{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6663", "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": 6663, "subject": "forlesen", "messages": 6, "voices": 4, "first": "2014-09-11T01:41:51+00:00", "last": "2014-09-15T17:40:54+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-09-11T01:41:51+00:00", "subject": "(urth) forlesen", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "forlorn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-09-11T01:52:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) forlesen", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "sorry I was sending an attachment of a word document to finish working on\nthe write up and in my autopilot state I sent it to the urth list instead\nof myself.\n\nA big picture for Forlesen continues to elude me besides \"work is hell\" and\nan empty exploration of a creativity problem in which actors run through\nthe motions of pointless working life on Earth. Oil everywhere, Forlesen\nfinds a book detailing what he just went through with one word changed,\nglass and mirrors do not show what they should, the cop is hooked up to his\ncop car by tubes, the pillars holding up the road move, wild horses wind up\nin a dog food factory ... the whole set is constantly under construction\nlike that one Theodore Sturgeon story where a guy accidentally sees the set\nup for tomorrow in progress. Forlesen thinks of his feet as shoes at\nfirst, as if he has put on the flesh as a costume.\n\nThis is the only work of fiction written before 1987 that I feel there\nmight be no objective bottom to." } ] }, { "message_id": "<541118BD.2000202@bindweed.com>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2014-09-11T03:36:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) forlesen", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 11/09/2014 02:52, Marc Aramini wrote:\nsorry I was sending an attachment of a word document to finish working \non the write up and in my autopilot state I sent it to the urth list \ninstead of myself.\nA big picture for Forlesen continues to elude me besides \"work is \nhell\" and an empty exploration of a creativity problem in which actors \nrun through the motions of pointless working life on Earth." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Bah, I spent enough time in middle management for that to be enough to \nexplain the story (I still think _Peace_ embodies Wolfe's guilt for his \npart in creating the disgusting 'Pringles').\n\nAside from that, maybe echoes of Pohl's 'Tunnel Under The World'.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Allan Lloyd", "address": "a.lloyd748 at btinternet.com" }, "date": "2014-09-15T09:42:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Forlesen", "in_reply_to": "<541118BD.2000202@bindweed.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Frick used his ill-gotten gains from oil and the railways to found a beautiful house and art gallery on the East Side of Central Park, which I visited this spring. It is an amazing building, with art from most of the pantheon of painters up to the Impressionists. I don’t really see any connection to Wolfe’s story, but is the gaining of wealth by dubious means in any way excused by setting up a collection of paintings for posterity. (It does seem likely that they were only meant for his own personal enjoyment, but we are lucky to be able to enjoy these pictures now, so who knows?)\n\nAllan" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-09-15T16:09:23+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Forlesen", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It's strange indeed, but the ubiquity of oil everywhere in Forlesen and the\nfences around the buildings as if for defense really do seem lifted from\nthe life of Frick, the name of the man whom Forlesen believes he should\nbe. I hope someone can do something with \"Forlesen\" to make it spring into\nfocus a bit. Certainly the character Frick is the most important of his\nE.F. generation. If there is indeed any historical reference in the story,\nthat one is much, much more subtle than naming a character Carnegie or\nRockefeller. I don't even know that my write up explains anything at all,\nhonestly.\n\nI do feel the wood in the building and the office room which smells of\napples must be somehow culled from the apple tree on Abraham's farm -\nbut does this business world have any knowledge of good and evil? And I\nam bothered by the name Emanuel quite a bit. There doesn't seem to be any\nhint of redemption save that the coffin has an engine and seems like a ship\nto set him free. The Creativity Group must be talking about creation as a\nholistic idea - perhaps even gnostically - a recreation of a debate that\ndoesn't use the original participants, as if Forlesen is involved in an\ninstructional movie or something.\n\nThus the inherent problem of the influence of Kafka on Wolfe - they\nactually have very different cosmological artistic goals, and I am never\nsure if \"Forlesen\" should be approached as a Kafkaesque work of naturalism\n(in which case what we have is what we get and the dots don't ever have to\nadd up) or a Wolfean bit of clever but subtle transmogrification which\nsomehow does the opposite of what it seems to do and might possibly even\nserve the idea of free will and justice." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 2:42 AM, Allan Lloyd \nwrote:\n Frick used his ill-gotten gains from oil and the railways to found a\nbeautiful house and art gallery on the East Side of Central Park, which I\nvisited this spring. It is an amazing building, with art from most of the\npantheon of painters up to the Impressionists. I don’t really see any\nconnection to Wolfe’s story, but is the gaining of wealth by dubious means\nin any way excused by setting up a collection of paintings for posterity.\n(It does seem likely that they were only meant for his own personal\nenjoyment, but we are lucky to be able to enjoy these pictures now, so who\nknows?)\n\nAllan\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2014-09-15T17:40:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Forlesen", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Allan Lloyd: Frick used his ill-gotten gains from oil and the railways to found a beautiful " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "house and art gallery on the East Side of Central Park, which I visited this spring. It is an " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "amazing building, with art from most of the pantheon of painters up to the Impressionists. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I> don’t really see any connection to Wolfe’s story, but is the gaining of wealth by dubious " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "means in any way excused by setting up a collection of paintings for posterity." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Balzac claimed that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Perhaps the same is true\n\nfor every great monument, art collection and Wonder Of The World. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] } ] }