Subject: (whorl) Preferring the Given

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 09:50:38 +0000

There is an idea in Christianity (with parallels in other religions, I
imagine) that one must not cling too tightly to one's own desires and
expectations, lest one miss the good things that God wants to give you
that you would never have asked for or imagined yourself.  C.S. Lewis
called this idea "preferring the given" and it features prominently in
Perelandra.

As I was reading SS, it seemed to me that you could see Wolfe's writting
as a sort of school for practicing this virtue.  He continually whets your
appetite for something, makes you want the story to go in a certain
direction, and if you cling to that desire you will be frustrated over and
over.  But if you let go and let Wolfe take you where he will, you will
see wonders.

If you had told me after I finished OBW that instead of Horn, Sinew, and
Krait trying (failing?) to love each other in the Amazing and Horrible
Jungles of Green I was going to get astral travel and hardly anything
about Horn and Sinew's relationship, I would have been very annoyed.  And
I was a little sad not to see some of those things in IGJ, yet I thought
IGJ was fantastic, and by the time I got to RTTW I was perfectly happy to
see whatever Wolfe wanted to show me, and if that meant missing most of
Hornsilk's trial so we can read about him chatting with Marrow's widow, I
have to admit I still loved pretty much every page of it.

-Rostrum

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From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 17:46:36 +0000

> over.  But if you let go and let Wolfe take you where he will, you will

Yes, this is an excellent point, and I think it's also true of the
things that some of us found annoying, such as the image of "astral
Oreb" as a tentacled hairy dwarf in IGJ.  I, and many others, read
this and found it pretty silly and out of place, and yet by the time
we get the explanation for this in RTTW, I found myself nodding and
agreeing that given Wolfe's seeming "astral travel model" the
depiction of Oreb was entirely consistent to that model.  This is just
one example.

> have to admit I still loved pretty much every page of it.

I'll agree with you there, though there are certain things about the
series, IGJ in particular that bother me such as Auk and Chenille
being reduced to less than a cameo appearance, but in general, I think
you're right on the money here.

Later, you also wrote:

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>

> So perhaps I can be forgiven for feeling, when Horn mentioned how the kite
> builder told them stuff they put in their book, that Wolfe was talking
> directly to me, and, when Horn mentions it for the THIRD time, that
> Wolfe thinks my bulb is particuarly dim.
> 
> (And there are at least a couple more comments Horn makes about getting
> information about Patera Q from time spent with him and from talking with
> Patera R that also seemed to be addressing the same issue.  Cringe.)
> 
> "Thought you'd caught me out, eh?  Didn't think I'd properly thought out
> this whole narrator business?  Well let me explain every detail slow-ly
> and care-ful-ly."
> 

Hey, don't be so hard on yourself.  And if Wolfe really was reacting
to you, I'd think you'd be flattered!  If anything, perhaps he was
being hard on himself.

Shellac

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 20:54:15 +0000

> to you, I'd think you'd be flattered!  If anything, perhaps he was

Chagrin at Wolfe being hard on himself was what I was really getting at.  
I didn't literally think he was talking to me.  I was just a little sad
that he felt the need to spell all that out.  The question wasn't so much
"Can Wolfe cover all the narrative bases?" as "Do Horn and Nettle take
some poetic licesnse here and there?" and I was actually happier with a
few loose ends that seemed to point in that direction.  (Fortunately, we
can transfer all that now to wondering about the stuff by Hoof
et. al.)  

Wolfe seems surprisingly less interested in that kind of
ambiguity--witness his willingness in interviews to directly undercut
Crane's point of view and say that, yes, the Outsider is real--considering
how good he is at creating it.

-Rostrum