{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1106", "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": "whorl", "thread": { "id": 1106, "subject": "[spoiler] Narrative technique in _Return_, and trilogity", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-02-07T22:35:29+00:00", "last": "2001-02-08T10:16:47+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan Rabin", "address": "wolfe-lists at danrabin.com" }, "date": "2001-02-07T22:35:29+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) [spoiler] Narrative technique in _Return_, and trilogity", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This third volume in the series adopts yet another distinct set of \ntechniques for interleaving two narrative time frames.\n\nIn _Blue's_ we had the Gaon story interrupt the quest story, \neventually dominating by the end of the volume.\n\nIn _Green's_ we're mostly in the Blanko story, with the continuation \nof the quest in flashbacks and the stories in the story-telling game.\n\nIn _Return_, we pretty much get a chapter-by-chapter alternation \nbetween the homeward-bound story and the _Whorl_ story, told in very \ndifferent styles. Homecoming-protagonist pretty much continues his \npersona from _Green's_, but as Whorl-narrator he adopts a very \nmannered avoidance of identification with the Whorl-protagonist: he \nnever names that person (always referred to via third-person pronouns \nor as \"the man who...\"). He keeps this up even when meeting his \n*father*. It's as if he wants to claim that that guy might or might \nnot have been Silk, but it sure wasn't *me*.\n\nAs a bonus, we get chapters in Hoof and Daisy's own distinct voices, \nand an afterword in which Silk is once again separated from the \nnow-current narrator.\n(I found Hoof's style to be rather charming.)\n\nOh, and the volumes are separated by interruptions in \nHorn/Rajan/Silk's supply of paper in the frame in which he is writing.\n\nReading this trilogy is like listening to Bach. There's a highly \nevolved formal structure available to enhance your enjoyment, but \nyou'll still come out way ahead if you just go ahead and listen.\n\nI note in this connection Wolfe's remarks in 1982 in the essay \"The \nRewards of Authorship\" in _The Castle of the Otter_, reprinted in \n_Castle of Days_, on p. 280 of the hardcover edition:\n\n Q: [the professor] also said that each volume in a trilogy should be a\n finished story in itself, the various parts being interconnected by a\n progression in time and overlapping characters. You don't do that in _The\n Book of the New Sun_. Shouldn't you have? It's sort of all one book,\n with breaks in between.\n A: That's right. Did you enjoy the books?\n Q: Yes, but it still seems wrong.\n A: Because your professor said so. Did he enjoy them?\n Q: I don't think he read them.\n A: I don't think so either. Did you like _The Lord of the Rings_?\n Q: I loved it!\n A: That's \"sort of all one book, with breaks in between\" isn't it?\n Q: I never thought of that. I wish I had mentioned it to my professor." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "A: It wouldn't have done any good--he wouldn't have read that \neither. I just wanted to point out that Tolkien was a professor of \nAnglo-Saxon at Oxford." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It seems to me that _Short Sun_ is in some measure a further argument \nin Wolfe's dispute with that imaginary professor. One of our \ncontributors who is in touch with Wolfe has reported Wolfe's glee at \nfinally having written a trilogy...\n\n -- Dan Rabin\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan Schmidt", "address": "dfan at harmonixmusic.com" }, "date": "2001-02-08T10:16:47+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) [spoiler] Narrative technique in _Return_, and trilogity", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan Rabin writes:\n\n| This third volume in the series adopts yet another distinct set of\n| techniques for interleaving two narrative time frames.\n| \n| In _Blue's_ we had the Gaon story interrupt the quest story,\n| eventually dominating by the end of the volume.\n| \n| In _Green's_ we're mostly in the Blanko story, with the continuation\n| of the quest in flashbacks and the stories in the story-telling game.\n| \n| In _Return_, we pretty much get a chapter-by-chapter alternation\n| between the homeward-bound story and the _Whorl_ story, told in very\n| different styles.\n\nI particularly liked how each title referred both to the past and the\npresent.\n\nIn ON BLUE'S WATERS, Horn's narrating his original adventures on Blue,\nand what's happening now that he's returned there.\n\nIn IN GREEN'S JUNGLES, he narrates his original adventures on Green,\nand visits there again via 'astral projection'.\n\nIn RETURN TO THE WHORL, he narrates his first return to the whorl, and\nthen returns to the whorl again as the book closes." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "http://www.dfan.org\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }