The Sorcerer's House Questions (Major Spoilers)

John Watkins · 19 Apr 2010, 15:07 · from 2010-April.txt.gz

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From: john.watkins04 at gmail.com (John Watkins)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:07:10 -0400
Subject: (urth) The Sorcerer's House Questions (*Major Spoilers*)
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Maybe the point of the story is narrative desire.  In college, a professor
asked a class I was in if anyone believed that Trystero was "real" within
the world of The Crying of Lot 49.  I was one of the ones who did, and when
asked to explain why, I sort of blurted "Because it's a better story."

If Bax is a con man who made up all the fantastic elements, then the story
is prosaic, dull, and flat.  If Bax is utterly honest with us and every word
of the letters can be believed, then the story is straightforward.  If Bax
is artfully mixing truth and lies, and some of the supernatural events do
occur, then the story is fascinating and complex.  I want the best story to
be the "true" story, and maybe that's the point.

One thing that's significant about Wolfe's reliance on unreliable narrators,
and I think this is most explicit in Long Sun and Short Sun, is that he's
mirroring an important aspect of Christian religious faith.  Believers, for
the most part, rely upon the Gospels, accounts that are, by their natural,
unreliable.  Wolfe seems to think that this is or can be a rational choice,
but he's not interested in soft-pedalling the complications this entails.
But maybe there's a Chesteronian idea at work as well, which is that stories
that are *compelling *are more likely to be true--that human beings
naturally seek to order things into coherent and interesting narratives
because we think that such narratives best help us to make sense of the
world.

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Eugene Zaretskiy <eugene.zar at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > In the end, I'm not convinced that the entire thing was a total
> fabrication.
> > But I am convinced that Wolfe means us to think that it's a possibility
> > since, otherwise, I have a hard time understanding why Bax should ever
> have
> > been a con man at all, unless it was just an easy way to get the
> character
> > into (and then out of) jail.
>
> This is what I think, too. Craig, earlier you said it made sense for
> Wolfe to write a novel where the fantasy elements are fabrications.
> Similarly, maybe his objective is more nuanced than that (Wolfe?
> Nuanced? Crazy, I know) and he wants to "con" readers into believing
> whatever they want about Bax's story. If there's a level to this book
> where Bax is the compiler and made everything up, I don't think it's
> the ONLY path to understanding the book as a whole, but I agree with
> you that Bax's being a con man and other such details are placed by
> Wolfe to add to this particular reading. I'm amazed that the "debate"
> has gone on for so long, though; you either believe it and toss away
> any hope of understanding the book as a puzzle box (this approach
> being understandably labeled "lame" by some) or you don't believe it.
>
> I get this feeling GW would be highly amused by all this. (Does he
> read this list?) Can't the "Bax made it all up" theory co-exist with
> the puzzle box version?
>
> >
> >
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>
>
> --
> Eugene Z
> http://blog.eugenez.net
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