{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1331", "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": 1331, "subject": "Alga bitches some more", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2001-04-10T08:13:56+00:00", "last": "2001-04-10T08:13:56+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "akt", "address": "akt at attglobal.net" }, "date": "2001-04-10T08:13:56+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Alga bitches some more", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "David DiGiacomo said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "1. Alga, why do you think it's worse than any other Wolfe book?\nOr are you just tired of his tricks?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No it's all the loose ends and carelessness, see below." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "2. I wonder how completely David Hartwell feels he needs to understand\na\nWolfe book before he can publish it. It doesn't seem that he has the\nluxury of reading through 4 or 5 times and then thinking it over for a\nwhile. If he hasn't worked out all the puzzles (or even just the\nending),\nhow can he edit effectively? Does he demand spoilers?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think an editor who has spent as much time as Hartwell has with this\nseries has a responsibility to readers to tie it up satisfactorially\neven if it means asking for revisions and a delay in publication. Of\ncourse he should demand \"spoilers!\" And get them, too--it's his job to\nlook out for mistakes. Obviously, some of you think the book is dandy\nas is, which is why I have been staying out of the discussion lately." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: William Ansley " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why do I feel cheated? There were just too many loose ends. And the\nbeginnings of most of the loose ends seemed to have no reason for\nbeing put in the trilogy in the first place." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Like the godling. No reason at all to introduce it/him, and a completely\nirrational sort of creature to put in a closed environment. Also like\nMerryn, whose appearence just seems bad-tempered on the author's part.." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I have enjoyed some of Wolfe's most \"puzzling\" works, both those in\nwhich many of the puzzles seem to have solutions even when I couldn't\nfigure them out (such as _Peace_) and those in which many of the\npuzzles seem to have no solution or we are not given enough\ninformation to solve them (such as _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_).\nRttW however, just left me feeling frustrated." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Seconded. I'm not a Peacenik, especially, but I have more respect for it\nthat this." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Robert Borski\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, for starters, the Brother and Sister section at the end of OBW\nis but\none of many in the SHORT SUN trilogy where disparate individuals who\nare not\nactually related by blood are still able to forge loving,\nfamilial-type\nbonds.\n\nHorn, for example, has a number of pseudo-children, from Brother and\nSister\nto Krait and Jahlee to Fava and Mora.\n\nHornSilk, meanwhile, has Hide and Hoof (and vice versa), while the\nMother\nhas Seawrack and Maytara Marble has Mucor--even as Fava and Mora love\neach\nother as much as sisters, just as Pig and Horn do brothers. Ditto for\nGreater Scylla and the Mother. And Brother, if he really is Fava's\nBricco,\nis adopted by a highborn lady of the Vanished People as a son.\n\nIt's a very Christian theme, this notion of community--love thy\nNeighbor\n(heh) as thy self--and it has repercusions all through the three books\nthat\nconstitute SS, being a major leit motif.\n\nSo, yeah, obviously I disagree about your assessment of the\nBrother-Sister\nsection, believing it to be important, vital, and integral to the\nseries." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Except that it isn't. Those relationships were vital, this is thrown in\nlike a load of old rubbish." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Nicholas=20Gevers?= \nSubject: To alga: Complaining too early" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think part of the difficulty list members like alga\nand William Ansley have had in accepting RTW stems\nfrom the fact that they haven't had sufficient time to\ndigest the Short Sun series yet. The implications of a\nWolfe text take a while to emerge fully, if they ever\ndo; give TBSS time. Meanings will emerge. Just reread,\nand ponder..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh, honestly, what nonsense--this isn't the Torah! It's not my fault\nthat Wolfe abandoned Mucor, murdered Jahlee, sent Nettle and Seawrack\noff on a Star Trek menage a trois with the saintly Silk, ditched Babbie,\ngave us no word of Oreb and in general tossed his whole story out the\nwindow--or off-planet as the case may be. Leaving both Blue and Green to\ngo to hell together, Neighbors, inhumi and whatnot. Tra-la, let's be\noff." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "To a few specifics:\n\nWilliam Ansley's querying of the \"brother and sister\"\nsection: TBSS is a political novel, with a strong but\nqualified utopian subtext. Please note, generally,\nthat the final fivefold \"Good fishing!\" utterance at\nthe end of RTW is almost certainly an homage to the\nending of Kim Stanley Robinson's markedly utopian MARS\ntrilogy (\"..on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on\nMars\"). The Secret of the Inhumi is a political\nsecret, an impetus to a juster social order; brother\nand sister represent Natural Man, or the Noble Savage,\nan essential component of general utopian discourse." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That strikes me as more nonsense. Why in the world would he be offering\nan \"homage\" to Robinson, a very diiferent kind of writer. Proust, maybe,\nbut Robinson? I don't think so." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Horn's status as inhumu-suspect, and the ring in RTW:\nHorn is not an inhumu, but he is inhumu-like, in that\nhe is one individual masquerading as another (either\nHorn as Silk or Silk as Horn). Thus the repeated hints\nof Horn being an inhumu, which misled John Clute among\nothers: the hints are thematic, pointers to Horn's\ninner and outer ambiguity. The ring Oreb retrieves for\nHorn in RTW changes form as a further pointer in the\ndirection of shifting or uncertain identity: it is\nprotean, like Horn, like the inhumi, like the\nNeighbors." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Why does that make him like an inhumu? As this list has pointed out\nrepeatedly, Wolfe writing is full of such figures. And Clute was just\nplain misreading. It happens. (To me too." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The death of Jahlee, and the massacre of the inhumi:\nAlga, I think this took you aback because you were\nanticipating Wolfe's intentions, a dangerous course as\nyou once warned me. You had a utopian/feminist agenda\nin your reading; while repeating that TBSS is a\npolitical and even utopian novel, I have to say that\nits utopianism is cautious, indeed conservative, as is\nonly natural for GW. Silk/Horn is concerned to protect\nhumanity; the inhumi are predators upon humanity; the\npolitical settlement required to defeat the inhumi is\nuniversal human solidarity, this 1) to deny the inhumi\nhuman blood and 2) to ensure that such human blood as\nthey do acquire is that of benign utopians. (Note that\nSinew's village late in IGJ is an emerging utopia\nalong these lines; but Silk/Horn is pessimistic about\ngeneral prospects on Blue.) In the immediate term,\ncruder methods are needed to fend off the inhumi, such\nas the killing of Jahlee; the inhumi need to be warned\nto rein in their arrogance; and in any case, Jahlee\nhad ample warning of the possibility of the murder, as\nin Horn's shooting of her \"friend\" on Green; and her\nattempt to kill Nettle was hardly benign. Wolfe in\nTBSS, as in all his major works, is being brutally\nfrank about the nasty realities of existence; Jahlee's\ndeath fits perfectly into this scheme, like it or not." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I did not necessarily have a \"utopian/feminist agenda,\" though I do\nadmit that I was somewhat seduced by Horn's treatment of Fava, Mora and\nJahlee in IGJ, especially in that beautiful ending, which, as I've said\nbefore, struck me as Chaucerian. I do not even object to Jahlee's death\nper se. I object to the hasty, melodramatic and far-fetched (would\nJahlee really have attacked Nettle so foolishly--allow me to doubt it)\nB-movie manner in which it is fobbed off, just as I object to his\nbundling his characters off-stage gracelessly and without motivation or\nany clue as to what happens to some characters we have grown interested\nin. Nasty realities of existence are one thing, but I do expect an\nauthor to wind up his series with the same skill he has put into\nconstructing it. See all the above. And what's more, I'm not going to\ncontinue this conversation endlessly.\n\nCrankily,\n-alga\n\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }