{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/566", "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": 566, "subject": "Oh That Hy!", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "1998-11-02T01:33:51+00:00", "last": "1998-11-02T18:50:30+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice Turner", "address": "al at interport.net" }, "date": "1998-11-02T01:33:51+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Oh That Hy!", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Well, she is beautiful and passionate, a combination that is pretty\nattractive. If you want a more literary interpretaion, I figured that\nit was related to the allegory of the church as the bride of Christ\nwhich is also tied up with Mary Magdelene imagery (\"whoring after false\ngods\" sort of thing). Silk is a redemtive figure (though not exactly\nChristic) and Hy seemed to me to be the worldly person who is loved, for\nall of their faults and failings. Certainly Silk is on a mission to\nsave her - especially at the very end of the book." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My goodness, that seems a bit much. My own opinion simply is that Hy is No\nBetter Than She Should Be and also Big Trouble, and that we haven't heard\nthe last of her--she's much too devious and useful a character to abandon\n(alga crosses her cilia and hopes)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " I'm still not sure I understand the change in Silk that takes place\nafter he and Hy sleep together and he has a second illumination from\nthe Outsider. (It's also been a while since I read that part.) Silk\ncertainly seems changed to me. But the storyline also seems to get\nmurkier." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is so (both the change and the murkiness). That's why I'm hoping very\nmuch that Wolfe doesn't simply pitch us forward by decades, leaving our old\nfriends in the past. That would be sadistic.\n\n-alga\n\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": "1998-11-02T08:39:01+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Oh That Hy!", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Mon, 2 Nov 1998, Alice Turner wrote:\n Well, she is beautiful and passionate, a combination that is pretty\nattractive. If you want a more literary interpretaion, I figured that\nit was related to the allegory of the church as the bride of Christ\nwhich is also tied up with Mary Magdelene imagery (\"whoring after false\ngods\" sort of thing). Silk is a redemtive figure (though not exactly\nChristic) and Hy seemed to me to be the worldly person who is loved, for\nall of their faults and failings. Certainly Silk is on a mission to\nsave her - especially at the very end of the book." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "My goodness, that seems a bit much. My own opinion simply is that Hy is No\nBetter Than She Should Be and also Big Trouble, and that we haven't heard\nthe last of her--she's much too devious and useful a character to abandon\n(alga crosses her cilia and hopes)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't know. Even I who reject a lot of the allegorical interpretations\nthat get passed around on this list thought that the \"flawed bride of\nChrist\" stuff was as blatant as Silk having a lame foot, his \"death\" and\nresurrection. \n\nOf course, I think the Bride of Christ is also Big Trouble and maybe even\nNo Better Than She Should Be.\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu" }, "date": "1998-11-02T12:06:21+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Oh That Hy!", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rostrum said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "My goodness, that seems a bit much. My own opinion simply is that Hy is No\nBetter Than She Should Be and also Big Trouble, and that we haven't heard\nthe last of her--she's much too devious and useful a character to abandon\n(alga crosses her cilia and hopes)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't know. Even I who reject a lot of the allegorical interpretations\nthat get passed around on this list thought that the \"flawed bride of\nChrist\" stuff was as blatant as Silk having a lame foot, his \"death\" and\nresurrection. \n\nOf course, I think the Bride of Christ is also Big Trouble and maybe even\nNo Better Than She Should Be." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Which seems to be a fair description of the church at various times, so it\nworks very well on both the self-sacrificing God-like love and the \"silly nice\npriest falls for treacherous but hot lady...\" As to the second Enlightenment\nafter the honeymoon, it seems to imply that the Outsider approves of Silk\nwedding Hy (by the way, who else thinks that ONLY Wolfe would have a massive\nfour-volume series and put a double wedding involving the four major characters\noffstage!). Thus giving the allegory a big boost.\n\tI'm still betting on Hy as head of the Trivigaunti spies, as well.\nAlthough how important (if it's true) that will be in Short Sun (assuming she\nshows up) I don't know.\n\tAnother thing, that just struck me today--I suspect this is pure\ncoincidence, but doesn't Hyacinth actually work fairly well as being named\nafter the Hyacinth girl in \"The Waste Land?\" Thus tying to Vivian Eliot,\nanother marriage that was lots of trouble (at least Silk can be sure Hy won't\nbe sleeping with Bertrand Russell, unless things get very odd...)" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.\" - John 8:32\n--\nAlex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)\nSenior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)\n'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President\n608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366\nhttp://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice Turner", "address": "al at interport.net" }, "date": "1998-11-02T18:50:30+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Oh That Hy!", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A letter I read today in the New York Review of Books can be seen as support\nfor the theological reading of Silk. It responds to an essay by Simon Leys\nentitled \"The Imitation of Our Lord Don Quixote\" by quoting a letter from\nDoestoevsky to his niece about the novel he is writing:\n\n\"The main idea of the novel is to present a positively beautiful man. This\nis the most difficult subject in the world, especially as it is now....There\nis only one positively beautiful man in the world, Christ, and the\nphenomenon of this limitlessly, infinitely beautiful person is an infinite\nmiracle in itself....I'd only mention that of all the beautiful individuals\nin Christian literature, one stands out as the most perfect, Don\nQuixote...Wherever compassion toward ridiculed and ingenious beauty is\npresented, the reader's sympathy is aroused. The mystery of humor lies in\nthe excitation of compassion.\"\n\nThe novel D. was working on was, of course, -The Idiot-, which features\nPrince Myshkin (as this letter-writer, Lev Loseff, states) as his own\nvariation on \"Christ as Don Quixote\" or \"Christ Ridiculous.\" Leys responds\ngenerously and warmly, calling the association between Quixote and Myshkin\n\"apposite and illuminating.\"\n\nAs I hope this post might be.\n\n-alga\n\n\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }