{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6248", "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": 6248, "subject": "convo from a decade ago", "messages": 7, "voices": 6, "first": "2012-05-05T09:20:12+00:00", "last": "2012-05-07T14:06:10+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2012-05-05T09:20:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) convo from a decade ago", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Just in case you've joined this list less than five years ago, like me, I\nwant to share what I thought was a pretty incredible piece of analysis from\nol' Dan'l just over a decade ago (he is working off of comments made by\nMichael Straight) - mainly about Long and Short Sun. It's a very LONG\npaste as it includes acute responses from Steve Strickland, then Michael\nStraight, then James Jordan.\n\nPlease ignore if this is old and/or unfruitful stuff for you. It really\nroped me in and I thought it just might do that for one or two others.\n (For the record, I essentially side with Dan'l's view, filtered through or\ntransmuted by James's, but would also want to absorb as much as possible of\nSteve's into it, and also certainly respect and grant much of Michael's.)\n\nThe thread goes on with many more insightful responses that flesh it out\nand nuance it very well, but this is where I stopped copying...\n\n-DOJP\n\nFrom: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \nSubject: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a\nTextual\nDate: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 15:39:30\n\nThis will wander a little off the Lupine track, but trust me,\nit's heading straight back there. Some points of Rostrum's\nscreed got my head working, and I've got a basic thesis on\nwhat Wolfe is doing and why.\n\nThe first of Rostrum's remarks that I responded to was this:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I remember feeling this way at the end of tBOTLS, the idea that\nsome of the wonderful things Horn had told me about Silk might\nhave been exaggerations or wishful thinking gave me a certain\n(fun) chill, but I never felt we have enough evidence to try to\ngo back and sift and somehow uncover the \"real\" Silk behind\nHorn's story." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now, I didn't really get that kind of shock out of the revelation\nthat \"I, Horn, wrote this years later, with some help.\" What I\n_did_ get out of it was a weird sense that Wolfe had patterned\nthis whole thing somehow after model the Catholic church\nuses to describe the formation of the (written) Gospels.\n\nBriefly, for non-[Catholic-Bible-scholars]: The basic idea the\nCatholic church endorses is that the Gospels were formed in\nthree \"layers\":\n1. The events that actually occurred in the greater\n Jerusalem metropolitan area ca. 4 BC - 33 AD.\n2. The memories of those events carried by eyewitnesses\n and the communities founded by those eyewitnesses.\n3. The setting-down of those memories by the communities,\n probably late in the first century.\nThe Catholic answers to questions like \"Yeah, but how do we know\nit's true?\" and \"Well, what about the way they [seem to] conflict\nwith each other?\" are deeply entrenched in that model, but it\ngets pretty complicated at that point.\n\nNow, what I _think_ we have in Horn's \"Book of Silk\" is something\nsimilar: Horn was, admittedly, an eyewitness to some of these\nevents -- a fairly small proportion of them. He's gone around\ninterviewing people, filled in the details as best he can, and\nfreely admits he made the rest up to complete the narrative. It\nisn't good historiography, but it suffices; it gives the sense\nof someone who isn't a historian doing the best he can. The made-\nup stuff, while perhaps not accurate, isn't a lie, in the sense\nof an untruth meant to deceive; it is intended to convey a sense\nof the probable truth.\n\nSo we have all three stages compressed into one text:\n\n1. We have Horn's own authentic(?) memories of Silk.\n\n2. We have the community's memories of Silk.\n\n3. The \"Book of Silk\" _as written by Horn & Nettle_\n collecting and collating their own memories with\n those of the community.\n\nUnfortunately, there's an implicit Stage 4, which is also\nimplicit in the Catholic model: The copyists get hold of\nthe text, and a long time later, scholars try to trace the\nprovenance of textual variants backwards and determine the\n\"true\" original text of Stage 3.\n\nIn the case of the BOOK OF THE LONG SUN, we feel like we have\nthe product of Stage 3, but the Narrator's comments in SHORT\nSUN lead us to wonder whether we might actually have a corrupt\ncopy, and how corrupt? Nor do Horn's comments at the end of\nLONG SUN make it any easier to determine; compare them to the\nfirst four verses of the Gospel according to Luke, and then\nfind out how much work goes into preparing a good textual\n\"edition\" of that Gospel. Assurances by the author of the\ntext's accuracy do not greatly help when the text has been\nhand-copied many times.\n\n\n\nWhich leads me to another of Rostrum's points:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It's not that Wolfe leaves things ambiguous because he doesn't\ncare whether you believe in Silk's enlightenment. Rather\nhe's giving you the same kind of evidence that we have in the\nreal world--do you trust the people who claim to have had an\nencounter with God and (equally important) the community of\npeople who have told and retold their stories? Can we hope\nthat, though mediated though our own fallibility and the\nfallibility of others, we can still have some genuine knowledge\nof God?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "We have, in THE BOOK OF THE LONG SUN, one of the following:\na) Horn and Nettle's \"Book of Silk\"\nb) one of many possible variant texts\nc) someone's \"edition\" of same\n-- and nothing to help us which. We are, in fact, in the precise\nposition of a non-scholarly reader of the Bible, or perhaps (given\nthat this discussion is happening at all) a medieval scholar with\nno access to modern textual studies.\n\nSo: paraphrasing Rostrum, can we hope that, though mediated\nthough our own fallibility and the fallibility of others, we can\nstill have some genuine knowledge of Silk?\n\nI think the answer is, and has to be, \"Yes,\" because the\npossibility that it's all made-up (within the Lupine universe\nof discourse) is too drab to be worth discussing.\n\nAll this brings me to my basic thesis.\n\nWhat Wolfe has reproduced, here, is the basic problem of putting\nfaith in a written Scripture. The following paragraph refers\nequivocally to the Bible (for us, or at least those of us to\nwhom the Bible represents something more than a reactionary symbol\nof patriarchal oppression) and to The Book of Silk (for a\nrepresentative inhabitant of the Lupiverse, modulo similar\nconcerns).\n\n\"What can we believe about this text or its contents? By itself,\nit is completely incapable of witnessing to its own veracity,\nand we are not even capable of coming to certainty on what the\ntext actually does say in some places; yet many have believed\nand do believe that it is a true account of the most important\nthing that ever happened in this world. To believe that it is\ncompletely made up by its author or authors seems impossible;\nto believe that it is accurate, on a word-by-word, factual\nbasis, seems even more impossible (though there are some\nextremists who in fact believe each of those things).\"\n\n-----------------------------\n\nNow, when Rostrum writes, \"Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he\ndoesn't insist that you accept the existence of God in order to\nenjoy his story,\" I disagree rather vehemently; to deny Silk's\nenlightenment is to make the whole LONG SUN (and, by transference,\nSHORT) fall apart, meaningless and incoherent. He even sets that\npossibility up as a straw man (Crane's cerebral accident theory),\nand _doesn't_ provide us with arguments about it, because it is\nridiculous _prima facie_. There is, I think, no way to take the\nsupernatural element out of the SUN books in any kind of \"good\nfaith\" (in the existential sense).\n\nStill, I agree that \"[t]here is a sense in which telling a story\nfrom a third-person, omniscient viewpoint is cheating.\"\n\nThere is. And there is another sense in which all stories are\ntold from that viewpoint, even those told by a limited and\nunreliable first-person narrator. The reader (well, all but the\nmost childlike and passive reader) sits outside the universe of\ndiscourse and, if not omniscient, is at least outside the\nviewpoint of the narrator, judging it. Without that basic fact,\nthe concept of an unreliable narrator would be entirely\nmeaningless.\n\n\nAgain: \"We never know the world that way.\"\n\nNo, we don't. But somehow we _conceive_ the world that way. We have\na sense that there is a single, coherent reality, even if our own\nlimited knowledge can never get at it. Living in a universe run by\nquantum mechanics doesn't really change that; it defines the limits\nof how much we can know about it. (If there is an omniscient and\nomnipotent Creator, Heisenberg's Law is a clear and present \"No\nTrespassing\" sign.)\n\n\n--------------------------------------\nEnough.\n\n--Blattid/Dan'l\n\n\nFrom: \"Steve Strickland\" \nSubject: Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a\nTextual Con sideration of the \"Book of Silk\"\nDate: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:35:11\n\nA nice piece of work, Dan'l, but I think Rostrum's remarks hit the mark\nclosest, especially when he said:\n\n\"Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he\ndoesn't insist that you accept the existence of God in order to\nenjoy his story.\"\n\nIn short, I think it is deliberate religious ambiguity Wolfe is attempting\nto generate, in much the same way that he generated ambiguity in \"The Book\nof the New Sun.\"\n\nSomewhere, maybe it is in one of the \"Castle of Days\" articles or in an\ninterview I read somewhere, Mr. Wolfe wrote about the relationship between\nhis faith and his writing, particularly with respect to the Book of the New\nSun. (Conveniently) I don't remember exactly what he said, but my\nimpression from the piece was that he was deliberately ambiguous on the\nquestion of religion, that TBOTNS was not a religious work, but a secular\nwork, and that, thus, Mr. Wolfe was careful to preserve a certain ambiguity\nin that regard.\n\nWhere is the religious ambiguity in TBOTNS? Well, for instance, I think,\nalmost certainly, that Master Ash's bleak and scientific outlook depicted\npart of that ambiguity. Maybe, too, the notion visited in \"Sword of the\nLictor\" that, if the universe had existed for an infinite time, all things,\nincluding angels, would have come into existence by logical necessity. And,\nfrom my religious perspective, it's hard to imagine a more terrifying story\nthan Melito's story from the \"Citadel of the Autarch\" of \"The Cock, the\nAngel, and the Eagle\", especially as that story was revisited and affirmed\nas true in \"Urth of the New Sun.\" The point is that within TBOTNS Mr.\nWolfe himself generates an alternative religious interpretation of the world\nin which his story takes place, something that an atheistic would be much\nmore comfortable with than a priest. (Though there's also plenty of room\nfor the priest's interpretation.) To me, this ambiguity is most excellent\nand makes the work, not only uplifting (as would be a purely religious\nwork), but also subtly frightening.\n\nIn Long Sun and Short Sun, I think there's a similar principle and purpose\nat work (same author, after all). The technique here is to raise a question\nabout the veracity/accuracy of the storyteller. It is thus possible that\nthe story has an entirely naturalistic interpretation, that, for instance,\nthe divine visitations, Silk's goodness, could be written in after the fact.\nIt is again subtly frightening.\n\nYikes! I just read what I just wrote. It probably doesn't make any sense\nat all. Sorry.\n\nImperator\n\n\nFrom: Michael Straight \nSubject: Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a\nDate: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 09:10:41" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sun, 10 Jun 2001, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nNow, I didn't really get that kind of shock out of the revelation\nthat \"I, Horn, wrote this years later, with some help.\" What I\n_did_ get out of it was a weird sense that Wolfe had patterned\nthis whole thing somehow after model the Catholic church\nuses to describe the formation of the (written) Gospels." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I didn't get into that specifically, but, yes, this is exactly what I had\nin mind too.\n\nOne of my favorite parallels: Luke and Acts are thought to have been\nwritten by the same person (arguably, \"Luke\"). Luke is all third person,\nand Acts is almost entirely third person until about 2/3 of the way\nthrough (in the fourth part if you divided the two books into four parts)\nthe narrator suddenly says, \"and then we got ready to leave for\nMacedonia\" (Acts 16:10)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now, when Rostrum writes, \"Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he\ndoesn't insist that you accept the existence of God in order to\nenjoy his story,\" I disagree rather vehemently; to deny Silk's\nenlightenment is to make the whole LONG SUN (and, by transference,\nSHORT) fall apart, meaningless and incoherent." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I strongly disagree. Horn believes that Silk was enlightened, and perhaps\nSilk believed it. But I don't think Silk's story is completely incoherent\nor unexplainable without it. It's certainly possible Silk simply had some\nsort of moment of inspiration in which he decided he ought to try to save\nthe manteion (or decided that the Outsider wanted him to save the\nmanteion). People point to Silk having received otherwise unavailable\nknowledge from his enligtenment, but its nothing Horn would not have known\nat the time he wrote the story. It's not like Horn even uses this as\n\"proof\" that Silk was enlightened, so it wouldn't necessarily have been\nbad faith if he just added those parts because he believed Silk must have\nhad some sort of revelation.\n\nDid Jesus really predict the fall of Jerusalem, or is that something the\ngospel writers added in later?\n\nNow I agree that the most satisfying reading of Silk's story involves\ntrusting Horn and his descendents and accepting Silk's enlightenment, but\nI still say that Wolfe (1) doesn't cheat by saying \"yes, it's true, I know\nbecause I'm omniscient\" (interviews excluded) and (2) still gives you a\ngood, if more tragic story should you choose to think Silk and Horn were\nmistaken.\n\nBut then I'm the guy who thinks \"Westwind\" may be a sinister story." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Still, I agree that \"[t]here is a sense in which telling a story\nfrom a third-person, omniscient viewpoint is cheating.\"\n\nThere is. And there is another sense in which all stories are\ntold from that viewpoint, even those told by a limited and\nunreliable first-person narrator. The reader (well, all but the\nmost childlike and passive reader) sits outside the universe of\ndiscourse and, if not omniscient, is at least outside the\nviewpoint of the narrator, judging it. Without that basic fact,\nthe concept of an unreliable narrator would be entirely\nmeaningless." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sure that happens, but I'm not sure that means it's a good idea. I'm not\nsure, but I have the suspicion that allowing ourselves to really believe\nin that feeling of having an outside, objective viewpoint is the source of\nmany evils. \"Unreliable narrator\" may in fact be a meaningless, or at\nleast tautologous concept. Or rather, it's the idea of a completely\nreliable narrator that is a fallacy." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Again: \"We never know the world that way.\"\n\nNo, we don't. But somehow we _conceive_ the world that way. We have\na sense that there is a single, coherent reality, even if our own\nlimited knowledge can never get at it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is a good point. We're always telling ourselves 3rd-person\nomniscient stories about the world. Is that a mistake? I don't know.\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\nFrom: James Jordan \nSubject: Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators\nDate: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 09:14:14" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 03:40 PM 6/10/2001 -0400, Rostrum wrote:\nI think part of what Wolfe is doing is this: If there are those who doubt\nsomeone so good as Silk could exist, or that he could really be\nenlightened by the Outsider, or that any god like the Outsider could\nreally exist, then they are free to think that Horn embellished or was\nmistaken. Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he doesn't insist that you\naccept the existence of God in order to enjoy his story.\n\nThere is a sense in which telling a story from a third-person, omniscient\nviewpoint is cheating." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Perhaps a slightly different take, which may be part of Wolfe's\nmotivation. Silk is Christlike, but he's not Christ. TBLS is like the\ngospels, but it's not the gospels. Wolfe is a conservative Christian, so he\nbelieves the gospels as originally written were \"inspired and infallible\"\nand that they have been preserved accurately in the Church. TBLS does not\nhave these divine attributes. Thus:\n\nGospels : TBLS :: Jesus : Silk\n\n With TBSS we move one step farther away from infallibility. TBSS\nis not a second-order version of part of the Bible, but is the life of a\nsaint. But again, from a Roman Catholic standpoint, there is always the\nquestion of what REALLY happened in the life of a saint. (Remember the\ncontroversy a few years ago when the Vatican began to question whether St.\nNicholas ever really lived.) Thus, in the order of perfection and\ninfallibility:\n\nGospels : TBLS : TBSS :: Jesus : Silk : Horn/Narrator(s)\n\n Maybe such considerations played no part in Wolfe's thinking, but\nthey make a kind of sense, given what he has done in these two books.\n\nNutria\n\nFrom: James Jordan \nSubject: Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible\nDate: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 09:21:16" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 08:35 PM 6/10/2001 -0500, you wrote:\nWhere is the religious ambiguity in TBOTNS? Well, for instance, I think,\nalmost certainly, that Master Ash's bleak and scientific outlook depicted\npart of that ambiguity. Maybe, too, the notion visited in \"Sword of the\nLictor\" that, if the universe had existed for an infinite time, all things,\nincluding angels, would have come into existence by logical necessity." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " And," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "from my religious perspective, it's hard to imagine a more terrifying story\nthan Melito's story from the \"Citadel of the Autarch\" of \"The Cock, the\nAngel, and the Eagle\", especially as that story was revisited and affirmed\nas true in \"Urth of the New Sun.\" The point is that within TBOTNS Mr.\nWolfe himself generates an alternative religious interpretation of the\nworld\nin which his story takes place, something that an atheistic would be much\nmore comfortable with than a priest. (Though there's also plenty of room\nfor the priest's interpretation.) To me, this ambiguity is most excellent\nand makes the work, not only uplifting (as would be a purely religious\nwork), but also subtly frightening." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Imperator" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " FWIW, this is exactly and precisely what Roman Catholic James\nBlish does in his classic *A Case of Conscience.* Wolfe shares Blish's\nThomism. Blish provides both a \"nature\" version of the story, and a \"grace\"\nversion of the story, and only the \"eye of faith\" can see which version is\nthe more \"ultimate\" explanation of events. It would not surprise me if\nWolfe, who certainly knows Blish's work, would do the same thing.\n\nNutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4FA5200B.5000405@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2012-05-05T12:41:47+00:00", "subject": "(urth) convo from a decade ago", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks Daniel. I guess I just barely missed that discussion.\n\ni should have known that the Church had worked out a \"model\" for how the \nGospels were developed. Reproducing it is exactly what Wolfe would do. \nAnd he would reproduce it naturalistically with all its faults, doubts, \nand errors, which only \"prove the rule.\" I have no doubt as to the \n\"best\" interpretation, but the others are equally valid." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 5/5/2012 5:20 AM, Daniel Petersen wrote:\nJust in case you've joined this list less than five years ago, like \nme, I want to share what I thought was a pretty incredible piece of \nanalysis from ol' Dan'l just over a decade ago (he is working off of \ncomments made by Michael Straight) - mainly about Long and Short Sun. \n It's a very LONG paste as it includes acute responses from Steve \nStrickland, then Michael Straight, then James Jordan.\n\nPlease ignore if this is old and/or unfruitful stuff for you. It \nreally roped me in and I thought it just might do that for one or two \nothers. (For the record, I essentially side with Dan'l's view, \nfiltered through or transmuted by James's, but would also want to \nabsorb as much as possible of Steve's into it, and also certainly \nrespect and grant much of Michael's.)\n\nThe thread goes on with many more insightful responses that flesh it \nout and nuance it very well, but this is where I stopped copying...\n\n-DOJP\n\nFrom: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" >\nSubject: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a \nTextual\nDate: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 15:39:30\n\nThis will wander a little off the Lupine track, but trust me,\nit's heading straight back there. Some points of Rostrum's\nscreed got my head working, and I've got a basic thesis on\nwhat Wolfe is doing and why.\n\nThe first of Rostrum's remarks that I responded to was this:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I remember feeling this way at the end of tBOTLS, the idea that\nsome of the wonderful things Horn had told me about Silk might\nhave been exaggerations or wishful thinking gave me a certain\n(fun) chill, but I never felt we have enough evidence to try to\ngo back and sift and somehow uncover the \"real\" Silk behind\nHorn's story." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now, I didn't really get that kind of shock out of the revelation\nthat \"I, Horn, wrote this years later, with some help.\" What I\n_did_ get out of it was a weird sense that Wolfe had patterned\nthis whole thing somehow after model the Catholic church\nuses to describe the formation of the (written) Gospels.\n\nBriefly, for non-[Catholic-Bible-scholars]: The basic idea the\nCatholic church endorses is that the Gospels were formed in\nthree \"layers\":\n1. The events that actually occurred in the greater\n Jerusalem metropolitan area ca. 4 BC - 33 AD.\n2. The memories of those events carried by eyewitnesses\n and the communities founded by those eyewitnesses.\n3. The setting-down of those memories by the communities,\n probably late in the first century.\nThe Catholic answers to questions like \"Yeah, but how do we know\nit's true?\" and \"Well, what about the way they [seem to] conflict\nwith each other?\" are deeply entrenched in that model, but it\ngets pretty complicated at that point.\n\nNow, what I _think_ we have in Horn's \"Book of Silk\" is something\nsimilar: Horn was, admittedly, an eyewitness to some of these\nevents -- a fairly small proportion of them. He's gone around\ninterviewing people, filled in the details as best he can, and\nfreely admits he made the rest up to complete the narrative. It\nisn't good historiography, but it suffices; it gives the sense\nof someone who isn't a historian doing the best he can. The made-\nup stuff, while perhaps not accurate, isn't a lie, in the sense\nof an untruth meant to deceive; it is intended to convey a sense\nof the probable truth.\n\nSo we have all three stages compressed into one text:\n\n1. We have Horn's own authentic(?) memories of Silk.\n\n2. We have the community's memories of Silk.\n\n3. The \"Book of Silk\" _as written by Horn & Nettle_\n collecting and collating their own memories with\n those of the community.\n\nUnfortunately, there's an implicit Stage 4, which is also\nimplicit in the Catholic model: The copyists get hold of\nthe text, and a long time later, scholars try to trace the\nprovenance of textual variants backwards and determine the\n\"true\" original text of Stage 3.\n\nIn the case of the BOOK OF THE LONG SUN, we feel like we have\nthe product of Stage 3, but the Narrator's comments in SHORT\nSUN lead us to wonder whether we might actually have a corrupt\ncopy, and how corrupt? Nor do Horn's comments at the end of\nLONG SUN make it any easier to determine; compare them to the\nfirst four verses of the Gospel according to Luke, and then\nfind out how much work goes into preparing a good textual\n\"edition\" of that Gospel. Assurances by the author of the\ntext's accuracy do not greatly help when the text has been\nhand-copied many times.\n\n\n\nWhich leads me to another of Rostrum's points:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "It's not that Wolfe leaves things ambiguous because he doesn't\ncare whether you believe in Silk's enlightenment. Rather\nhe's giving you the same kind of evidence that we have in the\nreal world--do you trust the people who claim to have had an\nencounter with God and (equally important) the community of\npeople who have told and retold their stories? Can we hope\nthat, though mediated though our own fallibility and the\nfallibility of others, we can still have some genuine knowledge\nof God?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We have, in THE BOOK OF THE LONG SUN, one of the following:\na) Horn and Nettle's \"Book of Silk\"\nb) one of many possible variant texts\nc) someone's \"edition\" of same\n-- and nothing to help us which. We are, in fact, in the precise\nposition of a non-scholarly reader of the Bible, or perhaps (given\nthat this discussion is happening at all) a medieval scholar with\nno access to modern textual studies.\n\nSo: paraphrasing Rostrum, can we hope that, though mediated\nthough our own fallibility and the fallibility of others, we can\nstill have some genuine knowledge of Silk?\n\nI think the answer is, and has to be, \"Yes,\" because the\npossibility that it's all made-up (within the Lupine universe\nof discourse) is too drab to be worth discussing.\n\nAll this brings me to my basic thesis.\n\nWhat Wolfe has reproduced, here, is the basic problem of putting\nfaith in a written Scripture. The following paragraph refers\nequivocally to the Bible (for us, or at least those of us to\nwhom the Bible represents something more than a reactionary symbol\nof patriarchal oppression) and to The Book of Silk (for a\nrepresentative inhabitant of the Lupiverse, modulo similar\nconcerns).\n\n\"What can we believe about this text or its contents? By itself,\nit is completely incapable of witnessing to its own veracity,\nand we are not even capable of coming to certainty on what the\ntext actually does say in some places; yet many have believed\nand do believe that it is a true account of the most important\nthing that ever happened in this world. To believe that it is\ncompletely made up by its author or authors seems impossible;\nto believe that it is accurate, on a word-by-word, factual\nbasis, seems even more impossible (though there are some\nextremists who in fact believe each of those things).\"\n\n-----------------------------\n\nNow, when Rostrum writes, \"Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he\ndoesn't insist that you accept the existence of God in order to\nenjoy his story,\" I disagree rather vehemently; to deny Silk's\nenlightenment is to make the whole LONG SUN (and, by transference,\nSHORT) fall apart, meaningless and incoherent. He even sets that\npossibility up as a straw man (Crane's cerebral accident theory),\nand _doesn't_ provide us with arguments about it, because it is\nridiculous _prima facie_. There is, I think, no way to take the\nsupernatural element out of the SUN books in any kind of \"good\nfaith\" (in the existential sense).\n\nStill, I agree that \"[t]here is a sense in which telling a story\nfrom a third-person, omniscient viewpoint is cheating.\"\n\nThere is. And there is another sense in which all stories are\ntold from that viewpoint, even those told by a limited and\nunreliable first-person narrator. The reader (well, all but the\nmost childlike and passive reader) sits outside the universe of\ndiscourse and, if not omniscient, is at least outside the\nviewpoint of the narrator, judging it. Without that basic fact,\nthe concept of an unreliable narrator would be entirely\nmeaningless.\n\n\nAgain: \"We never know the world that way.\"\n\nNo, we don't. But somehow we _conceive_ the world that way. We have\na sense that there is a single, coherent reality, even if our own\nlimited knowledge can never get at it. Living in a universe run by\nquantum mechanics doesn't really change that; it defines the limits\nof how much we can know about it. (If there is an omniscient and\nomnipotent Creator, Heisenberg's Law is a clear and present \"No\nTrespassing\" sign.)\n\n\n--------------------------------------\nEnough.\n\n--Blattid/Dan'l\n\n\nFrom: \"Steve Strickland\" >\nSubject: Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible \nCopyists: a Textual Con sideration of the \"Book of Silk\"\nDate: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:35:11\n\nA nice piece of work, Dan'l, but I think Rostrum's remarks hit the mark\nclosest, especially when he said:\n\n\"Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he\ndoesn't insist that you accept the existence of God in order to\nenjoy his story.\"\n\nIn short, I think it is deliberate religious ambiguity Wolfe is attempting\nto generate, in much the same way that he generated ambiguity in \"The Book\nof the New Sun.\"\n\nSomewhere, maybe it is in one of the \"Castle of Days\" articles or in an\ninterview I read somewhere, Mr. Wolfe wrote about the relationship between\nhis faith and his writing, particularly with respect to the Book of \nthe New\nSun. (Conveniently) I don't remember exactly what he said, but my\nimpression from the piece was that he was deliberately ambiguous on the\nquestion of religion, that TBOTNS was not a religious work, but a secular\nwork, and that, thus, Mr. Wolfe was careful to preserve a certain \nambiguity\nin that regard.\n\nWhere is the religious ambiguity in TBOTNS? Well, for instance, I think,\nalmost certainly, that Master Ash's bleak and scientific outlook depicted\npart of that ambiguity. Maybe, too, the notion visited in \"Sword of the\nLictor\" that, if the universe had existed for an infinite time, all \nthings,\nincluding angels, would have come into existence by logical necessity. \n And,\nfrom my religious perspective, it's hard to imagine a more terrifying \nstory\nthan Melito's story from the \"Citadel of the Autarch\" of \"The Cock, the\nAngel, and the Eagle\", especially as that story was revisited and affirmed\nas true in \"Urth of the New Sun.\" The point is that within TBOTNS Mr.\nWolfe himself generates an alternative religious interpretation of the \nworld\nin which his story takes place, something that an atheistic would be much\nmore comfortable with than a priest. (Though there's also plenty of room\nfor the priest's interpretation.) To me, this ambiguity is most excellent\nand makes the work, not only uplifting (as would be a purely religious\nwork), but also subtly frightening.\n\nIn Long Sun and Short Sun, I think there's a similar principle and purpose\nat work (same author, after all). The technique here is to raise a \nquestion\nabout the veracity/accuracy of the storyteller. It is thus possible that\nthe story has an entirely naturalistic interpretation, that, for instance,\nthe divine visitations, Silk's goodness, could be written in after the \nfact.\nIt is again subtly frightening.\n\nYikes! I just read what I just wrote. It probably doesn't make any sense\nat all. Sorry.\n\nImperator\n\n\nFrom: Michael Straight >\nSubject: Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a\nDate: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 09:10:41\n\nOn Sun, 10 Jun 2001, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Now, I didn't really get that kind of shock out of the revelation\nthat \"I, Horn, wrote this years later, with some help.\" What I\n_did_ get out of it was a weird sense that Wolfe had patterned\nthis whole thing somehow after model the Catholic church\nuses to describe the formation of the (written) Gospels." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I didn't get into that specifically, but, yes, this is exactly what I had\nin mind too.\n\nOne of my favorite parallels: Luke and Acts are thought to have been\nwritten by the same person (arguably, \"Luke\"). Luke is all third person,\nand Acts is almost entirely third person until about 2/3 of the way\nthrough (in the fourth part if you divided the two books into four parts)\nthe narrator suddenly says, \"and then we got ready to leave for\nMacedonia\" (Acts 16:10)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Now, when Rostrum writes, \"Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he\ndoesn't insist that you accept the existence of God in order to\nenjoy his story,\" I disagree rather vehemently; to deny Silk's\nenlightenment is to make the whole LONG SUN (and, by transference,\nSHORT) fall apart, meaningless and incoherent." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I strongly disagree. Horn believes that Silk was enlightened, and perhaps\nSilk believed it. But I don't think Silk's story is completely incoherent\nor unexplainable without it. It's certainly possible Silk simply had some\nsort of moment of inspiration in which he decided he ought to try to save\nthe manteion (or decided that the Outsider wanted him to save the\nmanteion). People point to Silk having received otherwise unavailable\nknowledge from his enligtenment, but its nothing Horn would not have known\nat the time he wrote the story. It's not like Horn even uses this as\n\"proof\" that Silk was enlightened, so it wouldn't necessarily have been\nbad faith if he just added those parts because he believed Silk must have\nhad some sort of revelation.\n\nDid Jesus really predict the fall of Jerusalem, or is that something the\ngospel writers added in later?\n\nNow I agree that the most satisfying reading of Silk's story involves\ntrusting Horn and his descendents and accepting Silk's enlightenment, but\nI still say that Wolfe (1) doesn't cheat by saying \"yes, it's true, I know\nbecause I'm omniscient\" (interviews excluded) and (2) still gives you a\ngood, if more tragic story should you choose to think Silk and Horn were\nmistaken.\n\nBut then I'm the guy who thinks \"Westwind\" may be a sinister story." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Still, I agree that \"[t]here is a sense in which telling a story\nfrom a third-person, omniscient viewpoint is cheating.\"\n\nThere is. And there is another sense in which all stories are\ntold from that viewpoint, even those told by a limited and\nunreliable first-person narrator. The reader (well, all but the\nmost childlike and passive reader) sits outside the universe of\ndiscourse and, if not omniscient, is at least outside the\nviewpoint of the narrator, judging it. Without that basic fact,\nthe concept of an unreliable narrator would be entirely\nmeaningless." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Sure that happens, but I'm not sure that means it's a good idea. I'm not\nsure, but I have the suspicion that allowing ourselves to really believe\nin that feeling of having an outside, objective viewpoint is the source of\nmany evils. \"Unreliable narrator\" may in fact be a meaningless, or at\nleast tautologous concept. Or rather, it's the idea of a completely\nreliable narrator that is a fallacy." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Again: \"We never know the world that way.\"\n\nNo, we don't. But somehow we _conceive_ the world that way. We have\na sense that there is a single, coherent reality, even if our own\nlimited knowledge can never get at it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This is a good point. We're always telling ourselves 3rd-person\nomniscient stories about the world. Is that a mistake? I don't know.\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\nFrom: James Jordan >\nSubject: Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators\nDate: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 09:14:14\n\nAt 03:40 PM 6/10/2001 -0400, Rostrum wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I think part of what Wolfe is doing is this: If there are those who doubt\nsomeone so good as Silk could exist, or that he could really be\nenlightened by the Outsider, or that any god like the Outsider could\nreally exist, then they are free to think that Horn embellished or was\nmistaken. Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he doesn't insist that you\naccept the existence of God in order to enjoy his story.\n\nThere is a sense in which telling a story from a third-person, omniscient\nviewpoint is cheating." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Perhaps a slightly different take, which may be part of Wolfe's\nmotivation. Silk is Christlike, but he's not Christ. TBLS is like the\ngospels, but it's not the gospels. Wolfe is a conservative Christian, \nso he\nbelieves the gospels as originally written were \"inspired and infallible\"\nand that they have been preserved accurately in the Church. TBLS does \nnot\nhave these divine attributes. Thus:\n\nGospels : TBLS :: Jesus : Silk\n\n With TBSS we move one step farther away from infallibility. TBSS\nis not a second-order version of part of the Bible, but is the life of a\nsaint. But again, from a Roman Catholic standpoint, there is always the\nquestion of what REALLY happened in the life of a saint. (Remember the\ncontroversy a few years ago when the Vatican began to question whether \nSt.\nNicholas ever really lived.) Thus, in the order of perfection and\ninfallibility:\n\nGospels : TBLS : TBSS :: Jesus : Silk : Horn/Narrator(s)\n\n Maybe such considerations played no part in Wolfe's thinking, \nbut\nthey make a kind of sense, given what he has done in these two books.\n\nNutria\n\nFrom: James Jordan >\nSubject: Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible\nDate: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 09:21:16\n\nAt 08:35 PM 6/10/2001 -0500, you wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Where is the religious ambiguity in TBOTNS? Well, for instance, I think,\nalmost certainly, that Master Ash's bleak and scientific outlook depicted\npart of that ambiguity. Maybe, too, the notion visited in \"Sword of the\nLictor\" that, if the universe had existed for an infinite time, all \nthings,\nincluding angels, would have come into existence by logical \nnecessity. And,\nfrom my religious perspective, it's hard to imagine a more terrifying \nstory\nthan Melito's story from the \"Citadel of the Autarch\" of \"The Cock, the\nAngel, and the Eagle\", especially as that story was revisited and \naffirmed\nas true in \"Urth of the New Sun.\" The point is that within TBOTNS Mr.\nWolfe himself generates an alternative religious interpretation of \nthe world\nin which his story takes place, something that an atheistic would be much\nmore comfortable with than a priest. (Though there's also plenty of room\nfor the priest's interpretation.) To me, this ambiguity is most \nexcellent\nand makes the work, not only uplifting (as would be a purely religious\nwork), but also subtly frightening." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Imperator" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " FWIW, this is exactly and precisely what Roman Catholic James\nBlish does in his classic *A Case of Conscience.* Wolfe shares Blish's\nThomism. Blish provides both a \"nature\" version of the story, and a \n\"grace\"\nversion of the story, and only the \"eye of faith\" can see which \nversion is\nthe more \"ultimate\" explanation of events. It would not surprise me if\nWolfe, who certainly knows Blish's work, would do the same thing.\n\nNutria\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<24BCC5350CED400DB196E65E9E79CAF6@Rover>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2012-05-05T13:31:50+00:00", "subject": "(urth) convo from a decade ago", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: Daniel Petersen " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[old post]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In the case of the BOOK OF THE LONG SUN, we feel like we have\nthe product of Stage 3, but the Narrator's comments in SHORT\nSUN lead us to wonder whether we might actually have a corrupt\ncopy, and how corrupt? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Which comments? \n\nAnd where is the following from?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"What can we believe about this text or its contents? By itself, \nit is completely incapable of witnessing to its own veracity,\nand we are not even capable of coming to certainty on what the\ntext actually does say in some places; yet many have believed \nand do believe that it is a true account of the most important\nthing that ever happened in this world. To believe that it is \ncompletely made up by its author or authors seems impossible; \nto believe that it is accurate, on a word-by-word, factual \nbasis, seems even more impossible (though there are some\nextremists who in fact believe each of those things).\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Duffy", "address": "david.duffy at qimr.edu.au" }, "date": "2012-05-06T23:54:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) convo from a decade ago", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sat, 5 May 2012, Daniel Petersen wrote:\nJust in case you've joined this list less than five years ago, like me, I\nwant to share what I thought was a pretty incredible piece of analysis from\nol' Dan'l just over a decade ago" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, I thought this was so obviously the model." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " FWIW, this is exactly and precisely what Roman Catholic James\nBlish does in his classic *A Case of Conscience." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I can only nitpick backwards in time ;) to say, Blish was not Catholic - rather,\nagnostic through most of his life, becoming Anglican close to his death. When\nchecking my memory, I just found the rather interesting:\n\nhttp://www.zen118085.zen.co.uk/blish/cslewisandjamesblish.htm\n\nNot directly on Wolfe, but maybe some three way comparisons would be fruitful.\n\nCheers, David Duffy." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2012-05-07T10:22:23+00:00", "subject": "(urth) convo from a decade ago", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, to their credit, the corrections you've noted regarding Blish were\nthrashed out in the ensuing dialogue of the original thread. And yeah,\nthat article looks like it could be useful for analysing Wolfe.\n\n-DOJP" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 12:54 AM, David Duffy wrote:\nOn Sat, 5 May 2012, Daniel Petersen wrote:\n\n Just in case you've joined this list less than five years ago, like me, I\nwant to share what I thought was a pretty incredible piece of analysis\nfrom\nol' Dan'l just over a decade ago" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes, I thought this was so obviously the model.\n\n FWIW, this is exactly and precisely what Roman Catholic James\nBlish does in his classic *A Case of Conscience." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I can only nitpick backwards in time ;) to say, Blish was not Catholic -\nrather,\nagnostic through most of his life, becoming Anglican close to his death.\n When\nchecking my memory, I just found the rather interesting:\n\nhttp://www.zen118085.zen.co.**uk/blish/cslewisandjamesblish.**htm\n\nNot directly on Wolfe, but maybe some three way comparisons would be\nfruitful.\n\nCheers, David Duffy.\n______________________________**_________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<00e801cd2c40$0f76deb0$4001a8c0@pc>", "from": { "name": "pinlighter", "address": "pinlighter at btconnect.com" }, "date": "2012-05-07T10:56:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) convo from a decade ago", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message ----- " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"David Duffy\" \nhttp://www.zen118085.zen.co.uk/blish/cslewisandjamesblish.htm\nCheers, David Duffy." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Marvellous essay!!!\n\nI have probably already told the list how, thirty years and more ago, I was \nin Oxford doing my degree, and went looking for C S Lewis' grave: but I went \nto the wrong churchyard, and chanced upon James Blish???\n\nhttp://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gsr&GSfn=james&GSmn=&GSln=blish&GSbyrel=all&GSby=&GSdyrel=all&GSdy=&GScntry=5&GSst=0&GSgrid=&df=all&GSob=n " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2012-05-07T14:06:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) convo from a decade ago", "in_reply_to": "<00e801cd2c40$0f76deb0$4001a8c0@pc>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Daniel Petersen: I want to share what I thought was a pretty incredible piece of analysis from\nol' Dan'l just over a decade ago" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nThanks, Daniel. It is great to have this discussion brought back to attention. My current view of the Sun Series is framed as a SF-oriented view of pagan pre-Christianity as the precursor to a Christian world. If the end of the series can be seen as organized in a manner similar to the origin of Christianity it fits nicely with my view. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] } ] }