Subject: (urth) Truth in fiction

From: Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:40:18 +0000

Lee Berman wrote:

> As Jane says, this is fiction! It is not possible for there to be a "right" answer. There is no objective reality
> to measure. Ideas are not found in dots on a page or screen. Ideas are not floating around in the aether either. They
> ONLY to be found as neural patterns in each human being's brain. And as long as one intelligent, sane person has a certain
> idea, that idea has validity.

There is no such thing as the truth about what actually happened on
Sainte-Anne, etc., but there can be a truth which is relevant to the
discussion; the truth about what the author meant and intended us to
see. That is a fact about what happened in some human being's brain.
There isn't always such a truth; perhaps he intended it to be
ambiguous; perhaps he just didn't think about some question. But
sometimes there is. You need not take an interest in it if you don't
want to, but I think many of us here do care about it.

I think it's clear that _sometimes_ Wolfe has a particular answer in
mind, and not all these cases are obvious. John V. Marsch is a good
example; from Wolfe's own testimony he not only intended that Marsch
had been replaced by an abo, but expected us to work it out.  Yet in
fact the matter was disputed. In such cases it surely makes sense to
try to work out what the answer is, and compare theories and consider
their advantages and disadvantages.

Not every case need be the same. In fact, Wolfe's behaviour in
interviews suggests they aren't; sometimes he gives perfectly
straighforward answers to questions that were doubtful, even adding
comments along the lines of 'How did you not get that?' other times he
refuses to answer or remains cryptic, suggesting that these are things
to which there isn't meant to be a clear answer.

Now, there are presumably other cases where Wolfe has a definite
answer in mind, but hasn't told us it, because it never came up. In
such cases we may never know for certain what the answer is. But still
there is an answer, which the author intends us to discover, so
debating it still makes sense. This doesn't seem very puzzling to me;
in all sorts of fields answers can't be known for certain, but some
answers are more plausible than others, and there are reasons for
accepting or rejecting them.

The real problem, of course, is that we can never know which are the
cases where there is a definite answer and which are the cases where
there isn't.So we may be going on wild-goose-chases some of the time.
I don't see an solution to this.

---

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:07:17 +0000

>Andrew Mason: There is no such thing as the truth about what actually happened on
>here isn't always such a truth; perhaps he intended it to beambiguous; 
>perhaps he just didn't think about some question. But
 
Andrew I care very very much about what Gene Wolfe intended his readers to understand.
So much so that I have devoted a lot of hours of study to obscure aspects of mythology
and the Bible and demonology and gnosticism etc. that I never had an interest in, solely
to try to understand Gene Wolfe better.
 
But, as you elegantly outline through the whole of your post, we can't truly know all his
intentions. He doesn't want us to know them. He almost surely correctly knows that if we
knew all his intentions his work would be quite ruined.
 
I apologize for the condescending tone here, but darn it, there is a manner of learning and 
growing and becoming a sophisticated, mature reader of literature. Young readers demand concrete 
"correct" answers to mysteries in what they are reading. Adults are supposed to have the wisdom 
to realize that in books, as in life, there isn't always a "best" answer for everyone.

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:20:19 +0000

Lee Berman wrote:
> I apologize for the condescending tone here,

If you recognize it as something to be apologized for, why do it in
the first place?

> but darn it, there is a manner of learning and

No, but there often is, and the default assumption unless there is
strong evidence otherwise is that there is, in fact, an answer which
"best" fits the internal "facts" of the text (if not an actual "right"
answer). "Adults [should] have the wisdom" to realize that the best
answer won't necessarily be handed to us on a silver platter, nor will
we always agree upon which answer is "best."

But it is perfectly reasonable for an adult to hold that one answer is
better than another, and to do so without denigrating those who hold
that other answer.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:47:37 +0000

> to realize that in books, as in life, there isn't always a "best" answer for everyone. 		 	   		

I would be interested to know if you've read Margaret Atwood's "Death by 
Landscape"? It seems to be to be a deliberately answerless and 
unanswerable mystery story, for or by anyone.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

---

From: Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 01:14:35 +0000

>Landscape"? It seems to be
>to be a deliberately answerless and  unanswerable mystery story, for or by 
>anyone.

I've taught that story before precisely to teach the value of ambiguity. Works 
well, actually. And anyone remember "The Lady and the Tiger"? I used to teach 
that to high school freshmen. It drove them absolutely nuts, which was awesome.

So how does one determine the difference between "Wolfean puzzle" and 
"literary/thematic ambiguity" in Wolfe? That's always the most frustrating thing 
to me about reading him, and about interpreting him (and hearing others talk 
about him, both here and anywhere): when are you dealing with a legitimate 
puzzle that's meant to be solved by attention to other details in the text? And 
when are you dealing with an ambiguity that is supposed to remain ambiguous?

For example, the talk about imitation leading to truth which has come up lately: 
that only really works in a "literary" way, in my opinion, if it remains 
structurally ambiguous whether the one/thing doing the imitating actually 
becomes the thing being imitated. Severian and Christ, say: it is important to 
me that Severian look like a Christian figure and, at times (like with the 
resurrections) even *seem* to become that thing, at least momentarily. However, 
as soon as we move to either definitive statement that Severian *IS* Christ or 
Severian *IS NOT* an actual messiah, the whole interesting dynamic of 
imitation-leading-to-truth dies. It becomes a plot point rather than something 
more thematic, potential, or always-a-possibility.

That's an example where it seems to me that ambiguity (of a certain sort, at 
least at the plot level) is necessary for the more fundamental meaning to really 
work. If it just becomes a plot point of Severian either just being a dupe or 
Severian actually being some kind of true supernatural messiah (above and beyond 
the Hieros), then it's just a story about a guy who is or isn't a messiah. The 
subtlety of not revealing that directly is clever but not actually insightful. 
But if it remains ambiguous, it becomes a story that actually shows a very 
intricate and sophisticated understanding of how an a-religious society could 
become "holy" in spite of itself. And that's way more interesting, and also much 
more worthy of how Wolfe actually can say both substantial and misleading things 
about his "beliefs" at the same time.

BUT...if I push on that angle too hard, I might well lose sight of certain 
specific puzzles in the text, particularly relating to the Hiero backstory, as 
well as interesting puzzles about Sev's own possible resurrection, etc. In 
practice, then, it seems wrong to stress puzzle-truth or the value of "multiple 
interpretations" and ambiguity too much. That kind of conundrum is peculiar to 
Wolfe (and a few other writers), and it can be incredibly fun, but also 
incredibly frustrating, especially if one leans too heavily on a certain 
ambiguity for one's interpretation...when someone else may well come up and just 
point out a fact of the text that "solves" the puzzle.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 06:15:24 +0000

> that to high school freshmen. It drove them absolutely nuts, which was awesome.

Not really what I meant. There are presented two firm answers, the 
mechanism that determines which one is discussed, and we are left by 
Stockton to meditate on the lover's decision; this is a reasonable 
ambiguity, all in the mystery of the human heart, and the reader can 
envision either outcome.

Atwood methodically considers and demolishes all the plausible 
explanations, sifting out most of the ambiguity of the girls' emotional 
lives and sowing it into the physical world with a seed broadcaster 
where it takes root in the vicissitudes of weather, the lake current, 
predators, etc. and lets it ramble for decades unharvested. The reader 
is left with the non-solution of the surviving girl dying of old age 
among her collection still unable to get traction on her friend's 
traceless disappearance.

---

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 07:37:00 +0000

>Jeff Wilson- I would be interested to know if you've read Margaret Atwood's "Death by Landscape"? 
>It seems to be to be a deliberately answerless and unanswerable mystery story, for or by anyone.
 
I am not familiar. I can tell you that I am not particularly a fan of absurdist or existential
literature. I generally like there to be some answer or conclusion to a story. But I don't think
I am alone in rejecting the opinion of people who assume they have the authority to tell me the proper
way to appreciate a piece of artwork.

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 14:03:04 +0000

On 1/8/2011 2:37 AM, Lee Berman wrote:
> literature. I generally like there to be some answer or conclusion to a story.
If you think about it, this truth might shed some light on your own 
process. I am not saying you have come out firmly against ambiguity, but 
your dissatisfaction with nonconcrete answers is almost palpable 
sometimes. Sometimes allusion is just allusion. We'll never find that 
line that establishes Inire as the king of monkey-men, or the snake in 
the garden, or the grandfather of the Conciliator.

Craig just wrote a cogent and convincing post on how ambiguity functions 
in BOTNS and how its presence is critical to appreciating the story. 
He's plainly right. If Severian's status (there's an adjective here I'm 
missing and can't think of: cosmological? theological?) were as clear as 
it is sometimes summarized, we would not be here discussing it 30 years 
after publication.
> But I don't think
Certainly not!

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From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 14:49:02 +0000

>it is sometimes summarized, we would not be here discussing it 30 years 

No argument with Craig from me. Could the missing adjective be "supernatural"?

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From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 15:34:18 +0000

> No argument with Craig from me. Could the missing adjective be "supernatural"? 		 	   		
That would cover it---thanks!

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