{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4960", "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": 4960, "subject": "free will and piracy", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "2007-12-18T04:44:41+00:00", "last": "2007-12-18T15:47:14+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "<214318.53952.qm@web58202.mail.re3.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2007-12-18T04:44:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) free will and piracy", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On an unrelated note, I do think that any discussion\nof the moral ambiguity inherent in Father Chris must\nconfront the older version breaking down in tears when\nthe young novitiate leaves and falls into the past -\nan older version that never once tries to deter the\nyounger man from the path that will lead to murder,\ndebauchery, and other piratical pass times.\n\nThere is the Christmas homily of Chris that speaks of\ngold - the talents given by God and the manner in\nwhich we use them. It is unclear to me whether the\nyounger or older versions of Chris are using those\ntalents, or \"gold\", in the manner most stereotypically\nconsidered as good, and I think somehow the older\nversions refusal to curtail the free will, or the\n\"pirate freedom\" of his younger self is somehow\ncentral to any discussion of the redemptive meaning or\ncatharsis of Chris' psuedo confession.\n\nCertainly free will and the existence of evil must be\ndiscussed when the text's tangential relationship to\nCatholicism is considered.\n\nGood discussions on this repetitive cycle and faux\nconfession of Fr. Chris so far in the list.\n\n\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<993351.36847.qm@web44904.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "paul witcover", "address": "gdeonn at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2007-12-18T13:23:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) free will and piracy", "in_reply_to": "<214318.53952.qm@web58202.mail.re3.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Marc Aramini wrote: On an unrelated note, I do think that any discussion\nof the moral ambiguity inherent in Father Chris must\nconfront the older version breaking down in tears when\nthe young novitiate leaves and falls into the past -\nan older version that never once tries to deter the\nyounger man from the path that will lead to murder,\ndebauchery, and other piratical pass times.\n\n\n###\n \n The question is, why does Ignacio cry at this point? My reading was that his tears were not provoked by any sense of empathy for what his younger self is about to experience, but rather the overwhelming emotional release of finally reaching the moment for which he has labored his entire adult life. He's crying because he is finally going back to Novia. Chris is nothing to Ignacio beyond a necessary cog in the mechanism that will take him back and allow him to reunite with her.\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<970863.4906.qm@web58204.mail.re3.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2007-12-18T14:41:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) free will and piracy", "in_reply_to": "<993351.36847.qm@web44904.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- paul witcover wrote:\n \n The question is, why does Ignacio cry at this\npoint? ........" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Chris is nothing to Ignacio beyond a\nnecessary cog in the mechanism that will take him\nback and allow him to reunite with her." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In the last decade and a half I have noticed an\nincreasingly sentimental nature in Wolfe's characters,\nan absence of the sinister silences we see in 5HOC and\nPeace and New Sun or his shorter work that makes us\nsay, jeez, this guy is creepy. Chris might be an\nineffectual apologist for the \"environment\" of the\nbrutal past forcing his hand, but if he elides facts\nit just doesn't seem overtly sinister, despite his\nembraced piracy.\n\nThe worst thing Silk ever did was right at the end of\nthe Sun cycle, when he kicked the inhuma to death. \nAble was at worst a bully and at best a hero. Ignacio\nis one cold dude if he could contribute to his own\nworst moments while still doing things like buying\nchickens and letting his younger self steal them.\n\nI need to read it again, I guess. As always." } ] }, { "message_id": "<002101c8418d$434b6d70$6734290a@bluelnk.net>", "from": { "name": "Dave Lebling", "address": "dlebling at hyraxes.com" }, "date": "2007-12-18T15:47:14+00:00", "subject": "(urth) free will and piracy", "in_reply_to": "<993351.36847.qm@web44904.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ignacio as an older Chris, laboring diligently to create exactly the Chris\nhe was as a young man, makes an interesting and creepy contrast to the life\nof Severian, molded by the hierodules, possibly more than once, to be a\nbetter man (or perhaps a worse - he is a mass murderer, after all) than the\nrough torturer he started out as.\n\n \n\nChris is a child of privilege (in a Mafia family, of course) whose life,\nlooked at from his own selfish point of view, works out nearly perfectly\nuntil he loses Novia. His older self works for years to recreate his younger\nself, so that the younger self will not deviate from the life he previously\nled, thereby recreating the older self that creates the younger self.\n\n \n\nContrast this with the narrator of 5HoC, who is trying to recreate himself\nin a cloned body, and has been working on this project for generations with\ndebatable success. Clearly Ignacio/Chris is aware that his project is risky\nand easily knocked off course (for example, he worries about the\nrepercussions that might ensue if he visited himself when Chris still lived\nin \"Jersey\").\n\n \n\nThe perfectly choreographed life Chris leads from the time he enters the\nmonastery is not \"pirate freedom,\" it is a prison he puts himself into and\ncan only break out of if his plan succeeds (or as Paul Witcover wrote, a\nmachine in which Chris is just a cog). So, \"pirate freedom\" isn't freedom at\nall. Maybe that's why Ignacio is crying: after all that work, he thinks he\nis finally going to be free. Of course, there may be another still older\nChris/Ignacio tugging the puppet strings.\n\n \n\n-- Dave Lebling, aka vizcacha\n\n \n\n _____ \n\nFrom: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On\nBehalf Of paul witcover\nSent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 8:23 AM" } ] } ] }