{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1438", "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": 1438, "subject": "Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a Textual Con sideration of the \"Book of Silk\"", "messages": 5, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-06-10T20:35:11+00:00", "last": "2001-06-18T16:16:06+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Steve Strickland", "address": "sstrickland at satx.rr.com" }, "date": "2001-06-10T20:35:11+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a Textual Con sideration of the \"Book of Silk\"", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A nice piece of work, Dan'l, but I think Rostrum's remarks hit the mark\nclosest, especially when he said:\n\n\"Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he\ndoesn't insist that you accept the existence of God in order to\nenjoy his story.\"\n\nIn short, I think it is deliberate religious ambiguity Wolfe is attempting\nto generate, in much the same way that he generated ambiguity in \"The Book\nof the New Sun.\"\n\nSomewhere, maybe it is in one of the \"Castle of Days\" articles or in an\ninterview I read somewhere, Mr. Wolfe wrote about the relationship between\nhis faith and his writing, particularly with respect to the Book of the New\nSun. (Conveniently) I don't remember exactly what he said, but my\nimpression from the piece was that he was deliberately ambiguous on the\nquestion of religion, that TBOTNS was not a religious work, but a secular\nwork, and that, thus, Mr. Wolfe was careful to preserve a certain ambiguity\nin that regard.\n\nWhere is the religious ambiguity in TBOTNS? Well, for instance, I think,\nalmost certainly, that Master Ash's bleak and scientific outlook depicted\npart of that ambiguity. Maybe, too, the notion visited in \"Sword of the\nLictor\" that, if the universe had existed for an infinite time, all things,\nincluding angels, would have come into existence by logical necessity. And,\nfrom my religious perspective, it's hard to imagine a more terrifying story\nthan Melito's story from the \"Citadel of the Autarch\" of \"The Cock, the\nAngel, and the Eagle\", especially as that story was revisited and affirmed\nas true in \"Urth of the New Sun.\" The point is that within TBOTNS Mr.\nWolfe himself generates an alternative religious interpretation of the world\nin which his story takes place, something that an atheistic would be much\nmore comfortable with than a priest. (Though there's also plenty of room\nfor the priest's interpretation.) To me, this ambiguity is most excellent\nand makes the work, not only uplifting (as would be a purely religious\nwork), but also subtly frightening.\n\nIn Long Sun and Short Sun, I think there's a similar principle and purpose\nat work (same author, after all). The technique here is to raise a question\nabout the veracity/accuracy of the storyteller. It is thus possible that\nthe story has an entirely naturalistic interpretation, that, for instance,\nthe divine visitations, Silk's goodness, could be written in after the fact.\nIt is again subtly frightening.\n\nYikes! I just read what I just wrote. It probably doesn't make any sense\nat all. Sorry.\n\nImperator\n\n\n\n\n----- Original Message -----\nFrom: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \nTo: \nSent: Sunday, June 10, 2001 5:39 PM\nSubject: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a\nTextual Con sideration of the \"Book of Silk\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This will wander a little off the Lupine track, but trust me,\nit's heading straight back there. Some points of Rostrum's\nscreed got my head working, and I've got a basic thesis on\nwhat Wolfe is doing and why.\n\nThe first of Rostrum's remarks that I responded to was this:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I remember feeling this way at the end of tBOTLS, the idea that\nsome of the wonderful things Horn had told me about Silk might\nhave been exaggerations or wishful thinking gave me a certain\n(fun) chill, but I never felt we have enough evidence to try to\ngo back and sift and somehow uncover the \"real\" Silk behind\nHorn's story." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now, I didn't really get that kind of shock out of the revelation\nthat \"I, Horn, wrote this years later, with some help.\" What I\n_did_ get out of it was a weird sense that Wolfe had patterned\nthis whole thing somehow after model the Catholic church\nuses to describe the formation of the (written) Gospels.\n\nBriefly, for non-[Catholic-Bible-scholars]: The basic idea the\nCatholic church endorses is that the Gospels were formed in\nthree \"layers\":\n1. The events that actually occurred in the greater\n Jerusalem metropolitan area ca. 4 BC - 33 AD.\n2. The memories of those events carried by eyewitnesses\n and the communities founded by those eyewitnesses.\n3. The setting-down of those memories by the communities,\n probably late in the first century.\nThe Catholic answers to questions like \"Yeah, but how do we know\nit's true?\" and \"Well, what about the way they [seem to] conflict\nwith each other?\" are deeply entrenched in that model, but it\ngets pretty complicated at that point.\n\nNow, what I _think_ we have in Horn's \"Book of Silk\" is something\nsimilar: Horn was, admittedly, an eyewitness to some of these\nevents -- a fairly small proportion of them. He's gone around\ninterviewing people, filled in the details as best he can, and\nfreely admits he made the rest up to complete the narrative. It\nisn't good historiography, but it suffices; it gives the sense\nof someone who isn't a historian doing the best he can. The made-\nup stuff, while perhaps not accurate, isn't a lie, in the sense\nof an untruth meant to deceive; it is intended to convey a sense\nof the probable truth.\n\nSo we have all three stages compressed into one text:\n\n1. We have Horn's own authentic(?) memories of Silk.\n\n2. We have the community's memories of Silk.\n\n3. The \"Book of Silk\" _as written by Horn & Nettle_\n collecting and collating their own memories with\n those of the community.\n\nUnfortunately, there's an implicit Stage 4, which is also\nimplicit in the Catholic model: The copyists get hold of\nthe text, and a long time later, scholars try to trace the\nprovenance of textual variants backwards and determine the\n\"true\" original text of Stage 3.\n\nIn the case of the BOOK OF THE LONG SUN, we feel like we have\nthe product of Stage 3, but the Narrator's comments in SHORT\nSUN lead us to wonder whether we might actually have a corrupt\ncopy, and how corrupt? Nor do Horn's comments at the end of\nLONG SUN make it any easier to determine; compare them to the\nfirst four verses of the Gospel according to Luke, and then\nfind out how much work goes into preparing a good textual\n\"edition\" of that Gospel. Assurances by the author of the\ntext's accuracy do not greatly help when the text has been\nhand-copied many times.\n\n\n\nWhich leads me to another of Rostrum's points:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "It's not that Wolfe leaves things ambiguous because he doesn't\ncare whether you believe in Silk's enlightenment. Rather\nhe's giving you the same kind of evidence that we have in the\nreal world--do you trust the people who claim to have had an\nencounter with God and (equally important) the community of\npeople who have told and retold their stories? Can we hope\nthat, though mediated though our own fallibility and the\nfallibility of others, we can still have some genuine knowledge\nof God?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We have, in THE BOOK OF THE LONG SUN, one of the following:\na) Horn and Nettle's \"Book of Silk\"\nb) one of many possible variant texts\nc) someone's \"edition\" of same\n-- and nothing to help us which. We are, in fact, in the precise\nposition of a non-scholarly reader of the Bible, or perhaps (given\nthat this discussion is happening at all) a medieval scholar with\nno access to modern textual studies.\n\nSo: paraphrasing Rostrum, can we hope that, though mediated\nthough our own fallibility and the fallibility of others, we can\nstill have some genuine knowledge of Silk?\n\nI think the answer is, and has to be, \"Yes,\" because the\npossibility that it's all made-up (within the Lupine universe\nof discourse) is too drab to be worth discussing.\n\nAll this brings me to my basic thesis.\n\nWhat Wolfe has reproduced, here, is the basic problem of putting\nfaith in a written Scripture. The following paragraph refers\nequivocally to the Bible (for us, or at least those of us to\nwhom the Bible represents something more than a reactionary symbol\nof patriarchal oppression) and to The Book of Silk (for a\nrepresentative inhabitant of the Lupiverse, modulo similar\nconcerns).\n\n\"What can we believe about this text or its contents? By itself,\nit is completely incapable of witnessing to its own veracity,\nand we are not even capable of coming to certainty on what the\ntext actually does say in some places; yet many have believed\nand do believe that it is a true account of the most important\nthing that ever happened in this world. To believe that it is\ncompletely made up by its author or authors seems impossible;\nto believe that it is accurate, on a word-by-word, factual\nbasis, seems even more impossible (though there are some\nextremists who in fact believe each of those things).\"\n\n-----------------------------\n\nNow, when Rostrum writes, \"Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he\ndoesn't insist that you accept the existence of God in order to\nenjoy his story,\" I disagree rather vehemently; to deny Silk's\nenlightenment is to make the whole LONG SUN (and, by transference,\nSHORT) fall apart, meaningless and incoherent. He even sets that\npossibility up as a straw man (Crane's cerebral accident theory),\nand _doesn't_ provide us with arguments about it, because it is\nridiculous _prima facie_. There is, I think, no way to take the\nsupernatural element out of the SUN books in any kind of \"good\nfaith\" (in the existential sense).\n\nStill, I agree that \"[t]here is a sense in which telling a story\nfrom a third-person, omniscient viewpoint is cheating.\"\n\nThere is. And there is another sense in which all stories are\ntold from that viewpoint, even those told by a limited and\nunreliable first-person narrator. The reader (well, all but the\nmost childlike and passive reader) sits outside the universe of\ndiscourse and, if not omniscient, is at least outside the\nviewpoint of the narrator, judging it. Without that basic fact,\nthe concept of an unreliable narrator would be entirely\nmeaningless.\n\n\nAgain: \"We never know the world that way.\"\n\nNo, we don't. But somehow we _conceive_ the world that way. We have\na sense that there is a single, coherent reality, even if our own\nlimited knowledge can never get at it. Living in a universe run by\nquantum mechanics doesn't really change that; it defines the limits\nof how much we can know about it. (If there is an omniscient and\nomnipotent Creator, Heisenberg's Law is a clear and present \"No\nTrespassing\" sign.)\n\n\n--------------------------------------\nEnough.\n\n--Blattid/Dan'l\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Steve Strickland", "address": "sstrickland at satx.rr.com" }, "date": "2001-06-10T20:35:11+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a Textual Con sideration of the \"Book of Silk\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A nice piece of work, Dan'l, but I think Rostrum's remarks hit the mark\nclosest, especially when he said:\n\n\"Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he\ndoesn't insist that you accept the existence of God in order to\nenjoy his story.\"\n\nIn short, I think it is deliberate religious ambiguity Wolfe is attempting\nto generate, in much the same way that he generated ambiguity in \"The Book\nof the New Sun.\"\n\nSomewhere, maybe it is in one of the \"Castle of Days\" articles or in an\ninterview I read somewhere, Mr. Wolfe wrote about the relationship between\nhis faith and his writing, particularly with respect to the Book of the New\nSun. (Conveniently) I don't remember exactly what he said, but my\nimpression from the piece was that he was deliberately ambiguous on the\nquestion of religion, that TBOTNS was not a religious work, but a secular\nwork, and that, thus, Mr. Wolfe was careful to preserve a certain ambiguity\nin that regard.\n\nWhere is the religious ambiguity in TBOTNS? Well, for instance, I think,\nalmost certainly, that Master Ash's bleak and scientific outlook depicted\npart of that ambiguity. Maybe, too, the notion visited in \"Sword of the\nLictor\" that, if the universe had existed for an infinite time, all things,\nincluding angels, would have come into existence by logical necessity. And,\nfrom my religious perspective, it's hard to imagine a more terrifying story\nthan Melito's story from the \"Citadel of the Autarch\" of \"The Cock, the\nAngel, and the Eagle\", especially as that story was revisited and affirmed\nas true in \"Urth of the New Sun.\" The point is that within TBOTNS Mr.\nWolfe himself generates an alternative religious interpretation of the world\nin which his story takes place, something that an atheistic would be much\nmore comfortable with than a priest. (Though there's also plenty of room\nfor the priest's interpretation.) To me, this ambiguity is most excellent\nand makes the work, not only uplifting (as would be a purely religious\nwork), but also subtly frightening.\n\nIn Long Sun and Short Sun, I think there's a similar principle and purpose\nat work (same author, after all). The technique here is to raise a question\nabout the veracity/accuracy of the storyteller. It is thus possible that\nthe story has an entirely naturalistic interpretation, that, for instance,\nthe divine visitations, Silk's goodness, could be written in after the fact.\nIt is again subtly frightening.\n\nYikes! I just read what I just wrote. It probably doesn't make any sense\nat all. Sorry.\n\nImperator\n\n\n\n\n----- Original Message -----\nFrom: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \nTo: \nSent: Sunday, June 10, 2001 5:39 PM\nSubject: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a\nTextual Con sideration of the \"Book of Silk\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This will wander a little off the Lupine track, but trust me,\nit's heading straight back there. Some points of Rostrum's\nscreed got my head working, and I've got a basic thesis on\nwhat Wolfe is doing and why.\n\nThe first of Rostrum's remarks that I responded to was this:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I remember feeling this way at the end of tBOTLS, the idea that\nsome of the wonderful things Horn had told me about Silk might\nhave been exaggerations or wishful thinking gave me a certain\n(fun) chill, but I never felt we have enough evidence to try to\ngo back and sift and somehow uncover the \"real\" Silk behind\nHorn's story." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now, I didn't really get that kind of shock out of the revelation\nthat \"I, Horn, wrote this years later, with some help.\" What I\n_did_ get out of it was a weird sense that Wolfe had patterned\nthis whole thing somehow after model the Catholic church\nuses to describe the formation of the (written) Gospels.\n\nBriefly, for non-[Catholic-Bible-scholars]: The basic idea the\nCatholic church endorses is that the Gospels were formed in\nthree \"layers\":\n1. The events that actually occurred in the greater\n Jerusalem metropolitan area ca. 4 BC - 33 AD.\n2. The memories of those events carried by eyewitnesses\n and the communities founded by those eyewitnesses.\n3. The setting-down of those memories by the communities,\n probably late in the first century.\nThe Catholic answers to questions like \"Yeah, but how do we know\nit's true?\" and \"Well, what about the way they [seem to] conflict\nwith each other?\" are deeply entrenched in that model, but it\ngets pretty complicated at that point.\n\nNow, what I _think_ we have in Horn's \"Book of Silk\" is something\nsimilar: Horn was, admittedly, an eyewitness to some of these\nevents -- a fairly small proportion of them. He's gone around\ninterviewing people, filled in the details as best he can, and\nfreely admits he made the rest up to complete the narrative. It\nisn't good historiography, but it suffices; it gives the sense\nof someone who isn't a historian doing the best he can. The made-\nup stuff, while perhaps not accurate, isn't a lie, in the sense\nof an untruth meant to deceive; it is intended to convey a sense\nof the probable truth.\n\nSo we have all three stages compressed into one text:\n\n1. We have Horn's own authentic(?) memories of Silk.\n\n2. We have the community's memories of Silk.\n\n3. The \"Book of Silk\" _as written by Horn & Nettle_\n collecting and collating their own memories with\n those of the community.\n\nUnfortunately, there's an implicit Stage 4, which is also\nimplicit in the Catholic model: The copyists get hold of\nthe text, and a long time later, scholars try to trace the\nprovenance of textual variants backwards and determine the\n\"true\" original text of Stage 3.\n\nIn the case of the BOOK OF THE LONG SUN, we feel like we have\nthe product of Stage 3, but the Narrator's comments in SHORT\nSUN lead us to wonder whether we might actually have a corrupt\ncopy, and how corrupt? Nor do Horn's comments at the end of\nLONG SUN make it any easier to determine; compare them to the\nfirst four verses of the Gospel according to Luke, and then\nfind out how much work goes into preparing a good textual\n\"edition\" of that Gospel. Assurances by the author of the\ntext's accuracy do not greatly help when the text has been\nhand-copied many times.\n\n\n\nWhich leads me to another of Rostrum's points:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "It's not that Wolfe leaves things ambiguous because he doesn't\ncare whether you believe in Silk's enlightenment. Rather\nhe's giving you the same kind of evidence that we have in the\nreal world--do you trust the people who claim to have had an\nencounter with God and (equally important) the community of\npeople who have told and retold their stories? Can we hope\nthat, though mediated though our own fallibility and the\nfallibility of others, we can still have some genuine knowledge\nof God?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We have, in THE BOOK OF THE LONG SUN, one of the following:\na) Horn and Nettle's \"Book of Silk\"\nb) one of many possible variant texts\nc) someone's \"edition\" of same\n-- and nothing to help us which. We are, in fact, in the precise\nposition of a non-scholarly reader of the Bible, or perhaps (given\nthat this discussion is happening at all) a medieval scholar with\nno access to modern textual studies.\n\nSo: paraphrasing Rostrum, can we hope that, though mediated\nthough our own fallibility and the fallibility of others, we can\nstill have some genuine knowledge of Silk?\n\nI think the answer is, and has to be, \"Yes,\" because the\npossibility that it's all made-up (within the Lupine universe\nof discourse) is too drab to be worth discussing.\n\nAll this brings me to my basic thesis.\n\nWhat Wolfe has reproduced, here, is the basic problem of putting\nfaith in a written Scripture. The following paragraph refers\nequivocally to the Bible (for us, or at least those of us to\nwhom the Bible represents something more than a reactionary symbol\nof patriarchal oppression) and to The Book of Silk (for a\nrepresentative inhabitant of the Lupiverse, modulo similar\nconcerns).\n\n\"What can we believe about this text or its contents? By itself,\nit is completely incapable of witnessing to its own veracity,\nand we are not even capable of coming to certainty on what the\ntext actually does say in some places; yet many have believed\nand do believe that it is a true account of the most important\nthing that ever happened in this world. To believe that it is\ncompletely made up by its author or authors seems impossible;\nto believe that it is accurate, on a word-by-word, factual\nbasis, seems even more impossible (though there are some\nextremists who in fact believe each of those things).\"\n\n-----------------------------\n\nNow, when Rostrum writes, \"Perhaps Wolfe is being a gentleman; he\ndoesn't insist that you accept the existence of God in order to\nenjoy his story,\" I disagree rather vehemently; to deny Silk's\nenlightenment is to make the whole LONG SUN (and, by transference,\nSHORT) fall apart, meaningless and incoherent. He even sets that\npossibility up as a straw man (Crane's cerebral accident theory),\nand _doesn't_ provide us with arguments about it, because it is\nridiculous _prima facie_. There is, I think, no way to take the\nsupernatural element out of the SUN books in any kind of \"good\nfaith\" (in the existential sense).\n\nStill, I agree that \"[t]here is a sense in which telling a story\nfrom a third-person, omniscient viewpoint is cheating.\"\n\nThere is. And there is another sense in which all stories are\ntold from that viewpoint, even those told by a limited and\nunreliable first-person narrator. The reader (well, all but the\nmost childlike and passive reader) sits outside the universe of\ndiscourse and, if not omniscient, is at least outside the\nviewpoint of the narrator, judging it. Without that basic fact,\nthe concept of an unreliable narrator would be entirely\nmeaningless.\n\n\nAgain: \"We never know the world that way.\"\n\nNo, we don't. But somehow we _conceive_ the world that way. We have\na sense that there is a single, coherent reality, even if our own\nlimited knowledge can never get at it. Living in a universe run by\nquantum mechanics doesn't really change that; it defines the limits\nof how much we can know about it. (If there is an omniscient and\nomnipotent Creator, Heisenberg's Law is a clear and present \"No\nTrespassing\" sign.)\n\n\n--------------------------------------\nEnough.\n\n--Blattid/Dan'l\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jerry Friedman", "address": "jerry_friedman at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2001-06-13T14:59:18+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a Textual Con sideration of the \"Book of Silk\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "--- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\n..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "-- presenting to us, in a fictive and\ncognitively \"safe\" \ncontext, the problem of teasing out the\nhistorical facticity\nthat lies behind the Gospels. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I sort of agree. I think Wolfe is clearly\ninspired by the way the\nchurch receives the Gospels, but I think he's\nmaking broader points\nthat have wider applicability than just an\napologetic framework for\nconsidering the Gospels." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Oddly enough, I wasn't thinking of this project as\napologetic. \nRather, I was thinking of it as experiential --\ntaking the \nexperience of having this manuscript, with a certain\nkind of \nprovenance, and just knowing that, however it may\nvary from the\nhistorical _fact_, it is in essence _true_.\n\nI agree that it has wider applicability than the\nGospels; I suspect\nthat this experience has two general applications:\n\n1. A general approach to our reaction to ancient\nmanuscripts -- to\n our only real source of knowledge of the history\nof the world \n before the modernist project of factual accuracy.\n2. A general approach to how religious persons\napproach their\n sacred texts. It has, as noted, a very strong\nsense (to me at\n least) of relation to Luke; but it might be\napplicable to the\n Qu'ran or the Rig-Veda or God wot what all; the\npoint being that\n we have various \"scriptures,\" documents which, to\ntheir \n respective communities of faith, describe the\nmost important\n events or facts or truths in the world, but which\nby their\n very nature _cannot_ be backed up in any\nfactitious way. I \n could as easily say \"Oh -- is _this_ what it's\nlike to \n believe the Book of Mormon, despite all the\nevidence against \n it?\": but for all I know, there may be a member\nof the LDS\n Church on this list, and the last thing I want to\ndo is give offense." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If I may introduce my non-religious perspective--\npeople read novels for reasons quite different from\nthose they read the Gospels or Qur'an or Rig-Veda for.\nIn a novel, we look for literary merits such as\n\"fantasy, color, and pathos\" (from \"The Tale of the\nRose and the Nightingale...\").\n\nI can enjoy stories in which the fantasy is ambiguous\n(\"Bezhin Meadow\" by Turgenev, _A Case of Conscience_,\nand I think lots of Lupines would like Nabokov's _Pale\nFire_). But that doesn't work for me in the \"Book of\nthe [Foo] Sun\", as you called it. If we imagine that\nSeverian was deluded when he had his epiphany on the\nbeach, that the Hierodules were lying to him, that\nSilk wasn't enlightened, that our narrator couldn't\nastrally project to other planets, then the stories\nlose a good deal of fantasy and color with no\ncompensating gain that I can see." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "H'mmmm. But then, I think the Gospels are\nincoherent unless \nyou assume that Jesus was divine. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Here's where I think you're making the connection\ntoo closely. \nWolfe may agree with you about the Gospels, but\nthat doesn't\nnecessarily mean that he intends the Long\nSun/Short Sun books\nto be incoherent if you don't believe in the\nOutsider." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I tend to agree while disagreeing. I believe that he\ntried to \nwrite something that you could do a Crane on --\nexplain everything\naway -- but to write it so that these explanations\nwould sound\ncontrived and improbable. I also believe he\nsucceeded at this." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Whether skeptical explanations sound contrived and\nimprobable is important when evaluating putative\nsacred texts (if that's something one is interested\nin). In the Long/Short Sun books, I think the\nimportant thing is that that those explanations are\nliterarily pointless (unlike the ambiguity in _A Case\nof Conscience_, which is a large part of the point).\n\nIt may be mildly amusing for us readers to note that\na fictional reader on New Viron is in much the same\nposition as a reader of the Gospels, but I don't think\nthat means we readers get anything out reacting the\nsame way as someone for whom the truth of the\nnarrative is important.\n..." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jerry Friedman", "address": "jerry_friedman at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2001-06-15T09:27:32+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a Textual Con sideration of the \"Book of Silk\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- Michael Straight wrote:\nOn Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Jerry Friedman wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Whether skeptical explanations sound contrived and\nimprobable is important when evaluating putative\nsacred texts (if that's something one is\ninterested\nin). In the Long/Short Sun books, I think the\nimportant thing is that that those explanations\nare\nliterarily pointless (unlike the ambiguity in _A\nCase\nof Conscience_, which is a large part of the\npoint).\n\nIt may be mildly amusing for us readers to note\nthat\na fictional reader on New Viron is in much the\nsame\nposition as a reader of the Gospels, but I don't\nthink\nthat means we readers get anything out reacting\nthe\nsame way as someone for whom the truth of the\nnarrative is important." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I disagree on two grounds.\n\n1. I think this business of objective vs.\nsubjective narration is an\nimportant theme of the Long/Short Sun books. Wolfe\nis asking us to\nexamine the assumptions we make when we read a story\nin third-person\n\"omniwscient\" voice; contrast them with the\nassumptions made when told a\nstory from an individual's limited point of view;\nperhaps realize how\nunreal and artificial third person/omniscient views\nare when they describe\nwhat's going on inside other people's heads. In\nreal life, we never know\nthat. We have to take it on faith that inner life\ninside other people's\nheads even exists; we can never observe it for\nourselves. There's a big\ndifference between Wolfe telling us Silk thought\nsuch-and-such and Horn\ntelling us Silk thought such-and-such.\n\n2. Contrary to your opinion, I think this ambiguity\nis much more\naesthetically interesting (different tastes, I\nguess)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Right--sorry I didn't allow for that in my post." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I thought it was\nquite striking that Wolfe seemed to begin the Long\nSun series asking us to\naccept the existence of a God who enlightens Silk as\nan axiom. Just when\nI'd started to take it for granted, Crane invited me\nto re-examine it\n(even if his explanation turns out not to be very\nplausible), which I\nthought was very interesting. And then Horn shows\nup and throws the whole\nthing into question again--it turns out Wolfe\nhimself doesn't ask us to\nassume the existence of the Outsider for the story,\nhe merely creates\ncharacters who believe it. Again, much more\ninteresting.\n\nI've said before, I was quite moved by Silk's inner\nlife, by the prayers\nhe offers, particularly the progression, comparing\nthe long prayers to the\nNine he makes in prison with the similar long prayer\nto the Outsider. So\nI was shocked when Horn revealed himself and I began\nto ponder how much of\nthat Horn could really have known, how much was the\nway Silk wished to\npresent himself to others, how much Horn's wishful\nthinking. For me,\npondering those issues gave me lots to think about\nafter reading the books\nand upon re-reading them, and I think it makes the\nseries much stronger,\ndeeper, and more interesting.\n\nIn a sense, I get to participate in the story. If I\nbelieve in Silk's\ngoodness and Silk's god (and I do!--in the context\nof the story, I mean),\nit's not just because Wolfe asked me to believe it\nso that he could tell\nme a story based on that assumption, but because he\ncreated characters who\nconvinced me to believe in them and I've chosen to\ndo so." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Part of the reason for my lack of interest in the\nreliability of Wolfe's narrators is that this goes\nback a hundred years, to Henry James (at least). I\ndon't see much difference, for example, between the\neditorial comments in TBotsS and those in _Ada_. And\nspeaking of Nabokov, I don't see anything\nmetafictional in any of the __ Sun books that compares\nto _Pale Fire_, which I strongly recommend to all\nLycophiles who haven't read it.\n\nHowever, for those of you who like this sort of thing\n(that means you too, Dan'l)--well, you're probably\naware of this but just haven't mentioned it--but I'll\nremind you that in _TBotNS_ there's also a fictional\nWolfe who translates Severian's manuscript (and has\nseen some of the era's few extant buildings). That\nadds yet another layer to the possible unreliability,\nas the fictional Wolfe could be either mistranslating\n(and he comments on the problems he has) or improving\nthe story. Aren't we supposed to imagine something\nsimilar in the Whorl books?\n\nCf., by the way, not only \"The Last Thrilling Wonder\nStory\" but also _The Lord of the Rings_, in which\nthe fictional Tolkien explains some features of his\ntranslation. In fact, I find the questions of\ntranslation more entertaining than those of\nreliability. Is the \"high tongue\" of Viron really\nSpanish, or some not-yet-existent language that Wolfe\nchooses to render as Spanish? Why is there a k in\n\"Duko\"?\n\nAs for your real point--maybe I just missed the shock\nof Horn's revealing himself and wondering what I was\nsupposed to doubt. But for me, reading a story by\nHorn isn't *that* different from reading a story by\nWolfe." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Jerry Friedman" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jerry Friedman", "address": "jerry_friedman at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2001-06-18T16:16:06+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a Textual Con sideration of the \"Book of Silk\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nJerry Friedman wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Part of the reason for my lack of interest in the\nreliability of Wolfe's narrators is that this goes\nback a hundred years, to Henry James (at least). " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I\ndon't see much difference, for example, between\nthe\neditorial comments in TBotsS and those in _Ada_. \n\nI must disagree on theoretical grounds. The\ndiscourse of\nSF uses rhetorical devices -- and the tactics of the\n\nunreliable narrator, the \"editorial\" comment, and \nmetafictional devices generally _are_ rhetorical\ndevices,\nthat is, tools in the rhetorical toolchest of the\nwriter \n(at least, the writer of narrative) -- in a\nfundamentally\ndifferent way than does the discourse of MF*." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I should probably mention that _Ada_ is alternate-\nhistory sf, with a little stefnal fun about the\ntechnology of \"Anti-Terra\". (Pace Nabokov and some\nNabokophiles who would undoubtedly say, undoubtedly\nhave said, that _Ada_ is a parody of sf, far superior\nto [what they think is] the naive and limited genre it\nparodies, and does something quite different with sf\nelements from what [they think] the genre does.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "------------------------\n* MF: A term I've been using for some years, though\nI\n haven't had much call for it on this group. Just\nas\n the S in SF may refer to \"Science\" or\n\"Speculative\"\n [or \"San\" if you live in Northern California], so\n the M in MF refers ambiguously/ambivalently to \n \"mimetic\" and \"mundane,\" the latter _not_ intended\n as a faanish put-down term but as a descriptive\nterm\n for \"stuff that is about the 'real' world.\"\n------------------------" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Or \"mainstream\"?\n\n[snip stuff that I may ponder more on SF and MF]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "And speaking of Nabokov, I don't see anything\nmetafictional in\nany of the __ Sun books that compares to _Pale\nFire_, " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm afraid I found it turgid. But I was a lot\nyounger then; perhaps\nI should give it another try." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Perhaps, but I'm not making any guarantees. For those\nwho haven't read it, I think people who like Wolfe, \nespecially his, uh, metafictional destabilizations,\nare\nmore likely to like _Pale Fire_ than is the general\nliterate population. I think it's great.\n..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Cf., by the way, not only \"The Last Thrilling\nWonder Story\" \nbut also _The Lord of the Rings_, in which the\nfictional\nTolkien explains some features of his translation." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " \n\nD'oh! And me a Tolkienologist. Well... to tell the\ntruth, though,\nI think Tolkien's intent is exactly opposed to\nWolfe's; Wolfe,\nas you note, casts doubt on his \"translation\" simply\nby _making_\nit a translation; Tolkien seeks to grant his\nsubcreation a greater\nsense of historicity and \"reality\" by an apparently\nsimilar (but\nfunctionally quite different) tactic." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Cf.\" abbreviates the Latin for \"compare and\ncontrast\". :-) I agree with you about Tolkien, but\nI'm not sure\nI agree about Wolfe. Maybe he was locating _TBotNS_\n(et seqq.) in an sf tradition that I don't think began\nwith Tolkien, and providing a socket into which we\ncould plug the bit about sealing the manuscript in a\ncoffer and casting it adrift on the seas of space and\ntime. I was just pointing out that if you like\ncasting doubt on Wolfean narratives, this is another\nopportunity." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Why is there a k in \"Duko\"?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Because \"Duo\" would sound dumb?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "*hands on hips* You know perfectly well what I meant.\nIf those four cities have Italian as their high\ntongue, why a k and not a c?\n\nJerry Friedman" } ] } ] }