his bidding! A sky-wolf who\nhappened to be totally loyal! Elves (called Aelf) who were his slaves\n(yes, not always reliable, but often enough). A magic sword, the\nblessing and friendship of Odin, various other magic devices he got\nat the end (the helmet, another sword). Heck, he even becomes a god\nhalfway through the work! Talk about favoritism!*\n\nThis sort of stacking the deck is hard enough to take when the writer\nhas some self-consciousness about what he's doing, but I didn't see\nany sign that Wolfe did. He simply loved his creation, and showered\nhim with so many cheats and advantages that any honor he might have\naccrued felt like a cheat.\n\nThere are three things that I thank the group for forcing me to think of.\n\nEven in the 14th century, the lack of knightly virtue was descried by no \nless than Chaucer himself. The Knight's battles and self represented an \nearlier, more ideal time. So, the knightly ideal was on a pedestal, a \nstandard toward which to aspire.\n\nAble started off pretty poor asd an excuse for a human, yes. It was the \nnarrator's \"voice?\" and the lack of justification of his actions that kept \nthe reading road smooth for me. From the word go I felt the narrator's \nvoice promised growth. And that is what I liked so much about Abel. He was \nwrong. And he grew. From the trust and chance given by the Valfather he \nbecame more than he was--bullying brawler on one hand and sex slave to a \ncreature of moss and twigs on the other.\n\nAnd by his stepping up to the plate, his refusal to walk off toward the end \nof the Wizard and go to Aelfrice with Disiri leaving everyone and thing \nelse, Wolfe has him give us the best portayal of courage and knightly \nvirtues I can imagine. No one other than Able and Disiri knew he had been \ntempted. Thoght I would not say that Michael or the Valfather had not \npredicted it. Not to mention we get the smooth non-Irish cream of Wolfe's \nprose.\n\nI thought the slow pace and acceleration was deliberate, and very \nreminiscent of the cavalry charge in Olivier's Henry V. Slow and \naccelerating and faster until they were at a full gallop. Perhaps Wolfe did \nsomewhat commit what the great Algis Budrys called the sin of taking his \naudience for granted? The unevenness I acknowledge as well. I like it, I'm \nnot a puzzle solver and these intervals give my rear brain time to catch up \nand help me unnertand what I read an hour or six ago.\n\nI love this book. Able had so many gifts, and still he had to have outside \nhelp for his real accomplisment--saving humanity. He had no hope of winning \nagainst the Black Caan until Lothur \"brought\" the hundreds and food with \nSmiler and Able accepted his impending severing from Disiri to save those he \nwould willingly have slain himself at the beginning of The Knight.\n\nThank you for making me think\n\n_________________________________________________________________\nGear up for Halo? 3 with free downloads and an exclusive offer. \nhttp://gethalo3gear.com?ocid=SeptemberWLHalo3_MSNHMTxt_1" } ] }, { "message_id": "<17FFFD38-06BE-49A1-BD51-78230482B48F@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-20T15:44:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay --Able's character", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sep 20, 2007, at 7:59 AM, Bob Miller wrote:\nFrom the trust and chance given by the Valfather he became more \nthan he was--bullying brawler on one hand and sex slave to a \ncreature of moss and twigs on the other." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Here's an odd thought: the story of Disiri and Able is directly \nparallel to that of Lara and Green in _There Are Doors_. The \nresemblance is strong enough that I think Wolfe was revisiting the idea.\n\nThe stories are very different, but this idea is fundamental to \nboth: \"goddess\" unworthy of worship seduces an earthly male, who is \nthereafter bound to her, searching, faithful, and unrewarded.\n\nIn _There Are Doors_, Green is saved, in some sense, by becoming \ncapable of love, even if only eros for an erotic pagan goddess.\n\nIn _The Wizard Knight_, Able's love is, at the end, able even to \nredeem Disiri." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "mfstraight at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-20T16:21:59+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<20070920025146.5F9CDC381C@mailserver10.hushmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On 9/19/07, thalassocrat at nym.hush.com wrote:\nBut in Wizard Knight (and many other of Wolfe's books) the\nprotagonist\nis stronger than most of his foes and the drama comes from the\nmoral\ndilemnas of how to wisely and honorably use that strength." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "... which is probably one of the reasons why the stories sometimes\nmight not seem to work so well as adventure stories." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. Exactly. Wolfe is not writing adventure stories. He's using\nthe trappings of adventure stories to do other things.\n\nEver since Severian, Wolfe has almost rigorously skipped over every\nscene that would be the awesome action sequence in a standard\nadventure story." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "the heroes usually have the deck massively stacked in\ntheir favor. (IMO, Wolfe even verges on self-parody with stacking\nthe deck for Able.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Standard fantasy is almost like a video game. The hero spends 6 books\npowering up and everything is carefully balanced so he's always just\nbarely powerful enough to defeat his enemies. Then when he's got all\nthe power-ups, he takes on the final boss and the story ends.\n\nIn Wizard Knight, Wolfe says, \"You want a hero with cool power-ups?\nGreat. You name it, this guy's got it. But now what? The story's\njust beginning.\"\n\n(In one of the more popular recent fantasy computer games, Oblivion,\nthe balancing seemed so ridiculous--no matter where you go, how much\nmagic you have, how powerful you are or are not, the monsters are\nalways just powerful enough to give you a challenge--that fans\nreleased a patch rewriting the game so that it was possible for a\nLevel 70 character to run into minor monsters that are appropriately\nbeneath the notice of such a demigod. So even the computer gamers\nyearn for something like what Wolfe is doing.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "<19136482.1190400015296.JavaMail.root@elwamui-polski.atl.sa.earthlink.net>", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2007-09-21T18:40:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hello again, everyone. I haven't posted for a long time, for various reasons, but when I saw that this was a thread about Able's thuggishness, I couldn't resist. It's nice to see that even a couple of people remember my long-ago rant favorably." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Stephen Frug wrote:\nThus it's not answer to say that \"perhaps something more complex is \ngoing on\", or \"Wolfe's narrators are sometimes unreliable\": I think \nthat you have to actually *argue* that in *this* case this is true \n*in ways relevant to my critiques*. Either make the case here, or \npresent a link to another case." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think this is true in all of the aspects of this argument.... but \nmost especially in terms of a sentiment like \"If you found the ethics \nto be problematic then perhaps the situations were intended to cause \nthe reader to reflect on those problems.\", where I not only made a \ntextual case, but also pointed towards a lot of extra-textual \nevidence about Wolfe's views and intents." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree completely. And for what it's worth, I recall nothing in The Knight, or the portion of The Wizard that I read, to suggest that Wolfe finds Able's behavior towards his inferiors in The Knight objectionable.\n\nI'd add a couple of things. First, while clearly we shouldn't automatically assume that Wolfe approves of his protagonists' behavior, nor should we assume that just because Wolfe shows a protagonist doing something we find immoral, he is being ironic.\n\nSecondly, I wonder whether the \"consensus\" view of Wolfe places too much emphasis on the unreliability of Wolfe's narrators. In Peace and Fifth Head of Cerberus, Wolfe employs flagrantly unreliable narrators; and there's a natural tendency to read his later novels in light of this. But looking at the later novels without preconceptions, I've never seen a convincing case for any of their narrators being unreliable to the extent that his/her words can't be trusted. (Silkhorn is unreliable regarding his own identity, but on no other point.) But the subject of the differences between the two early novels and the later ones deserves a post of its own.\n\nThe idea of Able as a Mary-Sue (the technical term for a male specimen is Gary-Stu) hadn't occurred to me, but it makes sense. It had crossed my mind that Able may have been wish-fulfillment on Wolfe's part. The short story \"Golden City Far,\" which was first published around the same time as The Knight iirc, is even more obviously wish-fulfillment, to the point that I found it embarrassing. And there's no hint of parodic intent in that story, so I doubt that Able's Gary-Stu qualities are parodic.\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-21T19:28:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<19136482.1190400015296.JavaMail.root@elwamui-polski.atl.sa.earthlink.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sep 21, 2007, at 1:40 PM, Adam Stephanides wrote:\nThe short story \"Golden City Far,\" which was first published around \nthe same time as The Knight iirc, is even more obviously wish- \nfulfillment, to the point that I found it embarrassing. And there's \nno hint of parodic intent in that story, so I doubt that Able's \nGary-Stu qualities are parodic." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But Bill, the hero of \"Golden City Far\", does not begin acting like \nAble when he becomes powerful. The relationship between the two may \nclinch the case for Wolfe portraying Able as morally problematic.\n\nAfter browsing through GCF, I think it must have been written as a \ncounterpoint to TWK. The closest thing to Ablean misbehavior that I \ncould find in GCF is a brief fight between Bill and two \nupperclassmen. The older boys attack Bill because he is wearing a \nletter jacket they don't think he has earned the right to wear. Bill \nincapacitates them without hurting them badly.\n\nLike Able, Bill has a talking dog and a magical sword. The letter \njacket is a gift from an odd sort of supernatural fem, and it is a \nclear analog to Able's unofficial knighthood.\n\nUnlike Able, Bill is humble, self-effacing even, and never seems \nthreatened by people disbelieving in his stories. He resists the \ntemptation of the superfem. He has a sense of humor: When someone \nis examining his sword and comments on the magical incantations \ninscribed in proto-Chaldean, he says, sotto voce, \"Made in India\"." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Duffy", "address": "david.duffy at qimr.edu.au" }, "date": "2007-09-23T06:22:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<19136482.1190400015296.JavaMail.root@elwamui-polski.atl.sa.earthlink.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Adam Stephanides wrote:\nThe idea of Able as a Mary-Sue (the technical term for a male specimen \nis Gary-Stu) hadn't occurred to me, but it makes sense. It had crossed \nmy mind that Able may have been wish-fulfillment on Wolfe's part. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think that TWK is written (as perhaps _The Devil in a Forest_ is) as a \ntraditional boys own adventure. It's supposed to be alluring to us young \nfolks, didactic, and morally uplifting ;)\n\nAble is a perfect knight within that milieu. Just as anyone in the \nmilitary hierarchy does, he frequently teaches uppity inferiors a lesson \nor two (one might recall Severian then Roche? as chief of the \napprentices).\n\nDavid Duffy," } ] }, { "message_id": "<20070924075432.40AA0DA81F@mailserver7.hushmail.com>", "from": { "name": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com", "address": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com" }, "date": "2007-09-24T07:54:31+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +1000 Adam Stephanides \n wrote:\n\nThe idea of Able as a Mary-Sue (the technical term for a male \nspecimen is Gary-Stu) hadn't occurred to me, but it makes sense. \nIt had crossed my mind that Able may have been wish-fulfillment on " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Wolfe's part. The short story \"Golden City Far,\" which was first \npublished around the same time as The Knight iirc, is even more \nobviously wish-fulfillment, to the point that I found it \nembarrassing. And there's no hint of parodic intent in that story, " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "so I doubt that Able's Gary-Stu qualities are parodic." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think the Toug character puts a spike in this. He's pretty much \nAble minus the \"power-ups\", and if Wolfe had been indulging just in \nGary-Stu-ism, I don't think he would have bothered with him. \n\nOTOH, I think Wolfe would be a better writer if the Tougs and Horns \nwere his main characters ..." } ] }, { "message_id": "<156083.34927.qm@web36906.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Craig Brewer", "address": "cnbrewer at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2007-09-24T16:52:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On Able's morality, Wolfe did say in an interview that\nTWK was inspired as a traditional chivalric romance\nexcept without the Christian worldview of the Middle\nAges. Instead, you get the harsher Norse aspect of the\nmythology.\n\nTo me, you can take that \"without the Christian\nworldview\" aspect in two ways. On the one hand, it\nlooks like traditional \"speculative fiction\" in the\nsense of \"what if\" novels. (I.e., what if the romances\nof the middle ages had been written without\nChristianity.) Or, you can take it as a more subtle\nmoral investigation of knight culture in which Able's\ntroubled morality (or \"bully\" nature) is both\nnecessary and inadequate to his society, etc.\n\nEither way, I don't find Able to be in any way\n\"worrying\" as if it supposedly exposes Wolfe as\nidealizing the school yard bully. It seems to me that\nthe two books offer much more for thought than whether\nor not we \"like\" the main character and can\n\"sympathize\" with him. If Wolfe chooses to write about\na warlike society without any moral system that\nopposes the brutality of the sword, why should we\nreact with shocked indignation when he gives us a\ncharacter who is a product of that society? In many\nways, I find TWK much more believable than most modern\nfantasy in which evil warlords run rampant and the\nmain \"good guy\" somehow ends up being an innocent-eyed\ndo-gooder who gets these ideas of freedom and kindness\nfrom seemingly nowhere in his quest to free the world\nof evil. If magic and knights were real (and socially\ndominant), then I expect the world would look\nsomething like Mythgarthr.\n\nCraig" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1687495427.20070924214433@poczta.fm>", "from": { "name": "Stanislaus", "address": "sbocian at poczta.fm" }, "date": "2007-09-24T19:44:33+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<156083.34927.qm@web36906.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hello Craig," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Monday, September 24, 2007, 6:52:41 PM, you wrote:\nOn Able's morality, Wolfe did say in an interview that\nTWK was inspired as a traditional chivalric romance\nexcept without the Christian worldview of the Middle\nAges. Instead, you get the harsher Norse aspect of the\nmythology." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "To me, you can take that \"without the Christian\nworldview\" aspect in two ways. On the one hand, it\nlooks like traditional \"speculative fiction\" in the\nsense of \"what if\" novels. (I.e., what if the romances\nof the middle ages had been written without\nChristianity.) Or, you can take it as a more subtle\nmoral investigation of knight culture in which Able's\ntroubled morality (or \"bully\" nature) is both\nnecessary and inadequate to his society, etc." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Either way, I don't find Able to be in any way\n\"worrying\" as if it supposedly exposes Wolfe as\nidealizing the school yard bully. It seems to me that\nthe two books offer much more for thought than whether\nor not we \"like\" the main character and can\n\"sympathize\" with him. If Wolfe chooses to write about\na warlike society without any moral system that\nopposes the brutality of the sword, why should we\nreact with shocked indignation when he gives us a\ncharacter who is a product of that society? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "...\n\nWizard-Knight is a Christian book, but it does have morality, even quite exacting one.\n\nThis is a Neoplatonic book. Neoplatonism is usually thought of as the most subtle and difficult metaphysics. It entails also morality - but it is a morality very different from the Christian one. \n\nNeoplatonism is strictly hierarchical. In fact, the name \"hierarchy\" - which means \"the holy authority\" or \"the holy rule\" is strictly connected with that philosophy. Neoplatonism was the ruling philosophy and religion of the Roman Empire and, in a version Christianized by Pseudo-Dionysius, of Byzantium (although the Ortodox authors tend to condemn Neoplatonism in its pure version).\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism\n\nAccording to Neoplatonism the world was created as a series of emanations of the One; the description in the Wizard is close enough. Our task is to return to the One by ascending again the ladder of hierarchy; this can be done by mediation or by faithful service to the state (according to the pre-Neoplatonic astral piety as eg Somnum Scipionis of Cicero, the meritorious civil servants become the astral spirits, in fact - equal of gods). \n\nThe characteristic element was the wholly negative nature of evil. Evil does not have any independent existence; it is simply a lack of good, caused by the growing distance to the One. (the Lowest God of Wolfe is an addition in Christian style). Each lower level is further from the One, and therefore worse.\n\nAn important part is that there is nothing like forgiveness, charity etc. Those that are lower, are lower because they are worse; the higher are nearer to the One or to his earthly image, the Emperor, and therefore are better. You can rise, best of all by philosophy or by service to the State, but if you do not, it is your own fault.\n\nThe Roman empire was organized exactly according to those rules. At top there was the Holy Emperor, below the hierarchy of offices glowing with His reflected light, below them the senatorial class, then the honestiores and at the end the humiliores, \"humble ones\" - serfs and indentured laborers.\n\n\n Wizard-Knight shows therefore a very different culture with a different view of the world and different morality.\n\n It is not very strange that any attempt to show anything different from the modern conceptions should cause a great deal of discomfort. It is a very well known fact that those who speak the most of \"diversity\", \"free thought\", \"open mind\" etc in practice cannot suffer any world-view which differs from their own. Since the world-view shown in Wizard-Knight is nearly a mirror image of the modern one, it is reasonable that it should be the most intolerable for modern people.\n\nAdditionally, it is rather clear that the author supports neither the pitiless hierarchy of Mythgarth, nor the lack of hierarchy in the modern society. The speach of Able to Arnthor obviously represents the view of the author. It is neither the love nor hate of hierarchy; it is rather a conventional Western and particulary American view of the world. In XIX century it would be an obvious and undisputable truth.\n\nWe can see that Wolfe wanted to shown mistakes of modernity; but instead of writing about an ideal utopia, he had shown a society imbalanced in the opposite direction. This allows us to see both benefits and dangers inherent in both systems.\n\nObviously, if someone thinks that the courage, honor and fidelity are evil things, he will see not advantages in the Mythgarth; but this position starts from so different assumption that I think any discussion with it is impossible.\n\nI will say only one thing. According to traditional Christian (and Neoplatonic) philosophy there are no evil things; everything which is, is good (even fidelity). But everything good can be perverted to evil. And the better thing is the worse it becomes if it is misused.\n\nContrary to modern view the good is infinitely stronger than evil (which is simply lack of good, not a separate thing). But if a very good thing is perverted it becomes very dangerous, and the less is the difference the more dangerous it is - since it retains much of the original good. And army of thieves and cowards is not very dangerous. An army of heroes commanded by experienced officers and serving a cruel madman is much more terrible.\n\nCorruptio optimi pessima.\n\nCorruption of the best is worst." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Best regards,\n Stanislaus mailto:sbocian at poczta.fm\n\n\n\n---------------------------------------------------------------------- \t\nZaplanuj i zrob to. Na pewno potrafisz!\nSprawdz >>> http://link.interia.pl/f1bba" } ] }, { "message_id": "<000c01c7ff48$dbecb5c0$26c95a42@rclackey.stic.net>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2007-09-25T07:51:13+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<1687495427.20070924214433@poczta.fm>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Stanislaus wrote:\nAccording to Neoplatonism the world was created as a series of emanations\nof the One; the description in the Wizard is close enough. Our task is to\nreturn to the One by ascending again the ladder of hierarchy; this can be\ndone by mediation or by faithful service to the state (according to the\npre-Neoplatonic astral piety as eg Somnum Scipionis of Cicero, the\nmeritorious civil servants become the astral spirits, in fact - equal of\ngods).<<\n[snip]\nAn important part is that there is nothing like forgiveness, charity etc." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Those that are lower, are lower because they are worse; the higher are\nnearer to the One or to his earthly image, the Emperor, and therefore are\nbetter. You can rise, best of all by philosophy or by service to the State,\nbut if you do not, it is your own fault.<<\n---------------------------------------------------\n\nThat's a nice theory, but it doesn't fit the facts as sketched in TWK, as I\npointed out two years ago.\n\nThe Aelf have no souls. When they die, they die *dead*. But for the sole\npossible exception of Disiri, when the Aelf die they cease to exist at all.\n(As does Mani, after his ninth death.) The Aelf will not rise again, to\nMythgarthr or anywhere else.\n\nThe overwhelming majority of humans in Mythgarthr aren't going to rise to\nthe next level, Skai, either. Only very few, the chosen slain, get to go to\nSkai. I don't know where, if anywhere, humans in Mythgarthr go when they\ndie, but that is the way things are set up in the Seven Worlds cosmology of\nTWK.\n\nTo anticipate possible argument; I could make a case for the eventual\nhumanization of the Aelf by way of human blood, but that would drag\nChristianity back into it. And even then, I find it rather difficult to\nimagine any significant portion of humanity ever getting picked to go to\nSkai. And it's harder yet to imagine the denizens of a Norse afterlife being\non the career path to a Christian heaven.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<52A0FF47062B0B4C80862F2526E02409048C5D88@enfimail2.datcon.co.uk>", "from": { "name": "Phill Springett", "address": "phill.springett at dataconnection.com" }, "date": "2007-09-25T08:21:09+00:00", "subject": "(urth) FW: Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<000c01c7ff48$dbecb5c0$26c95a42@rclackey.stic.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Long time reader of the urth list, but not a poster until now.\n\nI also found The Knight troubling in a similar way as was described\noriginally by Stephen Frug, and although I own The Wizard I've yet to\nread it (but I will do).\n\nCraig suggests\n\n\"If Wolfe chooses to write about a warlike society without any moral\nsystem that opposes the brutality of the sword, why should we react with\nshocked indignation when he gives us a character who is a product of\nthat society?\"\n\nWhich I find nothing to disagree with, and yet Wolfe makes it quite\nclear that Able is actually a product of _our_ society, and fits in\nquite well in Mythgarthr thank you very much, and rises up the ranks\nwith indecent haste (almost as if he was born to it!). Is Wolfe making\nsome point there? \n\nPlease note that I'm always very cautious with my views of Wolfe books,\nit normally takes me a couple of readings to begin to \"get\" his books,\nand I can't claim to really have got a good handle on The Knight yet. \n\nPhill Springett\n\n-----Original Message-----\nFrom: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net]\nOn Behalf Of Craig Brewer\nSent: 24 September 2007 17:53\nTo: The Urth Mailing List; Adam Stephanides\nSubject: Re: (urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight\n\nOn Able's morality, Wolfe did say in an interview that TWK was inspired\nas a traditional chivalric romance except without the Christian\nworldview of the Middle Ages. Instead, you get the harsher Norse aspect\nof the mythology.\n\nTo me, you can take that \"without the Christian worldview\" aspect in two\nways. On the one hand, it looks like traditional \"speculative fiction\"\nin the sense of \"what if\" novels. (I.e., what if the romances of the\nmiddle ages had been written without\nChristianity.) Or, you can take it as a more subtle moral investigation\nof knight culture in which Able's troubled morality (or \"bully\" nature)\nis both necessary and inadequate to his society, etc.\n\nEither way, I don't find Able to be in any way \"worrying\" as if it\nsupposedly exposes Wolfe as idealizing the school yard bully. It seems\nto me that the two books offer much more for thought than whether or not\nwe \"like\" the main character and can \"sympathize\" with him. If Wolfe\nchooses to write about a warlike society without any moral system that\nopposes the brutality of the sword, why should we react with shocked\nindignation when he gives us a character who is a product of that\nsociety? In many ways, I find TWK much more believable than most modern\nfantasy in which evil warlords run rampant and the main \"good guy\"\nsomehow ends up being an innocent-eyed do-gooder who gets these ideas of\nfreedom and kindness from seemingly nowhere in his quest to free the\nworld of evil. If magic and knights were real (and socially dominant),\nthen I expect the world would look something like Mythgarthr.\n\nCraig\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<6953.67.142.130.22.1190712540.squirrel@brunians.org>", "from": { "name": "brunians at brunians.org", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2007-09-25T09:29:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<000c01c7ff48$dbecb5c0$26c95a42@rclackey.stic.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The seven layer world is itself an afterlife.\n\nIt's similar to Dante's Purgatory, but not identical.\n\nIt is an afterlife to which has gone a decent kid (of, English, Norse and\nIrish descent, I believe) who is not a Christian. He's managed to write a\nletter to his brother by stimulating Gene to write this book.\n\n\n\n\n\n." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Stanislaus wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "According to Neoplatonism the world was created as a series of\nemanations\nof the One; the description in the Wizard is close enough. Our task is to\nreturn to the One by ascending again the ladder of hierarchy; this can be\ndone by mediation or by faithful service to the state (according to the\npre-Neoplatonic astral piety as eg Somnum Scipionis of Cicero, the\nmeritorious civil servants become the astral spirits, in fact - equal of\ngods).<<\n[snip]\nAn important part is that there is nothing like forgiveness, charity\netc." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Those that are lower, are lower because they are worse; the higher are\nnearer to the One or to his earthly image, the Emperor, and therefore are\nbetter. You can rise, best of all by philosophy or by service to the\nState,\nbut if you do not, it is your own fault.<<\n---------------------------------------------------\n\nThat's a nice theory, but it doesn't fit the facts as sketched in TWK, as\nI\npointed out two years ago.\n\nThe Aelf have no souls. When they die, they die *dead*. But for the sole\npossible exception of Disiri, when the Aelf die they cease to exist at\nall.\n(As does Mani, after his ninth death.) The Aelf will not rise again, to\nMythgarthr or anywhere else.\n\nThe overwhelming majority of humans in Mythgarthr aren't going to rise to\nthe next level, Skai, either. Only very few, the chosen slain, get to go\nto\nSkai. I don't know where, if anywhere, humans in Mythgarthr go when they\ndie, but that is the way things are set up in the Seven Worlds cosmology\nof\nTWK.\n\nTo anticipate possible argument; I could make a case for the eventual\nhumanization of the Aelf by way of human blood, but that would drag\nChristianity back into it. And even then, I find it rather difficult to\nimagine any significant portion of humanity ever getting picked to go to\nSkai. And it's harder yet to imagine the denizens of a Norse afterlife\nbeing\non the career path to a Christian heaven.\n\n-Roy\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<20070925095349.B7828DA82A@mailserver8.hushmail.com>", "from": { "name": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com", "address": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com" }, "date": "2007-09-25T09:53:48+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<6953.67.142.130.22.1190712540.squirrel@brunians.org>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:51:13 +1000 \"Roy C. Lackey\" \n wrote, inter alia:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't know where, if anywhere, humans in Mythgarthr go \nwhen they die ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I thought it was fairly clear that they cross the Bridge of Swords \ninto Hel's domain, unless they are specially favored. \n\nBut Sir Ravd threatens a villager with the prospect of Hel damning \nher to an afterlife in Muspel playing with dragons, if she perjures \nherself. So I guess that's an option also. \n\nAlso, there seems to be another hell-ish place apart from Muspel. \nAble says somewhere that he was \"at the siege of Nastrond\". \nWikipedia says Nastrond was an afterlife punishment place for bad \npeople of various descriptions. I assume in the TWK cosmos it's a \nregion of Hel." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f7617370709251029q5499aa06m23b784fffe9f134@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-25T17:29:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<6953.67.142.130.22.1190712540.squirrel@brunians.org>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 9/25/07, brunians at brunians.org wrote:\n\nThe seven layer world is itself an afterlife.\n\nIt's similar to Dante's Purgatory, but not identical.\n\nIt is an afterlife to which has gone a decent kid (of, English, Norse and\nIrish descent, I believe) who is not a Christian. He's managed to write a\nletter to his brother by stimulating Gene to write this book." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Certainly an interesting theory, though I think you're wrong about the\n\"stimulating Gene\" part -- doesn't he say that he has seen Ben in\nMythgarthr?\n\nAt any rate, it being an afterlife does explain some things, but it leaves\nothers hanging. Can you elaborate?\n\nFWIW, I didn't (and don't) see the worlds of the _Commedia_ in the\nSeven Layer World; I see the worlds of the Edda." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant\n-----\nhttp://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer\nhttp://www.danehyoakes.com\nI am miserable, he is miserable,\nWe are miserable.\nCan't we have a party? Would he rather have a party?" } ] }, { "message_id": "<5519.67.142.130.48.1190741981.squirrel@brunians.org>", "from": { "name": "brunians at brunians.org", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2007-09-25T17:39:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<1f7617370709251029q5499aa06m23b784fffe9f134@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 9/25/07, brunians at brunians.org wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "The seven layer world is itself an afterlife." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "It's similar to Dante's Purgatory, but not identical." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "It is an afterlife to which has gone a decent kid (of, English, Norse\nand Irish descent, I believe) who is not a Christian. He's managed to\nwrite a letter to his brother by stimulating Gene to write this book." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Certainly an interesting theory, though I think you're wrong about the\n\"stimulating Gene\" part -- doesn't he say that he has seen Ben in\nMythgarthr?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Might be. Don't remember.\n\nAble definitely talks about writing Ben a letter." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At any rate, it being an afterlife does explain some things, but it leaves\nothers hanging. Can you elaborate?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not at this time. I think it is pretty obvious." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "FWIW, I didn't (and don't) see the worlds of the _Commedia_ in the\nSeven Layer World; I see the worlds of the Edda." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On second thought, I agree that there is not really too strong a\ncorrelation between Dante and TWK. I don't think anyone is going to argue\nthat TWK does not resemble the Edda.\n\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-25T18:08:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<5519.67.142.130.48.1190741981.squirrel@brunians.org>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "On Sep 25, 2007, at 12:39 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:\nIt is an afterlife to which has gone a decent kid (of, English, \nNorse\nand Irish descent, I believe) who is not a Christian. He's \nmanaged to\nwrite a letter to his brother by stimulating Gene to write this \nbook." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Certainly an interesting theory, though I think you're wrong about \nthe\n\"stimulating Gene\" part -- doesn't he say that he has seen Ben in\nMythgarthr?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Might be. Don't remember.\n\nAble definitely talks about writing Ben a letter." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In the opening of The Knight, Abel mentions seeing Ben by the fire on \nthe battlefield, with no further explanation. The explanation only \ncomes in the closing scenes of the Wizard, where the tarnhelm-ish \nthingy gives Abel the power to see things as they truly are. He \nlooks at Bold Berthold and sees Ben." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "At any rate, it being an afterlife does explain some things, but \nit leaves\nothers hanging. Can you elaborate?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Not at this time. I think it is pretty obvious." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Because the dream of the ambulance means Arthur Ormsby is dead?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "FWIW, I didn't (and don't) see the worlds of the _Commedia_ in the\nSeven Layer World; I see the worlds of the Edda." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On second thought, I agree that there is not really too strong a\ncorrelation between Dante and TWK. I don't think anyone is going to \nargue\nthat TWK does not resemble the Edda." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I like the idea that the entirety of the seven layer universe is \nPurgatory, but I don't think that is what Wolfe had in mind." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4617.67.142.130.48.1190743998.squirrel@brunians.org>", "from": { "name": "brunians at brunians.org", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2007-09-25T18:13:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sep 25, 2007, at 12:39 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "It is an afterlife to which has gone a decent kid (of, English,\nNorse and Irish descent, I believe) who is not a Christian. He's\nmanaged to write a letter to his brother by stimulating Gene to write\nthis book." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Certainly an interesting theory, though I think you're wrong about\nthe \"stimulating Gene\" part -- doesn't he say that he has seen Ben in\nMythgarthr?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Might be. Don't remember." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Able definitely talks about writing Ben a letter." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In the opening of The Knight, Abel mentions seeing Ben by the fire on\nthe battlefield, with no further explanation. The explanation only\ncomes in the closing scenes of the Wizard, where the tarnhelm-ish\nthingy gives Abel the power to see things as they truly are. He\nlooks at Bold Berthold and sees Ben." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. Still, Able does talk about writing Ben a letter." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "At any rate, it being an afterlife does explain some things, but\nit leaves others hanging. Can you elaborate?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Not at this time. I think it is pretty obvious." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Because the dream of the ambulance means Arthur Ormsby is dead?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, that was part of it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I like the idea that the entirety of the seven layer universe is\nPurgatory, but I don't think that is what Wolfe had in mind." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah, it's a neat idea. I don't any longer think that is what Wolfe\nhad in mind either.\n\n\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "mfstraight at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-25T18:19:51+00:00", "subject": "(urth) FW: Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<52A0FF47062B0B4C80862F2526E02409048C5D88@enfimail2.datcon.co.uk>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 9/25/07, Phill Springett wrote:\nWhich I find nothing to disagree with, and yet Wolfe makes it quite\nclear that Able is actually a product of _our_ society, and fits in\nquite well in Mythgarthr thank you very much, and rises up the ranks\nwith indecent haste (almost as if he was born to it!). Is Wolfe making\nsome point there?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes and no. There's that whole bit of stuff that happens to Able\nbefore Knight begins, after which he is something of a tabla rasa.\n\nAble is from our world, but he seems to bring nothing from it to\nMythgarthr. The only thing Wolfe really does with Able's our-worldly\norigins is make him unfamiliar with certain aspects of Mythgarthr.\nAble might as well be a Mythgarthr native with amnesia for all the\ndifference it makes in what he brings personally to his adventures.\n\nRostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-25T19:25:46+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<4617.67.142.130.48.1190743998.squirrel@brunians.org>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "On Sep 25, 2007, at 1:13 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:\nAble definitely talks about writing Ben a letter." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "In the opening of The Knight, Abel mentions seeing Ben by the fire on\nthe battlefield, with no further explanation. The explanation only\ncomes in the closing scenes of the Wizard, where the tarnhelm-ish\nthingy gives Abel the power to see things as they truly are. He\nlooks at Bold Berthold and sees Ben." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes. Still, Able does talk about writing Ben a letter." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And _The Wizard Knight_ is that letter, natch.\n\nWolfe's disbelief in the third person voice provides the constraints \nwithin which his genius flows." } ] }, { "message_id": "<10310691519.20070925223618@poczta.fm>", "from": { "name": "Stanislaus", "address": "sbocian at poczta.fm" }, "date": "2007-09-25T20:36:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<000c01c7ff48$dbecb5c0$26c95a42@rclackey.stic.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hello Roy," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Tuesday, September 25, 2007, 9:51:13 AM, you wrote:\nThat's a nice theory, but it doesn't fit the facts as sketched in TWK, as I\npointed out two years ago." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The Aelf have no souls. When they die, they die *dead*. But for the sole\npossible exception of Disiri, when the Aelf die they cease to exist at all.\n(As does Mani, after his ninth death.) The Aelf will not rise again, to\nMythgarthr or anywhere else." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The overwhelming majority of humans in Mythgarthr aren't going to rise to\nthe next level, Skai, either. Only very few, the chosen slain, get to go to\nSkai. I don't know where, if anywhere, humans in Mythgarthr go when they\ndie, but that is the way things are set up in the Seven Worlds cosmology of\nTWK." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "To anticipate possible argument; I could make a case for the eventual\nhumanization of the Aelf by way of human blood, but that would drag\nChristianity back into it. And even then, I find it rather difficult to\nimagine any significant portion of humanity ever getting picked to go to\nSkai. And it's harder yet to imagine the denizens of a Norse afterlife being\non the career path to a Christian heaven." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "-Roy" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Apokatastasis -the universal return to the Source, universal salvation - is often connected with Neoplatonism, but it is by no means a necessary part of it.\n\nhttp://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01599a.htm\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocatastasis\n\nHere is a quote from Plotinus on reincarnation:\n\nhttp://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol9/plotinus.htm\n\n\"Those, then, who guarded the man in them, become men again. Those who lived by sense along become animals [---]. But if they did not even live by sense along with their desires but coupled them with dullness of perception, they even turn into plants; [---] and they were taking care to turn themselves into trees. Those who loved music but were in other ways respectable turn into song-birds; kings who ruled stupidly into eagles, if they had no other vices; astronomers who were always raising themselves to the sky without philosophical reflection turn into birds which fly high. [---] but one who has a lesser share of it a creature that lives in community, a bee or something of the sort. Who, then, becomes a daimon? He who was one here too. And who a god? Certainly he who was one here. For what worked in a man leads him [after death]. Since it was his ruler and guide here too.\"\n\n\n\nNeoplatonism doesn't teach that everyone will commune with God. To the contrary, this is the fate of the chosen few - the greatest philosophers. Those who have ascended to Skai (heroes and warriors) are nearer to the One than we, but the distance is still infinite. \n\nThe important point, however, is that everyone (that means all men, not all cats) could commune with God- if they do not, it is their own fault. If they suffer, it is their own problem. \n\nIn Wizard-Knight the Aelf are an equivalent of magical cats (only lower, of course). They have no souls, so there is no possibility of them ever ascending. Kulili, on the other hand, could do it, at least theoretically.\n\nWhen Disiri receives her soul, she is created anew, as a categorically different creature. She can remember her previous life, certainly, but memory is not identity." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Best regards,\n Stanislaus mailto:sbocian at poczta.fm\n\n\n----------------------------------------------------------------------\nFajne i smieszne. Zobacz najlepsze filmiki!\n\n>>> http://link.interia.pl/f1bbb" } ] }, { "message_id": "<23900929.1190843149618.JavaMail.root@elwamui-royal.atl.sa.earthlink.net>", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2007-09-26T21:45:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<10310691519.20070925223618@poczta.fm>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sept. 24, 2007, Stanislaus wrote:\nThis is a Neoplatonic book." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "How do you know this? I haven't read The Wizard, but I recall somebody writing on this list that each world but the topmost is basically made out of stuff rejected by the world above. That's more Gnostic, if anything, than Neoplatonist. And the Kabbalah, which at least we know Wolfe knows about, has an emanationist cosmology just as Neoplatonism does." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Neoplatonism was the ruling philosophy and religion of the Roman Empire and, in a version Christianized by Pseudo-Dionysius, of Byzantium (although the Ortodox authors tend to condemn Neoplatonism in its pure version)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What is your source for this? I've read a fair amount about the Roman Empire, and nothing I've read suggests anything like this; nor does the Wikipedia article you cite. In any case, Neoplatonism dates from the 3rd century A.D., while the Roman Empire was founded in the 1st century B.C. (and became Christianized in the 4th century A.D.)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism\n...\nAn important part is that there is nothing like forgiveness, charity etc. Those that are lower, are lower because they are worse; the higher are nearer to the One or to his earthly image, the Emperor, and therefore are better. You can rise, best of all by philosophy or by service to the State, but if you do not, it is your own fault." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Again, nothing in the Wikipedia article, or in this article, which Wikipedia references, suggests that there is a single Neoplatonist morality, let alone that \"there is nothing [in it] like forgiveness, charity etc.\" (which have nothing to do with Able throwing the captain out of his cabin, in any case), or that \"good equals strong,\" to quote a later email of yours." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Additionally, it is rather clear that the author supports neither the pitiless hierarchy of Mythgarth, nor the lack of hierarchy in the modern society. The speach of Able to Arnthor obviously represents the view of the author. It is neither the love nor hate of hierarchy; it is rather a conventional Western and particulary American view of the world. In XIX century it would be an obvious and undisputable truth." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There's nothing American, or particularly 19th-century, about Able's speech. The notions that kings should be like fathers to their subjects, help and protect them, and not tax them excessively were commonplaces in medieval Europe. That commoners in bandit-infested frontier regions should be permitted to arm themselves and form companies of their own is more unusual, but not unknown: that's how the Cossacks got started, and the political systems of Imperial Russia and 19th-century America are about as far apart as you can get. None of this is incompatible with forcibly putting uppity commoners in their place. Notice that Able doesn't say that all commoners should be allowed to form armed companies, still less that they have a right to.\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "mfstraight at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-27T16:03:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 9/25/07, Matthew King wrote:\nWolfe's disbelief in the third person voice provides the constraints\nwithin which his genius flows." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I can't think of a better way to summarize the key worthwhile insight\nof postmodernism. There is no such thing as a third person\nperspective.\n\nAnd I agree that Wolfe's embracing this insight is a cornerstone of\nhis greatness.\n\nRostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1974075138.20070927195955@poczta.fm>", "from": { "name": "Stanislaus", "address": "sbocian at poczta.fm" }, "date": "2007-09-27T17:59:55+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "<23900929.1190843149618.JavaMail.root@elwamui-royal.atl.sa.earthlink.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hello Adam," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Wednesday, September 26, 2007, 11:45:49 PM, you wrote:\nOn Sept. 24, 2007, Stanislaus wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "This is a Neoplatonic book." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "How do you know this? I haven't read The Wizard, but I recall\nsomebody writing on this list that each world but the topmost is\nbasically made out of stuff rejected by the world above. That's more\nGnostic, if anything, than Neoplatonist. And the Kabbalah, which at\nleast we know Wolfe knows about, has an emanationist cosmology just as Neoplatonism does." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Kabbalah is the Jewish version of Neoplatonism. For our purposes it is close enough.\n\nAs for Gnosis - there is a great difference. For Neoplatonism (and Kabbalah) the emanation of the world is a necessary process. The matter is comparatively much less good than spirit, but it is so because it is a very low emanation; there is nothing intrinsically evil in matter. It simply doesn't posess very much good.\n\nFor Gnostics the creation of the world is a terrible tragedy. An evil figure, the Demiurg, in his pride and will to dominate created an evil prison for souls.\n\nThere are a few Gnostic fantasy and sf books. The Long Sun trilogy is pretty obvious; less well known is \"The Voyage to Arcturus\" by Lindsay. If you want to see the difference between Gnosis and Neoplatonism, read it.\n\nhttp://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/vrctr10.txt" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Neoplatonism was the ruling philosophy and religion of the Roman Empire and, in a version Christianized by Pseudo-Dionysius, of Byzantium (although the Ortodox authors tend to condemn Neoplatonism in its pure version)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "What is your source for this? I've read a fair amount about the\nRoman Empire, and nothing I've read suggests anything like this; nor\ndoes the Wikipedia article you cite. In any case, Neoplatonism dates\nfrom the 3rd century A.D., while the Roman Empire was founded in the\n1st century B.C. (and became Christianized in the 4th century A.D.)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I blame Humanists. They liked only the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, and we must suffer the consequences. The late Empire is nearly unknown. But you can read some writings of Julian the Apostate, a Neoplatonist par excellence.\n\nhttp://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/toj/index.htm\nhttp://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/julian-mispogon.html" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism\n...\nAn important part is that there is nothing like forgiveness, charity etc. Those that are lower, are lower because they are worse; the higher are nearer to the One or to his earthly image, the Emperor, and therefore are better. You can rise, best of all by philosophy or by service to the State, but if you do not, it is your own fault." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Again, nothing in the Wikipedia article, or in this article, which\nWikipedia references, suggests that there is a single Neoplatonist\nmorality, let alone that \"there is nothing [in it] like forgiveness,\ncharity etc.\" (which have nothing to do with Able throwing the\ncaptain out of his cabin, in any case), or that \"good equals\nstrong,\" to quote a later email of yours." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "...." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--Adam" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As to the pre-Christian morality, here is an interesting interview with Wolfe:\n\nhttp://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html\n\n\"JJ: That is an interesting perspective on it, I hadn't thought of at all. My wife had one of her professors that taught in a Moslem country for a while and said he woke up one day and saw the children had a bunch of kittens they were throwing up in the air and hitting them with a baseball bat against the wall and the mothers just sat by and watched. He said \"I am not a Christian, I am an atheist, but I am a Christian in that I could not tolerate that.\" There has been an influence in our society that has made us different from pagans.\n\nGW: We vastly underestimate the importance of Jesus. We think we don't. We have all these churches and we say how can we be underestimating Jesus? We don't until we start trying to figure out what it would be like if he had never lived. When you really start trying to figure out what it would be like if He never lived you realize that He is a much more pivotal figure than we give him credit for. All of these people, everybody at this convention is in that sense a Christian although most of them would tell you that they are not and some of them would tell them quite truthfully that they were Jews who practice Judaism in one of its various forms and so on and so forth. Nevertheless they have been influenced by Christ much more than they realized. We are very lucky to have had Him. We are very fortunate. A friend of mine learned to read Turkish. And he got hold of a Turkish joke book and read it. And I said, \"What were the jokes like?\" He said it was horrible. They were all about ugly tricks that were being played on blind people and things like that. This is what we have escaped from and we don't realize that it is there and we came very close to falling into it. We very easily could have and we still may.\"\n\nRemember that for the Neoplatonists we live in the best of all possible worlds, and that this world is necessary. \n\nIf you want to know more about Neoplatonism, and especially Neoplatonism as it was reflected in the popular consciousness, I suggest two books by CS Lewis - \"Discarded Mirror\" and \"Allegory of Love\". \n\nThese are not philosophy books and are not primarily about Neoplatonism. They show however the popular worldview of late Antiquity and Middle Ages and are a necessary introduction to \"Wizard-Knight\".\n\nLewis explains one very important feature of Neoplatonism - the doctrine of mediation. Two beings from different levels cannot meet directly; they always need a mediator, a \"tertium quid\". That is the reason the hierarchy is so important. I cannot meet God directly, the best I can achieve is to see his reflection in my superior in the hierarchy - \"the bright shadow\" of Wolfe.\n\n(Here, actually, Plotinus differs from the standard Neoplatonism, because he thought the direct mystical union with God possible.\n\nhttp://home.uchicago.edu/~ajmazur/Unio_Magica_Part1.pdf\nZeke Mazur, Unio Magica, Part 1: On the Magical Origins of Plotinus? Mysticism,)\n\nA good popular introduction is Arthur Lovejoy's \"The Great Chain of Being\".\n\n\nSee also:\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chain_of_Being\nhttp://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/re/chain.htm\nhttp://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-45\n\nSome more info\nhttp://classics.mit.edu/Plotinus/enneads.html The works of Plotinus\nhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/n/neoplato.htm a short, but very good, article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy\n\nSee also Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite \"On the Divine Names\".\nhttp://www.ccel.org/ccel/rolt/dionysius.txt\nhttp://www.ccel.org/ccel/dionysius/works.txt\n\nHere is a fragment of the preface, written by the translator.\n\nKeep in mind that Dionysius is an orthodox Christian, and the Wizard-Knight is not Christian, although in comparison with typical Neoplatonism it shows Christian influences. Super-Essence means God.\n\nC. E. Rolt, Preface:\n\n\"Let us follow this creative process and see whither it leads. The\nSuper-Essence, as It transcends both Non-Existence and Existence, also transcends both Time and Eternity. But from afar It is seen or felt as Existence and as Eternity. \n....\n\nThus the world-process begins (as Dionysius had learnt from Genesis and from the teaching of Plato) as the level of dead solid matter, to which he gives the name of “merely existent” (ousi?d?s).\nThence, ... it advances to the production of plant and animal and man, being by the process enriched with more and more qualities as Life (autoz??), Wisdom (autosophia), and the other currents of the Universal stream begin to permeate it one by one.\n\nThus the separate individuals, according to the various laws (logoi) of\n their genera and species, are created in this world of Time. And each thing, while it exists in the world, has two sides to its existence: one, outside its created being (according to the sense of the word “outside” explained above), in the Super-Essence wherein all things are One Thing (as all points meet at infinity or as according to the neo-Platonic simile used by Dionysius, the radii of a circle meet at the centre), and the other within its own created being on this lower plane where all things are separate from each other (as all points in space are separate or as the radii of the circle are separate at the circumference). This paradox is of the very utmost importance.\n\n The various kinds of existences being now created in this world of time, we can regard them as ranged in an ascending scale between Nothingness and the Super-Essence, each rank of being subsuming the qualities of those that lie below it. Thus we get the following system in ascending order: Existence, Life, Sensation, Reason, Spirit. \n...\n\nThe diminution of Being which we find in glancing down the ladder is,\nDionysius tells us, no defect in the system of creation. It is right that a\nstone should be but a stone and a tree no more than a tree. Each thing, being itself however lowly, is fulfilling the laws of its kind which pre-exist (after a transcendent manner) in the undifferentiated\nSuper-Essence. If, however, there is a diminution of Being where such\ndiminution has no place, then trouble begins to arise. This is, in fact, the origin and nature of evil. For as we ascend the scale of Being, fresh laws at each stage counteract the laws of the stage below, the law of life by which the blood circulates and living things grow upwards counteracting the mere law of inert gravitation, and again, the laws of morality counteracting the animal passions. And where this counter-action fails, disaster follows. A hindered circulation means ill-health, and a hindered self-control means sin. Whereas a stone is merely lifeless, a corpse is not only lifeless but dead; and whereas a brute is un-moral, a brutal man is wicked, or immoral.\n What in the one case is the absence from a thing of that which has no proper place in it, is in the other case the failure of the thing’s proper virtues.\n....\n IV.?THE PROBLEM OF EVIL\n\n At wearisome length Dionysius discusses the problem of evil and shows that nothing is inherently bad. For existence is in itself good (as coming ultimately from the Super-Essence), and all things are therefore good in so far as they exist. Since evil is ultimately non-existent; a totally evil thing would be simply non-existent, and thus the evil in the world, wherever it becomes complete, annihilates itself and that wherein it lodges. We may illustrate this thought by the nature of zero in mathematics, which is non-entity (since, added to numbers, it makes no difference) and yet has an annihilating force (since it reduces to zero all numbers that are multiplied by it). Even so evil is nothing and yet manifests itself in the annihilation of the things it qualifies. That which we call evil in the world is merely a tendency of things towards nothingness. Thus sickness is a tendency towards death, and death is simply the cessation of physical vitality. And sin is a tendency towards spiritual death, which is the cessation of spiritual\nvitality. But, since the ground of the soul is indestructible, a complete cessation of its being is impossible; and hence even the devils are not inherently bad. Were they such they would cease ipso facto to exist.\n\nDionysius here touches incidentally on a mystical doctrine which, as developed by later writers, afterwards attained the greatest importance. This doctrine of a timeless self is the postulate, perhaps, of all Christian mysticism. The boldest expression of it is to be found in Eckhart and his disciple Tauler, who both say that even the lost souls in hell retain unaltered the ultimate nobility of their being. And lest this doctrine should be thought to trifle with grave matters, be it remembered that the sinfulness and gravity of sin are simply due to this indestructible nobility of our being. Man cannot become non-moral, and hence his capacity for wickedness. The soul is potentially divine, and therefore may be actually satanic. The very devils in hell cannot destroy the image of the Godhead within them, and it is this image that sin defiles.\n\n It follows from the ultimate non-entity of evil that, in so far as it\nexists, it can only do so through being mingled with some element of good. To take an illustration given by Dionysius himself, where there is disease there is vitality, for when life ceases the sickness disappears in death. The ugliness of evil lies precisely in the fact that it always, somehow or other, consists in the corruption of something inherently good.\n\n It is, however, this ugliness of things that Dionysius fails to emphasize, and herein lies the great weakness of his teaching. Not only does he, with the misguided zeal of an apologist, gloze deliberately over certain particular cruelties of the Creation and accept them as finite forms of good, but also he tends to explain away the very nature of evil in itself. He tends to be misled by his own true theories. For it is true that evil is ultimately non-existent. St. Augustine taught this when he said: “Sin is nought”; so did Julian of Norwich, who “saw not sin,” because she believes “it hath no manner of substance nor any part of being.” The fault of Dionysius is the natural failure of his mental type to grasp the mere facts of the actual world as mere facts. He is so dazzled with his vision of ultimate Reality that he does not feel with any intensity the partial realities of this finite universe. Hence, though his theory of evil is, in the main, true, he does not quite grasp the true application of his theory to this world of actual facts.\n\nFor this world is by its very nature finite. And hence, if the evil in it is\n(as Dionysius rightly says) but partial, it must also be remembered (as he for a moment forgets) that its very existence is but partial. And,\n therefore, though evil is ultimately non-existent, yet the bad qualities of things may, so far as this present world is concerned, have as much reality, or at least as much actuality, as their good qualities. And when we say that evil is ultimately non-existent we merely mean that evil ought to have no actuality here, not that it has none. Dionysius calls evil a lapse and failure of the creature’s proper virtues. But a lapse or failure has in it something positive, as he in the same breath both admits by using the word and also tries to explain away. It is as positive as the virtues from which it lapses. The absence of a wooden block is nothing, light has no proper place there, but the air, where light should is darkness and is a visible\nshadow. St. Augustine has crystallized this truth in his famous epigram, quoted above in part, which runs in full as follows: “Sin is naught, and men are naughtes when they sin.” The void left by the want of a good thing has a content consisting in the want. Probably had Dionysius seen more of the world’s misery and sin he would have had a stronger sense of this fact. And in that case he mould have given more prominence than he gives, in his extant writings at least, to the Cross of Christ.\"\n\n\n\n\nI hope those resources will help you understand the problem." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Best regards,\n Stanislaus mailto:sbocian at poczta.fm\n\n\n-----------------R--E--K--L--A--M--A-----------------\nLepsze wiadomosci z kraju i z zagranicy.\nNie wierzysz? Sprawdz - http://wiadomosci.interia.pl/" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-27T21:03:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sep 27, 2007, at 11:03 AM, Michael Straight wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Wolfe's disbelief in the third person voice provides the constraints\nwithin which his genius flows." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I can't think of a better way to summarize the key worthwhile insight\nof postmodernism. There is no such thing as a third person\nperspective." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Have any of the po-mos written about the evolution of the idea of the \nthird person?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "mfstraight at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-09-28T17:29:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "On 9/27/07, Matthew King wrote:\nWolfe's disbelief in the third person voice provides the constraints\nwithin which his genius flows." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I can't think of a better way to summarize the key worthwhile insight\nof postmodernism. There is no such thing as a third person\nperspective." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Have any of the po-mos written about the evolution of the idea of the\nthird person?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't know. It seems pretty ancient. The first few chapters of\nGenesis are basically third-person omniscient. And I can't help\nthinking that we'd have been spared a lot of headache if they weren't.\n\nRostrum" } ] } ] }