The Sorcerer's House Questions (Major Spoilers)

Thomas Bitterman · 19 Apr 2010, 19:57 · from 2010-April.txt.gz

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From: tom at bitterman.net (Thomas Bitterman)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:57:23 -0400
Subject: (urth) The Sorcerer's House Questions (*Major Spoilers*)
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On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:07 AM, John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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."
>

I thought Trystero was real, too.  It's not even clear what it could mean
for a fictional entity to be thinking about something that wasn't real.  But
this is starting to get real confusing.

If Bax is a con man who made up all the fantastic elements, then the story
> is prosaic, dull, and flat.
>

I don't find it such.  If lying and sorcery are the same thing, then Bax is
truly a powerful sorcerer.  He fooled not just a bunch of fictional
characters, but readers in the real world, too.


> 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.
>

Could you explain this further?
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