The Politics Of Gene Wolfe

John Watkins · 19 Mar 2009, 19:20 · from 2009-March.txt.gz

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From: john.watkins04 at gmail.com (John Watkins)
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:20:58 -0400
Subject: (urth) The Politics Of Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <957682.511.qm at web50706.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
References: <8974.67.142.130.34.1237464256.squirrel at brunians.org>
	<957682.511.qm at web50706.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <93d4039f0903191220o1922c44ar4729c6dfdcfb23e3 at mail.gmail.com>

Agreed...but this is in the context of a discussion of Tolkien's work.
Tolkien veers between a benign anarchism (The Shire) and divinely-appointed
or at least divinely-sanctioned kings.  It seems then that "good government"
is holy or ideal government--government by the best (in the sense of "most
moral") people.

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> --- On Thu, 3/19/09, brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org> wrote:
> > There's another aspect of Gene Wolfe's politics
> > which is mentioned
> > prominently in many of his stories, and that is his intense
> > distrust of government.
> ...
>
> > I'd like to solicit a discussion of this particular
> > aspect of his work.
> ...
>
> I haven't seen any mention yet of "The Best Introduction to
> the Mountains", where Wolfe says the code of conduct he
> learned in his childhood included, "Legitimate authority
> was to be obeyed without shirking and without question.
> Mere strength (the corrupt coercion Washington calls
> /power/ and Chicago /clout/) was to be defied."  So maybe
> another way of saying he distrusts government would be that
> he thinks most government is mere strength, but he thinks
> good government can exist and he'd be happy to trust an
> example of it.
>
> http://home.clara.net/andywrobertson/wolfemountains.html
>
> Jerry Friedman
>
>
>
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