{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1445", "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": 1445, "subject": "Fallible Readers and Unreliable History", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "2001-06-14T11:08:57+00:00", "last": "2001-06-26T14:02:00+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-06-14T11:08:57+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Fallible Readers and Unreliable History", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Summary: Anna June gets it, Adam doesn't, and Rostrum...\n\nQuoth Adam:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We \"believe\" in the accuracy of Horn's account because, as\nyou wrote in an earlier post, it is a literary convention to\naccept a narrator as truthful and correct unless there is\nevidence that he/she is lying or misled. And we \"believe\"\nin Silk's enlightenment because it makes for a better and\nmore coherent book, in an aesthetic sense (this is not at\nall the same thing as your argument that the coherence of\nfour separate accounts indicates the historicity of the\nGospels). " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "While I agree provisionally with you so far, I would note that \none of the reasons I believe in the Gospels is that such belief, \nin my opinion, makes for a better and more coherent Universe --\nat least, to the extent of my experiencing of it. Consider it a \nsort of existentialist jiujitsu: if I'm as radically free as \nall that, then I choose to live in a Universe where the Gospels \nare true, and I find that this converts the nausée of an \ninherently meaningless existence into joi. Some praise Sartre\nand Camus and that log for their courage in resolutely facing \nthe absurdity of life; I sneer at them for their rank silliness\nin choosing to live life as if it were absurd.\n\n\nMore importantly, though:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I doubt that either of these is the reason why a believer\naccepts the truth of the Gospels. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Which is why, I'm afraid, you're still talking crossdiagonally \nto the point I'm actually shooting at.\n\nThe question is not why a believer accepts the truth of the \nGospels, or why an unbeliever doesn't. That is a fundamental\nchoice. The question is this: no matter what stance one takes\nvis-a-vis the divinity of Jesus, what access, if any, does an\ninformed and in-formed reading of the Gospels offer us to any\nactual knowledge of events that went on in and around Jerusalem\nin the first third-of-a-century AD? This question is actually\nindependent of the question of \"belief.\"\n\nAnna asks roughly the same question in a different way, " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "How are we, either as unbelievers or believers, to interpret \nwhat actually happened when the Bible is insane? No offense \nmeant " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And none taken (at least on my part); I agree that trying to make \na single linear sense of the Bible is not unlike going to a \nbookshelf where things have been put more-or-less haphazardly -- \nsay, one of the bookshelves you find in rustic antique stores, \ncovered with books bought at random -- then starting at one end of \nthe shelf, and reading the books straight across -- and trying to \nread them as if they were a single multi-volume work. You might\nencounter, in sequence, a condensed Gibbon, the autobiography of \nRichard Wagner, and the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of \nChemistry and Physics (34th edition). How do these flow into each \nother? Yet they are all \"nonfiction,\" all descriptions at some\nlevel of the same overarching reality.\n\nSorry. Got carried away there." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "... it is self-contradictory - from Genesis 1 on! This is not\nquestioned by the Catholic Church, either - Catholics are\npermitted to engage in Biblical criticism." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Two points:\n\n1. The Catholic position is that the Bible is _not_ self-\ncontradictory, if read properly: that is, read as the record \nof a people's experience of and response to its God, rather \nthan as history, biology, geology, archaeology, cosmology, etc.\n\n2. Catholics are not merely permitted but encouraged to engage \nin Biblical criticism -- criticism meaning \"an informed, \nintelligent, and questioning encounter with the text.\" In\nthis way Catholics may expect a better understanding of that\nexperience and response than they might get from a passively\nliteralist reading.\n\nNeed I say: I suspect that this is a proper position to take\nwrt the Whorlbooks? That is:\n\n1. The Whorlbooks are not self-contradictory if read properly:\nthat is, read as a record of Horn's and Silk's (fictional)\nexperiences and their response to those experiences, rather \nthan as biography or history.\n\n2. We, the readers, ought to engage these texts in an informed,\nintelligent, and questioning way.\n\nAs this idea has been evolving in my head, I'm becoming more\nconvinced that the point here is not about what goes on in a \n_writer's_ head; it's about what goes on in a _reader's_ head.\nOne of the things I've loved about Wolfe since my first \nencounter with him (_tSotT_, and I still have my first printing,\nnyaaaah) is the very deliberate way he forces the reader to\nparticipate in the creation of the story; In the two Whorlish\nBooks, I think, he's taken the next step and made the reader's\nparticipation in the story part of how the reader participates\nin the story -- that is, these Books offer play for a thoughtful\nreader to think about how she is participating in the creation \nof the story.\n\nBut I _still wonder if he's taken all too far...\n(\"...but boy, could he play guitar\")\n\nMeanwhile, Adam again:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'll just say ... that contrary to what you imply above,\nthere was indeed \"deliberate suppression\" of works regarded\nas heretical and anti-Christian " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ummm... that is _not_ contradictory to what I imply, or at least\nwhat I mean to imply (though clearly it is contradictory to what\nyou infer from what I wrote). I do not at all doubt that, after\nthe rise of the Church to political power, there was a deliberate\nattempt to suppress \"heretical and anti-Christian\" texts; what I\nwas saying is that I don't think this attempt was quite as \nsuccessful as you seem to be making out. If such \"alternate\" \naccounts had existed, I would expect that traces of them would\nremain, if only in the form of the \"quotations or discussions by \nChristian writers who were refuting them\" you mention with respect\nto later works.\n\nOn to Rostrum:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think this business of objective vs. subjective narration is\nan important theme of the Long/Short Sun books. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'd go further and say it's an important theme of _all_ Wolfe's\nmajor work, at least from PEACE on." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Wolfe is asking us to examine the assumptions we make when we read\na story in third-person \"omniwscient\" voice; contrast them with the\nassumptions made when told a story from an individual's limited\npoint of view; perhaps realize how unreal and artificial third\nperson/omniscient views are when they describe what's going on\ninside other people's heads. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Which raises the counter-question: how unreal and artificial does\nsomething have to be to be inappropriate to a work of fiction, \nwhich describes a universe of discourse which is itself unreal and \nartificial. (This is only _more_ true of SF/F; it is always true \nof all fiction -- in which a postmodernist viewpoint would ask us \nto include all discourse, including the kind we call \"non-fiction.\")" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There's a big difference between Wolfe telling us Silk thought\nsuch-and-such and Horn telling us Silk thought such-and-such." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But is there? I wonder if this is one of the assumptions Wolfe is \nasking us to examine. Given the implied provenance of tBotLS, and\nignoring the question of n-generation copyist errors/alterations,\nwe have the Silk and the Horn who appear in the _Books_, and also \nthe Silk and the Horn upon whom the characters in the _Books_ are\nnotionally based. So it would appear that the Silk and Horn who\nappear in the _Books_ are a sort of second-order fiction, while the\nHorn and Narr (and kids) who write the _Books_ are the first-order\nfiction. Except, of course, that this reverses their remove from\n_our_ reality: we have knowledge only of the \"second-order\" fictive\ncharacters from the _Books_, and can only infer the \"first-order\"\ncharacters; so which is farther removed from \"reality\"?\n\nIn either case: we have Wolfe telling us Silk thought such-and-such,\nor we have Wolfe telling us that Horn tells us that Silk thought\nsuch-and-such; and I am not entirely convinced that the difference\nis quite as great as it looks at first. \n\nNarrative is not complete until someone reads it. When it is, a \nreal person constructs imaginary events, scenery, persons, etc., \nin his or her head, on the basis of words on paper. Are the events\nany more imaginary because the words fictively attribute themselves\nto a fictional person? In either case, the (provisional) origin of\nthe words is a real person (i.e., Gene Wolfe); the question of our\ntrust in the fictional narrator is far less significant than (and,\nultimately, dependent upon) the question of our trust in the real \nwriter. \n\nIn a sense, this is the same kind of game Wolfe's texts encourage\nus to play in stories like \"The Last Thrilling Wonder Story\" and\neven _PANDORA, by Holly Hollander_.\n\nI distrust the word \"deconstruct,\" but it seems exactly \nappropriate: Wolfe is undoing, in various ways, the construction\nof the received relationships between the reader, the writer, and\nthe narrator (and Wolfe uses a wide array of narrators: the first-\nperson narrator; the first-person narrator whose name is Gene \nWolfe; the impersonal third-person narrator; the third-person\nnarrator whose name is Gene Wolfe; the fictional third person\nnarrator...). \n\nRostrum: " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "it turns out Wolfe himself doesn't ask us to assume the existence\nof the Outsider for the story, he merely creates characters who\nbelieve it" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "...while at the same time, setting up the story so that you can only\ndisbelieve the Outsider's reality (in the Lupiverse) by presuming \nthat Horn/the Narrator writes in extreme bad faith. To be" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "moved by Silk's inner life, by the prayers he offers," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "etc., is to receive a kind of shock when we realize that Horn\nmade it up. But how is this different from Wolfe making it up?\nEither way, it's a fiction; either way, a writer has told us\nimaginary events that move us. \n\nFinally, this: " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If I believe in Silk's goodness and Silk's god ..., it's not just\nbecause Wolfe asked me to believe it so that he could tell me a\nstory based on that assumption, but because he created characters\nwho convinced me to believe in them and I've chosen to do so." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Or, in writer's-workshop terms (which are actually often very \nuseful from a critical standpoint): Wolfe has come up with an \ninteresting way to put into practice the age-old dictum, \"Show,\ndon't tell.\" By having Horn _tell_ us how he feels about Silk,\nWolfe _shows_ us how Silk affects Horn; by receiving this, we\nfeel some sense of Silk's actual goodness.\n\nThe question, then, is why some readers find more-or-less the same\ntechnic unconvincing when Horn's sons tell us how they feel about\nthe Narrator at the end of _Short_. I suspect this is for a couple\nof reasons, of which not the least important is sheer metafictive\nexhaustion. The revelation of Horn as the narrator of _Long_ comes\nat the end of a long story which has (mostly) been free of overt\nmetafictive content; the Editors' comments at the end of _Short_\nfollow three volumes of overt metafictional tactics.\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": "Jerry Friedman", "address": "jerry_friedman at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2001-06-18T16:00:09+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Fallible Readers and Unreliable History", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "--- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\n... " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The question is not why a believer accepts the truth\nof the \nGospels, or why an unbeliever doesn't. That is a\nfundamental\nchoice. The question is this: no matter what stance\none takes\nvis-a-vis the divinity of Jesus, what access, if\nany, does an\ninformed and in-formed reading of the Gospels offer\nus to any\nactual knowledge of events that went on in and\naround Jerusalem\nin the first third-of-a-century AD? This question is\nactually\nindependent of the question of \"belief.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "...\n\nYahoo's otherwise excellent e-mail truncates long\nmessages, so I can't combine this with your comments\nabout it not mattering so much whether Silk is a\ncharacter in Horn's story or Wolfe's (or I'm not\nwilling to do the cutting and pasting). But I agree\nwith you about it not mattering that much--and I had\nalready read that comment when I said much the same to\nRostrum.\n\nHere's the difference between reading the Whorl books\nand reading the Gospels, imo. If you could learn the\nreality behind the Gospel narratives, you'd have the\nanswer to a question that's been crucially (pun not\nintended but noticed) important to billions of people.\nOn the other hand, if you could learn the fictional\nreality behind the Whorl books, all you'd have is\nanother story.\n\nJerry Friedman" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-06-18T16:46:18+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) Fallible Readers and Unreliable History", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Jerry Friedman, you wrote:\nHere's the difference between reading the Whorl books\nand reading the Gospels, imo. If you could learn the\nreality behind the Gospel narratives, you'd have the\nanswer to a question that's been crucially (pun not\nintended but noticed) important to billions of people.\nOn the other hand, if you could learn the fictional\nreality behind the Whorl books, all you'd have is\nanother story." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well ... yeah. That's the point, innit?\n\nWhat I've been trying to convey: I \"think\" Wolfe's text offers a \n(willing) reader some sense of the experience of trying to get \nat the \"reality\" behind an ancient text, with multiple authors, \nquestionable provenance, and no guarantee that N generations of \ncopyists have managed the degree of accuracy we'd like, -- in\nshort, an experience roughly analogous to trying to determine\nthe historical \"facts\" behind the Gospels -- in a context that \nfeels \"safe\" because, after all, \"it's just a story;\" and that \nit does this without repsect to (a) the story Wolfe has chosen \nto tell, (b) Wolfe's intentions in telling that particular story, \nand (c) whether or not Wolfe actually intended the text to offer \nsuch an experience-by-analogy.\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": "2001-06-26T14:02:00+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Fallible Readers and Unreliable History", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nThere's a big difference between Wolfe telling us Silk thought\nsuch-and-such and Horn telling us Silk thought such-and-such." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But is there? [...]\nIn either case: we have Wolfe telling us Silk thought such-and-such,\nor we have Wolfe telling us that Horn tells us that Silk thought\nsuch-and-such; and I am not entirely convinced that the difference\nis quite as great as it looks at first. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think of it this way. Imagine reading a story in which spaceships can\nuse a certain doohicky to move faster than light (not hyperspace, but\nactually moving faster than light). Now I might believe that such a\ndoohicky is impossible, yet accept it as the author's premise and see if\nshe writes an interesting story around it. Now imagine that part way\nthough the book, the author gives you reason to believe the spaceships\naren't going faster than light after all, that the characters only think\nthey're going faster. The whole story changes from one where FTL is\naccepted as a given to one where the possibility of FTL is part of what\nthe story is about.\n\nPut another way, when we read Tolkein, we don't get into a tizzy about\nwhether Morgoth and Sauron and other such supernatural creatures really\nexist. We just accept them as a given, as part of Tolkien's imaginary\nuniverse. Wolfe doesn't want us to think of the Outsider like that.\n\nI think this is related to Wolfe's writing technique in the New Sun books. \nI've argued elsewhere that Wolfe baits us by making the series look\nsuperficially like fantasy, but gradually luring us into reading it as\nscience fiction, with \"scientific\" explanations for the various marvels. \nSo then, when he throws in some genuine miracles, they are genuinely\nstartling in the way that a miracle would be in the real world. We don't\njust think, \"oh this is a fantasy universe where magic healing exists.\"\n\nFor Wolfe to tell us in third-person omniscient mode that Silk was\nenlightened would make the enlightenment an objective fact of the\nLupiverse. For Horn to tell us about it makes it a subjective belief of\none or more inhabitants of the Lupiverse." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "...while at the same time, setting up the story so that you can only\ndisbelieve the Outsider's reality (in the Lupiverse) by presuming \nthat Horn/the Narrator writes in extreme bad faith. To be" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, if the Outsider is all in Silk's head, then Horn isn't lying to\nus; he's just mistaken. The bits of \"foreknowledge\" that he writes into\nthe book would simply be Horn's mistaken notion of what the Outsider had\nrevealed to Silk." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "moved by Silk's inner life, by the prayers he offers," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "etc., is to receive a kind of shock when we realize that Horn\nmade it up. But how is this different from Wolfe making it up?\nEither way, it's a fiction; either way, a writer has told us\nimaginary events that move us." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It makes a difference because I thought I was reading a story about Silk's\nfaith in the Outsider, but then it turns out I'm really reading a story\nabout Horn's faith in Silk. Horn believes that Silk was enlightened, that\nhe was a good man, that he would have prayed this way in those\ncircumstances. So not only do we get the story Horn tells us, but we, by\nimplication get to ponder the story of how Horn came to believe these\nthings, and whether he was right.\n\nEither way, those beautiful prayers are no longer simply Silk's private,\ninner life. Either Horn made them up, which makes them part of\nHorn's story--how he came to acquire such depth--or Silk taught them to\nHorn, which means the prayers are part of Silk and Horn's relationship,\nnot just Silk's relationship with the Outsider." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Or, in writer's-workshop terms (which are actually often very \nuseful from a critical standpoint): Wolfe has come up with an \ninteresting way to put into practice the age-old dictum, \"Show,\ndon't tell.\" By having Horn _tell_ us how he feels about Silk,\nWolfe _shows_ us how Silk affects Horn; by receiving this, we\nfeel some sense of Silk's actual goodness.\n\nThe question, then, is why some readers find more-or-less the same\ntechnic unconvincing when Horn's sons tell us how they feel about\nthe Narrator at the end of _Short_" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The difference is that Horn does more showing and Horn's sons are just\ntelling. Horn doesn't give us this big dissertation on how genuinely good\nSilk is, he mostly just tells stories about what he thinks Silk said and\ndid. When I got to that passage at the end, I was surprised, I wondered\nwhat exactly made Hoof(Hide?) feel that Silk was so good, and why it\nscared people. I'd had a sense of Silk's goodness from Horn's stories,\nbut Hoof/Hide didn't give me a real sense of what it was like to be around\nsomeone so good it was scary, they just told me as a statement.\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }