Crowley and mystery

Son of Witz · 18 Dec 2008, 23:16 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org (Son of Witz)
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:16:49 +0000
Subject: (urth) Crowley and mystery
Message-ID: <W421368067220681229642209@webmail40>

yeah, it wasn't overtly silly.  It was there, but fairly straight faced and highbrow, as in Wolfe.
"He mispronounced quite common words: urticate, salpinx, bordereau."
LoL.

~witz

>-----Original Message-----
>From: David Stockhoff [mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net]
>Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 03:08 PM
>To: urth at lists.urth.net
>Subject: Re: (urth) Crowley and mystery
>
>Yeah, other than what I quoted, it does sound fairly silly. I have a low tolerance for silly unless it's funny (see Snow Crash: very silly, not funny). Wolfe always disguises his silly.
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 5
>Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:53:31 +0000
>From: "Son of Witz" <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
>Subject: Re: (urth) Crowley and mystery
>To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>Message-ID: <W261571814178091229626411 at webmail45>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>Exactly what I was thinking.
>the trappings are not at all similar, nor is the plot, but some of the meta concepts about time, recurrent anchors in history, fraud and veracity in religion are probably closer to BotNS than any other work I've read.
>I'll have to read the first again, then the others.  Like I said, I had a strong "WTF did I just read?" reaction to the book, then it dawned on my, unbidden, months later in a real Aha moment.  There were several complaints I had about it, but once I began to understand it more, everything I thought was sort of stupid became symbolically perfect and apt.
>
>
>
>> >-----Original Message-----
>> >From: David Stockhoff [mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net]
>>   
>
>>At a high level of abstraction, this sounds not very different from 
>>TBotNS. Wolfe also forges an alternate history but on a vaster scale, a 
>>history in which the miraculous truth and mundane deceit are conflated. 
>>Note the line about Mary and Fatima and Ruth; after chiliads, the same 
>>has occurred on Urth. And the last paragraph especially.
>
>
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