American Nights Forgery -- more evidence

Roy C. Lackey · 15 May 2008, 05:40 · from 2008-May.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 00:40:02 -0500
Subject: (urth) American Nights Forgery -- more evidence
Message-ID: <002e01c8b64e$22805840$09d14a0c at rclackey.stic.net>

Dave,

If, as you contend, the last three pages of the notebook were forged, and
if, as you also contend, they were forged by an automated writing machine,
then the climax of the story is a Farsi farce. The most pivotal incident of
Nadan's life is nothing but a machine-generated fiction, which trivializes
what, for Nadan, was a soul-shattering event. And it makes for a much less
interesting story.

I don't see Wolfe attempting to map a week in the life of a Moslem to the
events of Holy Week. As you said early on, this story is a perverted rehash
of the story of Cupid and Psyche, but with a reversal of gender. Instead of
Psyche's light revealing the naked glory of a god, Nadan's light revealed
something that was not merely ugly to behold, it was something that crossed
a moral or spiritual boundary from which there was no return. He had
embraced that something, loved, or at least lusted after it, and saw himself
as irrevocably polluted by his contact.

-Roy

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