The Sorcerer's House Questions (Major Spoilers)

Craig Brewer · 19 Apr 2010, 15:18 · from 2010-April.txt.gz

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From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:18:43 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) The Sorcerer's House Questions (*Major Spoilers*)
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>>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.


I like this a lot.

It also speaks to Severian's dilemma: could he just be a dupe of alien creatures AND an actual messiah figure? Even false things can be true.


      
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