{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6730", "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": 6730, "subject": "Short Story 217*: A Visit From His Confidant", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2015-04-22T16:21:49+00:00", "last": "2015-04-22T16:21:49+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2015-04-22T16:21:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 217*: A Visit From His Confidant", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "#A VISIT FROM HIS CONFIDANT\n\n“A Visit From His Confidant” appeared in the *Readercon 22* convention\nbooklet in 2011. Mark Twain was the memorial guest of honor.\n\n##SUMMARY:\n\nThe narrator awakens in a different room than the one in which he went to\nsleep, dressed in a smoking jacket and finding himself in a library much\nmore sparsely filled than his own. Soon he notices what he takes to be a\nfloating brown caterpillar, which greets him in dialect. The narrator soon\nrecognizes it as Mark Twain’s talking mustache. The mustache acknowledges\nits primary reason for coming to see our speaker is the mustache on his own\nface (thus, of course, we have our narrator as Gene Wolfe). In their\nconversation, Wolfe is categorized as neither a brave nor entirely good\nman, but a reliable one no worse than most men.\nHe admits he won’t be attending Readercon in Boston because of his wife,\nbut the mustache cuts him off and says “We don’t speak of ?em here. ?No”\nis good enough for us, an? what’s more n? good enough is over much. You’re\nnot goin?, an? that’s settled. Or else you are, an that’s better. Mark’s\ngoin?,too. You tell “em Mark’s a reader.” Wolfe balks, insisting that\nTwain is a great writer, but the mustache insists he read much more than he\nwrote. The topic of the book Joan of Arc comes up, and Wolfe asserts Twain\nthought it his best.\n\nThe mustache insists it is talking of an older manuscript which Twain read\nand lost, then, inspired by it, determined to write a better one when he\nhad the chance. The mustache further insists that Twain learned not only\nthrough doing, but by reading stacks of books to achieve understanding.\nWolfe asserts that he must have read a lot of Cooper to write “Fennimore\nCooper’s Literary Offenses.”\n\nThey then move on to discuss Twain’s defense of Harriet Shelley, with Wolfe\nplaying devil’s advocate for Pierce Shelley, saying that certainly his\nunconventional views towards marriage should have been considered. The\nmustache then dismantles moral relativism by asking Wolfe if Wolfe's\nbicycle was ever stolen, and if his lack of precautions justified the\ntheft, then draws the same situation forward to his car.\n\nTwain’s mustache then says that Twain lost a wife and a daughter, and it\nmade him bitter, but ultimately sympathetic to women like Joan of Arc and\nHarriet Shelley. Wolfe says he will tell the fans at Readercon that “Mark\nTwain was a wise man and a learned man. Better than both, he was a man who\nthought. Men who think go wrong at times. Men who don’t, never go wrong\nbecause they don’t go at all.”\n\nThe mustache condemns them as going wrong anyways. He concludes by saying\nTwain only had a grammar school education and read because he was\napprenticed to a printer. Wolfe assures the mustache that he can be relied\nupon to relate all of these facts.\n\n##COMMENTARY:\n\nAs a short write up for Readercon 22 which featured Mark Twain as a\nmemorial guest of honor, it seems that Wolfe wants to highlight a few of\nTwain’s more serious but less well-known literary efforts. He acknowledges\nthe research and dedication Twain brought to his rather uncharacteristic\nlate in life work on Joan of Arc, which Twain regarded as his best, even\nthough it has been subject to very mixed critical reviews. The emphasis on\nTwain as a reader, as a serious critic, and as a literary historian\ndedicated to research who acquired his love for reading through a printing\napprenticeship is unambiguously Wolfe’s main point. He selects less well\nknown features, eschewing mention of Twain’s time on a steamboat or his\ncomic novels and instead opting to explore his critical position and his\nhistorical writing. Wolfe’s other purpose is of course a rather didactic\nexcoriation of modernity, with barbs criticizing modern education, implying\nthat the apprenticeship to a printer and simply thinking is ultimately more\nproductive than higher education might be. (Wolfe jokes that grammar\nschools are no longer so called because they do not in fact teach grammar\nthere, etc.)\n\nThe works mentioned by the mustache include the dismantling of James\nFennimore Cooper, which , after setting forth how Cooper violated 18 of the\n19 or 22 rules of literary art governing romantic fiction, concludes with\nthis gem:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that \"Deerslayer\" is not a work\nof art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every\ndetail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me\nthat \"Deerslayer\" is just simply a literary delirium tremens." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or\nresult; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality;" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove\nthat they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its\nhumor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are -- oh!\nindescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the\nlanguage." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "(Twain)\n\nWhile this is a light piece, it definitely resonates with some of Harold\nBloom’s ideas of misprision: Twain reads a book on Joan of Arc that\nobsesses him so much that he must struggle with it, do his own research,\nand create a different final product. Bloom usually characterizes this\nprocess as creative misprision. It seems Wolfe went through much the same\ndevelopmental pattern with Jack Vance’s *Dying Earth* series and *The Book\nof the New Sun*.\n\nWolfe (as writer) also casts some barbs at moral relativism, insinuating\nthat some truths and rights are universal, and further implies, using\nTwain’s mustache as his mouthpiece, that Twain’s criticism of Shelley for\nabandoning his first wife were justified, though perhaps steeped in\nlikeable rhetoric serving to ingratiate his audience. In the final analysis\nthe portrait, while lighthearted, paints Twain as a serious reader. The\nironic distance between Wolfe defending Shelley and the mustache defeating\nhim so easily in an argument is typical of the ironic distance between the\nnarrator’s position and Wolfe the writer’s stance, similarly separated from\nthe Gene Wolfe character just as it was in “The Last Thrilling Wonder\nStory.”\n\n##CONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\nMuch as his earlier critiques of the established educational system, such\nas his introduction to *Endangered Species* as well as his foray into\nfictionalizing scholars such as “Civis Laputus Sum” and “Morning Glory”,\nthis one highlights the more important status of readers and writers. The\noff screen implication of Rosemary’s health problems and the silence the\nmustache invokes are probably as close as Wolfe can come in a\npseudo-fiction to a real life exploration of the effect of caring for\nsomeone with Alzheimers . The stance, as in his more typical fictional\nefforts, is once again “enough said”. The concept that it is better to have\na wrong opinion and express that belief than to have none at all and do\nnothing seems to be an apologia for Twain and perhaps for many modern\nfigures as well.\n\nJust as in “Redbeard”, the rather traditional morality espoused by the\nnarrative is set contrary to the Gene Wolfe surrogate, our narrators in\neach story. This ironic tone is here set up by the mustache’s superior\nrhetoric. This distance between the “correct” ethical attitude and the\nnarrator’s viewpoint is a hallmark of Wolfe throughout his entire career,\nbut we can often still determine the \"triumphant\" side. In his most\ncomplex works, Wolfe gives the adversarial position an extremely compelling\nargument (as is the case when Thecla discusses the impossible promise of\nreligion: that a compassionate God would forgive everything when the chance\nfor a choice existed and refuse to act within Creation, but damn forever\nonce life is past and suddenly exert an ultimate, irreversible influence on\ncosmology)." } ] } ] }