Subject: (whorl) Failed Candyland?

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:53:00 +0000

[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Reply:  Item #8273815 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET03#

Nutria,

Right, I remember that it was Gene Wolfe's responses to you that made
you ditch the gnostic reading you had originally formed.  So you first
rank the author's opinion as godlike, and realign your reading to
match what he says; then you accuse him of incompetance for
unintentionally writing the reading you read! <g>  Hmmmm. <G>

Here, for a new angle let's try the Church of Vienna: a Freudian
interpretation of the superficial structure might be that Gene Wolfe
is working out some of the more complicated historico-religious
tangles of the religion he converted to as an adult.  The result is
the gray-hued world of adult understanding, rather than the black/white
rendition appropriate for young children and elderly saints.  It may
be that everything Gene Wolfe writes is not about
Christianity/Catholicism itself, but about his own personal
conversion to Catholicism; a verb of radical transformation (the
space between "before" and "after"), not a noun (the religion) nor a
verb of being in a steady state (for example, one born into a religion
and never going through the examination of it).

It may also be that Gene Wolfe brings the hard-nosed questioning of a
Protestant to the arena usually reserved for unquestioning faith.

=mantis=

---

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:25:22 +0000

>Protestant to the arena usually reserved for unquestioning faith.

	I think that may well be true. There is the remark somewhere that the dead
do not communicate with the living, else they would rule this world from
beyond the grave. Not a very RC thought, but certainly a Protestant one. 
	I questioned Wolfe pretty carefully (as carefully as I thought I had
permission to do), thinking perhaps he was on the liberal wing of
Catholicism (a la Teilhard de Chardin); but from all I could tell, he is a
conservative Thomist, pretty much in line with the Papacy on all the
important matters.

Nutria