Wolfe being clear on 5HoC

Daniel D Jones · 10 Sep 2006, 13:12 · from 2006-September.txt.gz

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From: ddjones at riddlemaster.org (Daniel D Jones)
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 09:12:49 -0400
Subject: (urth) Wolfe being clear on 5HoC
In-Reply-To: <1f7617370609091832x210a855btc345aabd6e926028 at mail.gmail.com>
References: <000001c6d46f$3da7bfe0$6401a8c0@cthulhu>
	<1f7617370609091832x210a855btc345aabd6e926028 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200609100912.50079.ddjones at riddlemaster.org>

On Saturday 09 September 2006 21:32, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> Adding onto what Tony says:
>
> I don't believe that the words are "sacred" or anything. A text is
> a made thing. But I also quite firmly believe that a text is what it
> is, rather than what its writer may have wanted it to be, or indeed
> may believe it to be. Indeed, my own experience with texts I have
> written have shown me that the writer may be quite unaware of
> what a text actually is. The best story I've published to date
> concealed a religious message, almost an allegory, of which I
> had no inkling when I wrote it but which was so painfully
> obvious when a reader pointed it out to me ... well, if someone
> else had written it, I wouldn't believe their claims that it was
> not intentional. But there you are: the text is what it is.
>
> To that extent, then, while I don't suggest that the writer's
> external comments be utterly disregarded in interpreting a
> text, those comments are of tertiary value at best. The primary
> fact, we interpret, is the text, an independent object sent into
> the world by its writer, and the secondary means by which
> we interpret it is by observing our encounters with the text
> as _readers_. The writer's intentions must yield pride of place
> to both the text as a fact and the encounter with the text as
> experiential data.

I largely agree with you on this, but I would add that one needs to 
distinguish between the symbolism/message of a text, and the actual events 
the text describes.  What started this exchange of observations, as the 
subject still shows, was Wolfe's comments on the issue of whether or not 
there is an exchange of narrators in V.R.T.  In this case, I'd say that 
Wolfe's comments are of primary rather than tertiary value.  The situation 
would be quite different if he commented on, for example, what the book says 
about a societies responsibilities in how they treat less advanced cultures 
or species with which they interact.  I'd then agree with your position that 
his comments are not definitive but merely suggestive at best.

There are many of Wolfe's works where a primary challenge is to determine 
exactly what occurred.  If Wolfe can not answer with authority as to the 
actual events of the story he wrote, then certainly no one else can either 
and discussing or trying to solve the puzzles degenerates into instances of 
navel gazing.

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