{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1440", "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": 1440, "subject": "Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a", "messages": 5, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-06-11T09:10:41+00:00", "last": "2001-06-14T09:41:52+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-06-11T09:10:41+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sun, 10 Jun 2001, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nNow, 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." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I didn't get into that specifically, but, yes, this is exactly what I had\nin mind too.\n\nOne of my favorite parallels: Luke and Acts are thought to have been\nwritten by the same person (arguably, \"Luke\"). Luke is all third person,\nand Acts is almost entirely third person until about 2/3 of the way\nthrough (in the fourth part if you divided the two books into four parts)\nthe narrator suddenly says, \"and then we got ready to leave for\nMacedonia\" (Acts 16:10)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now, 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. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I strongly disagree. Horn believes that Silk was enlightened, and perhaps\nSilk believed it. But I don't think Silk's story is completely incoherent\nor unexplainable without it. It's certainly possible Silk simply had some\nsort of moment of inspiration in which he decided he ought to try to save\nthe manteion (or decided that the Outsider wanted him to save the\nmanteion). People point to Silk having received otherwise unavailable\nknowledge from his enligtenment, but its nothing Horn would not have known\nat the time he wrote the story. It's not like Horn even uses this as\n\"proof\" that Silk was enlightened, so it wouldn't necessarily have been\nbad faith if he just added those parts because he believed Silk must have\nhad some sort of revelation. \n\nDid Jesus really predict the fall of Jerusalem, or is that something the\ngospel writers added in later? \n\nNow I agree that the most satisfying reading of Silk's story involves\ntrusting Horn and his descendents and accepting Silk's enlightenment, but\nI still say that Wolfe (1) doesn't cheat by saying \"yes, it's true, I know\nbecause I'm omniscient\" (interviews excluded) and (2) still gives you a\ngood, if more tragic story should you choose to think Silk and Horn were\nmistaken.\n\nBut then I'm the guy who thinks \"Westwind\" may be a sinister story." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Still, 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." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sure that happens, but I'm not sure that means it's a good idea. I'm not\nsure, but I have the suspicion that allowing ourselves to really believe\nin that feeling of having an outside, objective viewpoint is the source of\nmany evils. \"Unreliable narrator\" may in fact be a meaningless, or at\nleast tautologous concept. Or rather, it's the idea of a completely\nreliable narrator that is a fallacy." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Again: \"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. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is a good point. We're always telling ourselves 3rd-person\nomniscient stories about the world. Is that a mistake? I don't know.\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-06-11T15:43:40+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Alex David Groce wrote:\nBlish was Catholic? Somehow I'd gotten the impression he was, at some\npoint, an atheist and at another point (I forget the ordering) an\nAnglican, and that heresies and theology were to a large extent more a\nhobby to him than a matter of faith. Was I off-base? Google doesn't\nquickly confirm either hypothesis for me." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You're right. Blish was not Catholic and I don't think he did a very good\njob capturing Catholic thinking in Case of Conscience. I seem to remember\nhim saying that in the book's universe the Church had only recently\naccepted Darwinism, when in real life the Church has never really opposed\nit.\n\nBut the real oddity is the book's central dilemma (SPOILERS ahead!). I\nwas completely unable to believe that a Jesuit would assume that because\nthey'd discovered aliens with no discernible knowledge of God or sin, that\nthe whole planet must be an illusion created by Satan. Since when do\nCatholics believe Satan is capable of such a thing? I think there's some\nfringe fundamentalists who have suggested the fossil record is some kind\nof trick by Satan, but Jesuits? And it's extremely anthropocentric to\nassume that just because we don't understand how this race is related to\nGod they can only be some sort of delusion by Satan to trick us. The\nwhole thing just rang completely false to me.\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-06-11T16:01:58+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nOne of my favorite parallels: Luke and Acts are thought to\nhave been written by the same person (arguably, \"Luke\"). " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, either him or another Hellenized Hebrew of the same name ;*)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Inevitably, some scholars suggest there may have been a later writer using\nLuke's name, but I don't think they make a very good argument." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now, Wolfe is not writing children's books, but I think it \npossible and even likely that he is doing something analogous\n-- presenting to us, in a fictive and cognitively \"safe\" \ncontext, the problem of teasing out the historical facticity\nthat lies behind the Gospels. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I sort of agree. I think Wolfe is clearly inspired by the way the church\nreceives the Gospels, but I think he's making broader points that have\nwider applicability than just an apologetic framework for considering the\nGospels." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I strongly disagree. Horn believes that Silk was\nenlightened, and perhaps Silk believed it. But I don't think\nSilk's story is completely incoherent or unexplainable without\nit. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "H'mmmm. But then, I think the Gospels are incoherent unless you\nassume that Jesus was divine. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Here's where I think you're making the connection too closely. Wolfe may\nagree with you about the Gospels, but that doesn't necessarily mean that\nhe intends the Long Sun/Short Sun books to be incoherent if you don't\nbelieve in the Outsider.\n\nMyself, I'd prefer to say that it's very hard to explain why the Gospels\nwere written as they were if you don't believe Jesus was divine. \nCoherence by itself doesn't mean a whole lot. The Gospels could be\ncoherent in their presentation of a divine Jesus but false. \n\nAnd the Gospels are more active at debunking rival explanations. They\ndenounce the claim that the disciples stole the body as a story made up by\nthe Jewish Temple establishment. Horn doesn't jump in and proclaim that\nCrane's hypothesis was nonsense. Horn's not completely convinced himself\nof the Outsider's existence." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Did Jesus really predict the fall of Jerusalem, or is that\nsomething the gospel writers added in later? " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That is, of course, precisely the kind of question that the\nthree-layered model I described makes almost unaskable. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "N.T. Wright takes a pretty good stab at it in _Jesus and the Victory of\nGod_. He claims that Jesus could easily have predicted the fall of\nJerusalem as an inevitable consequence of continued defiance of the Romans\nwithout requiring any sort of forknowledge of the future." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Truth is stranger than fiction,\" said Mark Twain, \"because\nfiction is obliged to make sense.\" Wolfe is pushing the limit\nof that obligation, very hard, and I'm not at all certain\nthat he hasn't violated it in SHORT SUN." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Interesting point." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "This is a good point. We're always telling ourselves 3rd-person\nomniscient stories about the world. Is that a mistake? I don't know." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If it is a mistake, it is an unavoidable mistake. We are narrative\nbeings." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But could our narrations be more modest? More aware that they are always\nfrom a particular vantage point and not a true objective model of the\nworld?\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2001-06-13T20:16:12+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 6/11/01 7:14 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes at ddanehy at siebel.com wrote:\nOddly enough, I wasn't thinking of this project as apologetic.\nRather, I was thinking of it as experiential -- taking the\nexperience of having this manuscript, with a certain kind of\nprovenance, and just knowing that, however it may vary from the\nhistorical _fact_, it is in essence _true_." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And, clarifying his position later, he wrote:\nThe issue here is _not_ how a\nhypothetical Bluish reader might respond when faced with\nthe Books of Silk and Horn; the issue is how _we_ respond\nwhen faced with the Books of the Suns of Various Lengths --\n[snip]\nMy point (All together now... \"and I do have one\") is that\nthe position into which Wolfe places _us_, vis-a-vis the\nevents which hypothetically underlie the LONG/SUN books,\nis homologous to the position in which an engaged and\nthoughtful reader, even a skeptical one, finds herself\nwhen vis-a-vis the events which hypothetically underlie\nthe Gospels -- \"Layer 1 of Gospel formation,\" to use the\nRCC terminology: the actual events, _whatever they were_,\nthat occurred in Judaea and the surrounding area ca.\n4BC-33AD. (That \"fairly unthoughtful\" reader, in fact,\nwould be in a position homologous to that of of a \"every\nword of Scripture is literally factual\" fundamentalist.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't agree. We \"believe\" in the accuracy of Horn's account because, as\nyou wrote in an earlier post, it is a literary convention to accept a\nnarrator as truthful and correct unless there is evidence that he/she is\nlying or misled. And we \"believe\" in Silk's enlightenment because it makes\nfor a better and more coherent book, in an aesthetic sense (this is not at\nall the same thing as your argument that the coherence of four separate\naccounts indicates the historicity of the Gospels). I doubt that either of\nthese is the reason why a believer accepts the truth of the Gospels. And\nthey have nothing to do with my response as an unbeliever to the Gospels.\nIf the \"Book of Silk\" had somehow actually come to us from the future, but\nwith no further indications as to its provenance, we would have no reason to\naccept Horn's narrative as true in essence, or Silk as enlightened. If\nanything, the sophistication with which the book was shaped would tell\nagainst taking giving credence to the narrative." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I agree that it has wider applicability than the Gospels; I suspect\nthat this experience has two general applications:\n\n1. A general approach to our reaction to ancient manuscripts -- to\nour only real source of knowledge of the history of the world\nbefore the modernist project of factual accuracy." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I would hope that historians do not approach ancient manuscripts generally\nwith the same assumptions that we approach the \"Book of Silk\" or believers\napproach the Gospels. And it's my impression that the better ones don't.\n(And there are other sources of knowledge on the ancient world besides\nmanuscripts--archaeology and inscriptions.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Right. The only problem is that there doesn't seem to be any\nevidence, outside the one Gospel, that such a story ever\ncirculated. Again: where are the contemporary challenges? For\nthem all to disappear seems to imply their deliberate suppression,\nwhich in turn demands the conspiracy-theory of church formation;\nbut that again seems to founder on the inconsistencies of the\ntexts." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I could say some things in response to this, but I don't think anybody wants\na thread going that far afield. I'll just say (since it doesn't directly\nquestion anyone's religious belief) that contrary to what you imply above,\nthere was indeed \"deliberate suppression\" of works regarded as heretical and\nanti-Christian (see Ramsay MacMullen, _Christianity and Paganism in the\nFourth to Eighth Centuries_). And, apart from deliberate destruction, the\nsurvival of ancient manuscripts was dependent (except for chance\narchaeological discoveries) largely upon copying by Christian monks and\nscribes, who would certainly not have copied anything challenging the truth\nof the Gospels. Several ancient anti-Christian treatises are known only\nfrom quotations or discussions by Christian writers who were refuting them;\nand until the Nag Hammadi discoveries, the same was largely true of our\nknowledge of Gnosticism.\n\n--Adam\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-06-14T09:41:52+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists: a", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Jerry Friedman wrote:\nWhether 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." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I disagree on two grounds.\n\n1. I think this business of objective vs. subjective narration is an\nimportant theme of the Long/Short Sun books. Wolfe is asking us to\nexamine the assumptions we make when we read a story in third-person\n\"omniwscient\" voice; contrast them with the assumptions made when told a\nstory from an individual's limited point of view; perhaps realize how\nunreal and artificial third person/omniscient views are when they describe\nwhat's going on inside other people's heads. In real life, we never know\nthat. We have to take it on faith that inner life inside other people's\nheads even exists; we can never observe it for ourselves. There's a big\ndifference between Wolfe telling us Silk thought such-and-such and Horn\ntelling us Silk thought such-and-such.\n\n2. Contrary to your opinion, I think this ambiguity is much more\naesthetically interesting (different tastes, I guess). I thought it was\nquite striking that Wolfe seemed to begin the Long Sun series asking us to\naccept the existence of a God who enlightens Silk as an axiom. Just when\nI'd started to take it for granted, Crane invited me to re-examine it\n(even if his explanation turns out not to be very plausible), which I\nthought was very interesting. And then Horn shows up and throws the whole\nthing into question again--it turns out Wolfe himself doesn't ask us to\nassume the existence of the Outsider for the story, he merely creates\ncharacters who believe it. Again, much more interesting.\n\nI've said before, I was quite moved by Silk's inner life, by the prayers\nhe offers, particularly the progression, comparing the long prayers to the\nNine he makes in prison with the similar long prayer to the Outsider. So\nI was shocked when Horn revealed himself and I began to ponder how much of\nthat Horn could really have known, how much was the way Silk wished to\npresent himself to others, how much Horn's wishful thinking. For me,\npondering those issues gave me lots to think about after reading the books\nand upon re-reading them, and I think it makes the series much stronger,\ndeeper, and more interesting.\n\nIn a sense, I get to participate in the story. If I believe in Silk's\ngoodness and Silk's god (and I do!--in the context of the story, I mean),\nit's not just because Wolfe asked me to believe it so that he could tell\nme a story based on that assumption, but because he created characters who\nconvinced me to believe in them and I've chosen to do so.\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }