Subject: RE: (whorl) Style (spoiler)

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 17:01:27 +0000

James Jordan wrote:

>Someone brought up the fact that so many climactic events are off stage,
>and we only get hints of them. I can understand this as "Horn's" rambling
>style of memoir writing, devoid of a Nettle to edit him. But it seems that
>the children also write this way in their part of RTTW, and that's odd.

I've commented before on the unlikelihood of the children preserving the
mystery of "Horn"'s identity until the end.  Unlike Wolfe's narrative games
in other works, I can't see that the children's authorship of the
third-person sections is anything more than a device to increase Wolfe's
mystification of "Horn"'s identity.

>Also, the children's part of RTTW reflects the many times that Father
>talked about his experiences on the Whorl. Well, how long did Silkhorn hang
>around New Viron? I got the impression that he left right away, but maybe
>he stayed around for a year or so, and that's why the good-byes are not
>eally needed. I guess it would have taken some time for the entourage to
>be collected....

Otoh, Horn would have had plenty of time to narrate his experiences on the
Whorl to Hide and Hoof while they were travelling on Blue (and astral
travelling), so there's no problem here.

--Adam

*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.
*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.moonmilk.com/whorl/
*To leave the list, send "unsubscribe" to whorl-request at lists.best.com
*If it's Wolfe but not Long Sun, please use the URTH list: urth at lists.best.com

---

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 18:21:21 +0000

>mystification of "Horn"'s identity.

I politely disagree in the most strenuous terms while still allowing for
all the spectrum of personal readings.

The kick of all the Whorl stuff being written by people who have never
actually been on the Whorl, and never are going to be on the Whorl . . .
well.  It is somewhat like having the fictional framing of "`A Story' by
John V. Marsch" (an anthropological reconstruction/romance) eroded and put
through the pretzel machine in the course of "V.R.T.," only much moreso.
Because we read those Whorl chapters as being "true," "from the Narrator
named Horn by his mother," "based upon firsthand experience," etc.  Just as
OBW and IGJ had been.

The poignancy of N meeting Horn's father; the intensity of the dark; the
sacrifice of the eye; visits by "ghosts" from the beginning (Remora) to the
end (Crane); N's sense of what any of it means; all vppppt!  Gone into a
different plane.  At first read perhaps we think "N is writing in third
person during these sections because he is recreating through the action of
writing how he was still struggling to get a grip on his personality/body
issues."  Nope.  We might think, "Oh look, it says right here in the first
few pages that the pockets of the robe were unfamiliar--that means he does
not recall being Silk."  Not exactly, but it does suggest what the
writer(s) think about what happened (whether the writer[s] are consistant
or not, etc.).

Here we were expecting to get to the "heart" of the matter, and we find
that we are further away than when we started.  Like in 5HC, where you
think you've been on Ste. Anne, but you never have, you've always been on
Ste. Croix.

The entire Whorl "half" of the book really =is= fan-fiction (aka fanfic).
Literally and truly.  (This is unarguable, right?)  Again, this is another
term (fanfic) which has been bandied about with regard to RTTW, in reaction
to cases which may or may not be limited to the Whorl "half"; but yet
again, here is a detail ("fanfic quality, nuance, or origin") to which I
myself say, "That's not a =bug=, that's a =feature=."

Which, in turn, boils down to the simple case of "I like it" and "you don't."

I have here tried to explain my reading, to explain why I, personally,
strongly object to Adam's statement of opinion, reiterated here again for
clarity: "I can't see that the children's authorship of the third-person
sections is anything more than a device to increase Wolfe's mystification
of "Horn"'s identity."

Perhaps a flavor of discontent with RTTW can compare with the following
case regarding URTH OF THE NEW SUN: some readers were expecting certain
types of revelation, and when these things didn't materialize, they said
things like, "URTH doesn't give anything that wasn't intimated before."

Likewise, it may be for RTTW and some readers.

This particular fanfic angle might also lead to some of the more tricky
("potentially destabilizing of a given reading") questions inspired by John
Crowley's ENGINE SUMMER, since the same can be said of it in its entirety.
To the same sort of reader disappointment/thwarting, etc.

=mantis=

Sirius Fiction
Catalog and errata sheet at http://www.sirius.com/~mantis/

---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 22:44:15 +0000

<defense of the 3rd person sections of RttW snipped>

Very nice, mantis.  

> This particular fanfic angle might also lead to some of the more
> tricky ("potentially destabilizing of a given reading") questions
> inspired by John Crowley's ENGINE SUMMER, since the same can be said
> of it in its entirety.  To the same sort of reader
> disappointment/thwarting, etc.

Ok, I'll bite.  It's been a while since I read ENGINE SUMMER, but I'm
about to reread it again.  Which specific destabilizing questions are
you talking about?  (I can think of a couple of possibilities, but
there may be more).

--
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce