{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1442", "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": 1442, "subject": "Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists:", "messages": 6, "voices": 1, "first": "2001-06-11T09:42:24+00:00", "last": "2001-06-18T17:07:03+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-06-11T09:42:24+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists:", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rostrum, again:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "One of my favorite parallels: Luke and Acts are thought to\nhave been written by the same person (arguably, \"Luke\"). " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, either him or another Hellenized Hebrew of the same name ;*)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Luke is all third person, and Acts is almost entirely third\nperson until about 2/3 of the way through (in the fourth\npart if you divided the two books into four parts) the\nnarrator suddenly says, \"and then we got ready to leave for\nMacedonia\" (Acts 16:10)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Luke/Acts is a special problem, imo, in this particular flavor\nof Scripture scholarship. While the other three Gospels try to\ngive the character of an eyewitness narrative (and \"John,\" in \nmy opinion, actually possesses that character & may well have \nactually been written or dictated in its earliest form by the\nJohn who followed Jesus around), Luke makes no such pretense.\nThose first four verses I mentioned have a queerly _modernist_\nhistoriographical sense: they are the preface of a historian\nsaying, in effect, \"I've done my homework, I've researched,\nI've gone to original sources and interviewed the remaining\nwitnesses,\" that sort of thing. This is weird because that sort\nof historiographical concern doesn't really become common until\nthe Enlightenment or thereabouts; is Luke being defensive, or\nis he just out of his time, or what? At any rate, it gives me\na kind of confidence in the historical facticity of Luke's \naccount that I don't really have for Mt and Mk.\n\nAll of which I mention because the first draft of the note I\nsent off yesterday under this title went into great detail\nabout that subject; it was in fact the launching place for\nmy thesis that Wolfe is recreating the experience of \nencountering the Gospels, albeit in a fictive context.\n\nMay I analogize? _One_ of C.S. Lewis' motivations for writing\nthe \"Narnia\" books the way he did, was to present some of the \nideas of Christianity in a \"safe\" context -- that is, in a\ncognitive environment freed of affective authority, with nobody\ntelling you how you \"ought\" to feel about Jesus and God and\nall that. By allowing children to respond to these ideas and\nevents in such an environment, Lewis reasoned, he could perform\na sort of guerilla evangelism; the responses, once present in\nthe children, might freely associate themselves with their \nproper objects when those objects were re-cognized.\n\nNow, 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. \n\nGiven the way the Gospels | Given the way the Books of Silk\nwere written, | and Horn appear to have been written, \nand the way they have come | and and the way they appear to have \ndown to us, can we believe | come down to us, can we believe\nthat we know anything about | that we know anything about what\nwhat really happened in | \"really\" happened in the fictive\nJerusalem ca. 4BC-33AD? | lives of Silk and Horn?\n\n\n******" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I wrote: \n... to deny Silk's enlightenment is to make the whole LONG\nSUN (and, by transference, SHORT) fall apart, meaningless\nand incoherent. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rostrum responds:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "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": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmmm. But then, I think the Gospels are incoherent unless you\nassume that Jesus was divine. I'm not just talking about the\ninfamous \"madman, devil, God\" trichotomy (which, btw, I think \nhas more force than most people credit); I'm saying that given\nthe different apparent provenances of the four accounts, and \nespecially the radically different provenance and character of \nJohn's from the others, I find it extremely unlikely that any\ncoherent explanation of these texts can be produced that does\nnot involve at least some of the miracles, the Last Supper,\nand the Resurrection actually occurring. I find it equally \nunlikely, given the nature of the movement, that there are no \ncontemporary accounts of anyone saying \"I was there and it \ndidn't happen that way at all\" -- the closest things being \nJosephus, who skirts the issue entirely, and some of the \nearliest \"apocryphal\" Gospels, which vary in detail but which\nactually do support the general outline -- unless there was\nnobody to say it. (One can conceive of a vast clerical\nconspiracy to suppress and destroy all such documents, of \ncourse, but I'm extremely skeptical of conspiracy theories.)\n\nThe point of which is not to try to convert anyone out there,\nbut to give some sense of what kind of response I think the\nGospels, and analogously the Books of Silk and Horn, demand." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "People point to Silk having received otherwise unavailable\nknowledge from his enligtenment, but its nothing Horn would\nnot have known at the time he wrote the story. It's not like\nHorn even uses this as \"proof\" that Silk was enlightened..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "... which is another example of the BoS having something of\nthe character of the Gospels. While the evangelists do in fact\ngo out of their way at times to show how Jesus' actions fulfilled\nthis or that prophecy, they don't seem particularly concerned to\n\"prove\" that Jesus was the Son of God; they just tell you so and\nyou take it or leave it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Did Jesus really predict the fall of Jerusalem, or is that\nsomething the gospel writers added in later? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That is, of course, precisely the kind of question that the\nthree-layered model I described makes almost unaskable. Given \nthe nature of Scripture in this understanding -- the written \npreservation of a community's response to its encounter with \nthe Divine -- the question actually becomes meaningless. \nGiven the model of \"inspiration\" used in the same school of \nScripture study, it simply does not matter whether or not \nJesus \"actually\" said a given thing (that is, whether the\nstatement \"Jesus said X\" has historical facticity); what \nmatters is that His having said it is preserved for our \nedification (lit. \"building up\"). It is perfectly consonant\nwith this model of truth to believe that, on a certain occasion,\nJesus said something -- X -- which was ideally suited to the\nneeds of His audience, while the evangelist, years later, \nwrote down a somewhat different statement, Y, which marks\nnot only the evangelist's imperfect memory, but the movement\nof the Holy Spirit in the evangelist to set down the statement\nwhich would most generally benefit two thousand years and more\nof believers and potential believers.\n\nSo to ask \"Did Jesus really say X\"? becomes something rather \nother than moot -- it becomes an almost Clintonesque inquiry \ninto \"well, that depends on what 'really' means.\"\n\nAnd, yes, I do think we are operating at that level of \nuncertainty in dealing with the LONG/SHORT SUN texts; and,\nno, I am _not_ completely comfortable with that. And so I\nreturn to my response to your statement that \"[t]here is a \nsense in which telling a story from a third-person, \nomniscient viewpoint is cheating.\" At another level, I want\nso say that there is a very real sense in which _not_ telling\na story from that kind of viewpoint is cheating: it is \ncheating the reader of a coherent narrative. If I want\nuncertainty, I'll read fact; when I read fiction, it is \nusually because I want the pleasure of a coherent narrative.\n\n\"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": "quote", "depth": 2, "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": "quote", "depth": 1, "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": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If it is a mistake, it is an unavoidable mistake. We are narrative\nbeings.\n\n--Dan'l\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-06-11T12:57:13+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists:", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Blish was Catholic? Somehow I'd gotten the impression he was, at\nsome point, an atheist and at another point (I forget the ordering)\nan Anglican, and that heresies and theology were to a large extent\nmore a hobby to him than a matter of faith. Was I off-base? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Actually, you were right on target. Blish was an atheist through\nthe fifties -- but one of those atheists who _wants_ to believe,\nif you know what I mean? \n\nAnd, like most rationalists with an attraction to religion, he\nwas particularly attracted to the Roman Catholic church and Thomism.\nHis trilogy \"After Such Knowledge\" (consisting of the historical\nnovel DOCTOR MIRABILIS, the contemporary fantasy BLACK EASTER \n[its second part, THE DAY AFTER JUDGMENT, should be included here],\nand the SF novel A CASE OF CONSCIENCE) collectively presume the\nliteral truth of Catholicism at one level or another. The ending\nof ACOC looks a _lot_ less ambiguous if viewed in the light (or,\nrather, the darkness) of BLACK EASTER.\n\nAfter moving to England in the late '60s, Blish was received \ninto the Anglican church. I'm aware of only one bio of Blish, \nand I read it more than ten years ago; but from what I recall,\nAnglicanism was a sort of compromise because for some reason\n(possibly the fact that he was a divorcé?) he could not be\naccepted into the Catholic church.\n\n--Dan'l \n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-06-11T17:14:24+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists:", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Well, either him or another Hellenized Hebrew of the same name ;*)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Inevitably, some scholars suggest there may have been a later writer\nusing Luke's name, but I don't think they make a very good argument." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nor do I; but I think even more that it doesn't much matter." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "-- presenting to us, in a fictive and cognitively \"safe\" \ncontext, the problem of teasing out the historical facticity\nthat lies behind the Gospels. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I sort of agree. I think Wolfe is clearly inspired by the way the\nchurch receives the Gospels, but I think he's making broader points\nthat have wider applicability than just an apologetic framework for\nconsidering the Gospels." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oddly 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_.\n\nI 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\n our only real source of knowledge of the history of the world \n before the modernist project of factual accuracy.\n2. A general approach to how religious persons approach their\n sacred texts. It has, as noted, a very strong sense (to me at\n least) of relation to Luke; but it might be applicable to the\n Qu'ran or the Rig-Veda or God wot what all; the point being that\n we have various \"scriptures,\" documents which, to their \n respective communities of faith, describe the most important\n events or facts or truths in the world, but which by their\n very nature _cannot_ be backed up in any factitious way. I \n could as easily say \"Oh -- is _this_ what it's like to \n believe the Book of Mormon, despite all the evidence against \n it?\": but for all I know, there may be a member of the LDS\n Church on this list, and the last thing I want to do is give\n offense." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "H'mmmm. But then, I think the Gospels are incoherent unless \nyou assume that Jesus was divine. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Here's where I think you're making the connection too closely. \nWolfe may agree with you about the Gospels, but that doesn't\nnecessarily mean that he intends the Long Sun/Short Sun books\nto be incoherent if you don't believe in the Outsider." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I tend to agree while disagreeing. I believe that he tried to \nwrite something that you could do a Crane on -- explain everything\naway -- but to write it so that these explanations would sound\ncontrived and improbable. I also believe he succeeded at this." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Myself, I'd prefer to say that it's very hard to explain why the\nGospels were written as they were if you don't believe Jesus was\ndivine. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, \"if you don't believe that the evangelists believed that \nJesus was divine.\" That phrasing leaves separate (as it ought to \nbe) the question of whether they were right about this, and \nseparate from both, the question of the historical facticity of \nthe Gospel accounts. It's when the three questions are laid end\nto end that I come to my claim that the whole thing becomes\ncoherent only if Jesus was divine." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Coherence by itself doesn't mean a whole lot. The Gospels could\nbe coherent in their presentation of a divine Jesus but false. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have a great deal of difficulty with this, but only because of \nthe interaction of these three questions. Why would there be a\nfalse-but-coherent presentation of a divine Jesus? If it was a\ndeliberate plot to defraud the masses (as some have claimed), I\nthink the plotters would have done a better job of getting their\nstories straight. Allowing for Luke and John to be later texts by\ndupes, the inconsistency between MT and MK are enough to cast\nserious doubt on this; on the other hand, they have exactly the\nkind of inconsistency that grows in eyewitness accounts handed\non orally but _carefully_. On the other hand, if the evangelists\nwere themselves all deluded (that is, they believed but falsely),\na whole set of questions about the lack of contemporary challenge\nto the core of their claims seems to arise." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And the Gospels are more active at debunking rival explanations. \nThey denounce the claim that the disciples stole the body as a\nstory made up by the Jewish Temple establishment. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "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": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Horn doesn't jump in and proclaim that Crane's hypothesis was\nnonsense. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Right. To do so would be to problematize it; to simply portray\nSilk's reaction (including his actually considering it as at \nleast a possibility) allows it to reduce itself to absurdity." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Horn's not completely convinced himself of the Outsider's\nexistence." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But this has something of an \"I believe; help thou mine unbelief\"\nfeel, doesn't it?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "N.T. Wright takes a pretty good stab at it in _Jesus and the\nVictory of God_. He claims that Jesus could easily have\npredicted the fall of Jerusalem as an inevitable consequence\nof continued defiance of the Romans without requiring any sort\nof forknowledge of the future." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Haven't read this. Probably won't; live's too short." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "We are narrative beings." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But could our narrations be more modest? More aware that they\nare always from a particular vantage point and not a true objective\nmodel of the world?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Subjectivism itself collapses under its own weight (as the question\nof whether we can ever have access to any certainty drags on and\nbecomes a certainty that there is no certainty), and ultimately\nbecomes the de-valued worldview of postmodernism. I am afraid that\nI simply reject that worldview as useless for living.\n\n--Dan'l\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-06-13T15:32:28+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists:", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "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": "While you're right, you are right in a way that, well,\nsort of misses my point. The 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\n-- specifically, the question \"How the hell are we supposed \nto know what actually _happened_?\" How are we to make \n(narrative) sense of this welter of provenances and possible \nprovenances, this scribbling of narrators and editors, \ninterpolators and (maybe) copyists, any one of whom _may_ \nbe almost-arbitrarily unreliable?\n\nTaking my hypothesis for truth, for the moment: Wolfe is \nenabled to do this precisely because his texts are located \nat a peculiar node of the textus of Western culture, a time \nwhen the authority of narrativity has been somewhat-\nsuccessfully challenged by relativistic narrative, \nunreliable narrators, subjectivism, and postmodernity; but\nhe is writing within a narrower tradition (science fiction)\nwhere the objectivity of narrative has remained relatively\nunchallenged. Using the tools provided by the larger \ncultural movements, he is writing, for an audience who\nexpects narrative to narrate an objectively-consistent\nand determinable series of events, in such a way that the\nseriese of events may be objectively consistent, but\nwhose objectivity remains beyond the grasp of that audience.\n\nNo. Let me take a step back from that position. It is much\neasier to imagine a reader who accepts the events at their\nface value, and believes that she has thus grasped the\nobjective flow of events, than it is (for me) to imagine \none who believes that Crane's hypothesis is a plausible\n(plausible from our, outside-the-narrative, hypothetically-\nobjective, standpoint) explanation of Silk's enlightenment.\n\nBut I believe that this would be a fairly unthoughtful \nreader, and not one likely to be a great fan of Wolfe's.\n\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.)\n\nI am not, of course, prepared to state that this was\nWolfe's intent. I do not claim to know his intent. I am\nstating that this is an interesting homology, a use to\nwhich the Books can be put, if you will; and that I would\nnot be surprised to learn that this was _one_ of Wolfe's\nreasons for writing them the way he did, rather than some\nother way. In an ideal world I should like to ask him \nabout it, but this is not an ideal world, and I don't\nexpect the opportunity to arise any time soon.\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-06-15T10:15:20+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists:", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Jerry Friedman wrote:\nPart 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_. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I must disagree on theoretical grounds. The discourse of\nSF uses rhetorical devices -- and the tactics of the \nunreliable narrator, the \"editorial\" comment, and \nmetafictional devices generally _are_ rhetorical devices,\nthat is, tools in the rhetorical toolchest of the writer \n(at least, the writer of narrative) -- in a fundamentally\ndifferent way than does the discourse of MF*.\n\n------------------------\n* MF: A term I've been using for some years, though I\n haven't had much call for it on this group. Just as\n the S in SF may refer to \"Science\" or \"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 term\n for \"stuff that is about the 'real' world.\"\n------------------------\n\nThe writer of MF is ostensibly writing about the world that \nis the case. (Elided: not only the basic fact that all fiction \nis about fictive worlds, but the more problematic question of \nwhether _any_ narrative can reasonably be called \"non-\nfiction.\") This is true even of the MF writer who wanders into \nbizarre fantasy -- Kathy Acker, say, or William S. Burroughs. \nThese writers are writing about (their?) subjective experience \nof the objectively-\"real\" world; even when they seem to be\nsaying that there is no objective reality, that is still \ntheir experience or description of the consensus(?) reality.\n\nThe writer of SF, by contrast, is explicitly writing about a \nfictive world, which exists in a kind of dialogue with the\nworld that is the case. Every detail of the SF writer's \nfictive world in some way comments-by-contrast upon the \"real\" \nworld: even the parts that resemble the \"real\" world, by their \npresence, announce that (in the mind of _this_ writer) these \nthings remain stable even when these other parts of reality \nare destabilized. The most explicit statement of this I can \nthink of is the end of Wells' THE TIME MACHINE:\n\n And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white \n flowers - shrivelled now, and brown and flat and \n brittle - to witness that even when mind and strength \n had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still \n lived on in the heart of man.\n\nSo how do editorial comments, etc., work in SF? \n\nSimply: The discourse of MF creates a fictional series of events\namong a fictional set of persons set in an ostensibly-real world. \nA wide range of rhetorical devices add subjective depth to the\nfictional persons. The particular devices under discussion function\nin MF to destabilize/cast doubt (primarily) on the events and \n(secondarily) on the character of the persons.\n\nThe discourse of SF creates a fictional series of events among\na fictional set of persons set in an explicitly-fictional world.\nThose rhetorical devices which add subjective depth to MF function \nprimarily to add \"objective\" depth to the fictional world of the\nSF text, as do a host of additional rhetorical devices evolved\nwithin the stfnal tradition. The particular devices under discussion\nfunction in SF to destabilize/cast doubt on the discursive reality\nitself.\n\nMore grossly: an MF writer, using metafiction and similar techniques, \nmay be suggesting (for example) that we cannot have any objective \nknowledge of \"reality;\" an SF writer, using metafiction and similar\ntechniques, is commenting upon the \"real\" world by contrasting it \nwith a hypothetical world, but problematizing the contrast by \ndenying us (the sense that we have) any stable knowledge of the \nhypothetical world." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And speaking of Nabokov, I don't see anything metafictional in\nany of the __ Sun books that compares to _Pale Fire_, " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm afraid I found it turgid. But I was a lot younger then; perhaps\nI should give it another try." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "However, 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). " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hadn't mentioned because I hadn't _thought_ about it. You're\nquite right." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Cf., by the way, not only \"The Last Thrilling Wonder Story\" \nbut also _The Lord of the Rings_, in which the fictional\nTolkien explains some features of his translation. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "D'oh! And me a Tolkienologist. Well... to tell the truth, though,\nI think Tolkien's intent is exactly opposed to Wolfe's; Wolfe,\nas you note, casts doubt on his \"translation\" simply by _making_\nit a translation; Tolkien seeks to grant his subcreation a greater\nsense of historicity and \"reality\" by an apparently similar (but\nfunctionally quite different) tactic." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why is there a k in \"Duko\"?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Because \"Duo\" would sound dumb?\n\n\n--Dan'l\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-06-18T17:07:03+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Narrators and Even More Fallible Copyists:", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And more of Mr Friedman:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "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": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "To respond to that I'd have to know (or at least make\nan educated guess at whether Nabokov himself was familiar\nwith/skilled at the kind of reading SF requires. From\nwhat little I know about him I can't begin to make a guess.\n\nI'd be willing to hazard a guess, though, that most\nNabokophiles haven't that level of experience/expertise\nwith decoding SF rhetoric.\n\nRegarding my term MF:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Or \"mainstream\"?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, yeah. I used to include that. (And I also used to use\nthe longer term BLMF, for bourgeois literary MF, but I \ndecided a long time ago that the first two terms weren't\nvery interesting to me.) I still do, sometimes, but I no\nlonger believe that the term \"mainstream\" has much meaning\n-- it might be used to describe any of a number of things,\nincluding \"fiction approved of by literary academics,\"\n\"fiction that doesn't go into any of the marketing categories\nlike SF and mysteries and, yes, fiction-for-the-literary-\nacademics,\" \"highly-mimetic [i.e., 'realistic'] fiction,\" or \neven \"bestsellers.\"\n\nBut that there is _a_ _mainstream_ is unlikely, just as there\nis no longer _a_ _mainstream_ American culture -- if there\never was. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I 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": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Cf.\" abbreviates the Latin for \"compare and\ncontrast\". :-) " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh. Actually, that's one I _thought_ I had glerked\nfrom context, and so never actually looked it up.\nApparently I hadn't glerked it all that well." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I agree with you about Tolkien, but I'm not sure\nI agree about Wolfe. Maybe he was locating \n_TBotNS_ (et seqq.) in an sf tradition that I\ndon't think began with Tolkien, " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, JRRT himself wasn't operating in any tradition\nof the SF/F genre qua genre; I gather that late in\nhis life he read a bit of \"that American SF,\" but \ndon't believe he ever read enough to locate his own\nwork in any of its \"traditions,\" and certainly not\nas far back as the '40s. \n\nBut, yes, Wolfe himself was certainly operating in \nthe conventions of SF/F. That tBotNS is in part an\nhomage to Vance's \"Dying Earth\" is just a starting\nplace." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and providing a socket into which we could plug the\nbit about sealing the manuscript in a coffer and\ncasting it adrift on the seas of space and time. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Possibly. I would tend to believe that, yes, that image\ncame before the \"apparatus\" of tBotNS, and that the\napparatus was intended to interact with that image.\nSomeone else pointed out \"Wolfe's\" claim to have seen \nsome buildings of the post-historic period (what would \nyou call that -- pre-ruins?). I suppose that the existence\nof this \"Wolfe\" in tBotNS implies a translating \"Wolfe\" in \nthe rest of the Lupiverse texts; assuming that Wolfe was\nconsciously aware of this and intended us to be (though,\nif so, why he didn't make comments about translational\ndifficulties in _these_ texts is a question worth asking), \nthis adds to the levels underlying the \"what actually \nhappened?\" experience." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Why is there a k in \"Duko\"?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Because \"Duo\" would sound dumb?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "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?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't think it's Italian, I think it's \"Italian,\" if you\nsee what I mean -- the same way that some of the words of\nVironese are Spanish and some are sorta-Spanish-ish? Or,\ncontrariwise, since some of the Vironese words turn out to\nbe South American Spanish, maybe it's some Italian dialect?\n(Do, or historically did, Sicilians use a different \nspelling from Romans? Or Tuscans, maybe?)\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }