SRD on obscurity

David Duffy · 10 Jun 2006, 11:36 · from 2006-June.txt.gz

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From: David.Duffy at qimr.edu.au (David Duffy)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 21:36:03 +1000 (EST)
Subject: (urth) SRD on obscurity
In-Reply-To: <200606091843.57324.ddjones at riddlemaster.org>
References: <1f7617370606091436r75c733f3x7de5dcd18332ae51 at mail.gmail.com>
	<200606091843.57324.ddjones at riddlemaster.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0606102052450.14344 at orpheus.qimr.edu.au>

On Fri, 9 Jun 2006, Daniel D Jones wrote:

> On Friday 09 June 2006 17:36, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> > No ... I don't mean Samuel R. Delany, but a writer many on
> > this list probably disdain, Stephen R. Donaldson.
>
> Why would you assume that many here disdain him?
>

FWIW, does anyone else remember the back-to-back review of Donaldson and
Wolfe by either Clute or Watson or Greenland in Foundation around 1983: it
quite favourably compared _The One Tree_ to _The Sword of the Lictor_,
(both midway through the series at that time).  Donaldson's style was
becoming less grating to the reviewer.  Unfortunately I didn't subscribe
at that time, and can find no on-line contents list going back that far.

The review actually led me to bother reading the second Donaldson series,
not being greatly impressed by the first.  Anyway, I don't *have* to
reread Donaldson, but I do have to read each Wolfe through a few times
(much better value for money;)).

Other quotable Wolfe:

"But I wanted to be a particular person again, and so I sought the mirror
of other persons, which would show me that I was not as they were."

"Thus by the paradoxical nature of knowledge, it is seen that though the
existence of the Ylem, the primridal source of all things, may be doubted,
yet the existence of his servants may not be doubted."

"...it represents for me all that monomaniacal fabric of argument, so
tightly woven that not even the tiniest objection or spark of light can
escape its net, in which human minds become enmeshed whenever the subject
is one in which no appeal to fact is possible."

David Duffy.

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