{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1434", "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": 1434, "subject": "Fallible Narrators", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-06-10T15:40:33+00:00", "last": "2001-06-11T09:14:14+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-06-10T15:40:33+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Fallible Narrators", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nThat said, tBotSS offers the prettiest Lupine problem in time-\nof-narration since PEACE. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "editors do not object to inserting a few obvious editorial \ncomments into the text; have they made any less obvious \ncomments? Any fictionalizing? Any tonings-down or deletions? \nCan we even begin to guess? And to what extent are their \n\"reconstructions\" of events on the _Whorl_ to be trusted,\nanyway? How much did the Narr really tell them, how much do\nthey make up? This is the problem of tBotLS grown up and\nturned very nasty." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I remember feeling this way at the end of tBOTLS, the idea that some of\nthe wonderful things Horn had told me about Silk might have been\nexaggerations or wishful thinking gave me a certain (fun) chill, but I\nnever felt we have enough evidence to try to go back and sift and somehow\nuncover the \"real\" Silk behind Horn's story.\n\nI think part of what Wolfe is doing is this: If there are those who doubt\nsomeone so good as Silk could exist, or that he could really be\nenlightened by the Outsider, or that any god like the Outsider could\nreally exist, then they are free to think that Horn embellished or was\nmistaken. Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he doesn't insist that you\naccept the existence of God in order to enjoy his story.\n\nThere is a sense in which telling a story from a third-person, omniscient\nviewpoint is cheating. We never know the world that way. All we ever\nknow about other people's thoughts is what they tell us. In a sense,\nalmost all of our knowledge is based on trust. If you want to know about\nHorn and Silk, then you're going to have to trust the people who tell you\ntheir stories, and you're going to have to live with the fact that\nsometimes they will let you down, get it wrong, lie even. We might prefer\nto have an infallible, omniscient account of what happened, but that kind\nof knowledge is just a delusion that we never really achieve.\n\nWhat we're left with is the hope that, though mediated through our own\nfallibility and the fallibility of others, we can still genuinely know\nother people's stories, still genuinely know who they are.\n\nYou probably see that this is also related to my first point about Wolfe's\nbelief in God. It's not that Wolfe leaves things ambiguous because he\ndoesn't care whether you believe in Silk's enlightenment. Rather he's\ngiving you the same kind of evidence that we have in the real world--do\nyou trust the people who claim to have had an encounter with God and\n(equally important) the community of people who have told and retold their\nstories? Can we hope that, though mediated though our own fallibility and\nthe fallibility of others, we can still have some genuine knowledge of\nGod?\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at home.com" }, "date": "2001-06-11T09:14:14+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 03:40 PM 6/10/2001 -0400, Rostrum wrote:\nI think part of what Wolfe is doing is this: If there are those who doubt\nsomeone so good as Silk could exist, or that he could really be\nenlightened by the Outsider, or that any god like the Outsider could\nreally exist, then they are free to think that Horn embellished or was\nmistaken. Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he doesn't insist that you\naccept the existence of God in order to enjoy his story.\n\nThere is a sense in which telling a story from a third-person, omniscient\nviewpoint is cheating." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Perhaps a slightly different take, which may be part of Wolfe's \nmotivation. Silk is Christlike, but he's not Christ. TBLS is like the \ngospels, but it's not the gospels. Wolfe is a conservative Christian, so he \nbelieves the gospels as originally written were \"inspired and infallible\" \nand that they have been preserved accurately in the Church. TBLS does not \nhave these divine attributes. Thus:\n\nGospels : TBLS :: Jesus : Silk\n\n With TBSS we move one step farther away from infallibility. TBSS \nis not a second-order version of part of the Bible, but is the life of a \nsaint. But again, from a Roman Catholic standpoint, there is always the \nquestion of what REALLY happened in the life of a saint. (Remember the \ncontroversy a few years ago when the Vatican began to question whether St. \nNicholas ever really lived.) Thus, in the order of perfection and \ninfallibility:\n\nGospels : TBLS : TBSS :: Jesus : Silk : Horn/Narrator(s)\n\n Maybe such considerations played no part in Wolfe's thinking, but \nthey make a kind of sense, given what he has done in these two books.\n\nNutria\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }