Send in the Clones

Chris · 25 Jun 2005, 15:32 · from 2005-June.txt.gz

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From: rasputin_ at hotmail.com (Chris)
Date: Sat Jun 25 15:32:32 2005
Subject: (urth) Send in the Clones
In-Reply-To: <12930047.1119618577620.JavaMail.root at wamui-karabash.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <BAY102-F1828758020D4C634F9AEF586EC0 at phx.gbl>

Crush said:
>Even if the Whorl is a miniture Gnostic universe, Silk, Horn, and Horn! 
>become
>the Rajan mostly OUTSIDE it. If Wolfe were *merely* trying to create a 
>Gnostic
>set-piece then the Rajan Trinity confuses or devastates it. Horn, a clone 
>of Typhon,
>is *ironically* the FATHER the Trinity. But he is neither Typhon himself 
>nor Pas. He
>was reared in a vastly different environment than Typhon. Horn! the 
>Neighbor is the
>Spirit. They become 3-1 on the Whorl when they join with the Son (Silk). 
>Fine for our
>Gnostic story, although Silk has already been enlighten and so this event 
>is out of
>order. But THEN the Rajan preaches the will of Pas to the Whorl!!! That's 
>hardly the
>Gnostic story.
>
>If Wolfe were determined to avoid the chance of people thinking he was 
>endorsing the
>Gnosticsm then he should have avoided making Silk so appealing or naming 
>his hero
>in The New Sun after a Gnostic sect.

There is some sense to this, of course, but the thematic interpretation 
still *feels wrong* in a way that's difficult to put a definitive expression 
to. My intuitive reaction to this is that I could accept the proposed 
trinity as ironic if it were a case of it being an *apparent* construction 
whose meaning on further examination is called into question. In this case 
the trinity analogy is not "apparent", not without considerable examination 
and scrutiny (more so even than the average effort that goes into reading 
one of Wolfe's stories). So even if on *further* further examination it 
turns out not to be so, the reader's attitude on reaching the construction 
you suggest is not one of surface appearances but one of having uncovered 
deep secrets. So the ironic mode does not seem to drop into place entirely 
naturally.

I can't say that it's an invalid reading, if there is such a thing (I think 
there is, but that's just me), but the constellation of meanings and 
insights that can be drawn here all just seem fundamentally "off" to me; 
they also don't seem to represent an improvement over the meanings that can 
be drawn from the story without the Typhonic trinity. I'm aware that this 
seems a weak criticism, but at the same time I also think about half the 
magic to textual interpretation consists in that intuitive feeling of 
rightness or wrongness that leads you to settle on a meaning, or else keep 
looking.

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