Jaynes and Wolfe

Alex David Groce · 29 Oct 1998, 20:41 · from urth-v0021.mbox · original
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From: "Alex David Groce" <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Jaynes and Wolfe
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 20:41:48
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alga said:
> Subject: (urth) Jaynes and Wolfe
> I think Mothman is really onto something here. Jaynes's book was published
> in 1979 in the US and caused the most tremendous furor--it was a real
> whoop-de-do. -Soldier of the Mist- was published in 1986. It seems to me
> absolutely impossible that Wolfe, in researching these books, should not
> have read it. And I do think that he borrowed what was useful to him from
> Jaynes's thesis, not only for the Soldier books but for the relationship
> between "gods" and men in BOTLS too--almost directly for the former. BOTLS
> (which I admire more structurally with each contemplation--especially sin=
ce
> I don't think Wolfe was strong with structure up to that point) could be
> read as Wolfe's attempt to integrate Jaynes with his (Wolfe's) new knowle=
dge
> of computers.

I think this is a very likely history--especially as Jaynes' hypothesis wou=
ld
have fit in well with Wolfe's suspicions voiced here and there about the "r=
eal
existence" of the gods--it wouldn't fit precisely, but it would be an excel=
lent
model to keep in mind in portraying fictionally the ancient world as Wolfe
(maybe) sees it.  How much new knowledge of computers is involved in Long S=
un,
I'm not sure--it seems given Wolfe's general subtle but accurate technical
detail, he'd have known most of the concepts involved in BOTLS for a long t=
ime.
Mainframes, memory, & personality downloading are pretty old ideas...  &
actually Sillhoutte has some nice computer bits in it (the Overmonitor acts
like an old, cranky operating system, or an Infocom game...)

> BTW, I don't posit that Wolfe actually *bought* the Jaynes thesis, which =
has
> been pretty thoroughly scientifically pooh-poohed, but that it was awfully
> useful to him as a novelist. Similarly, Martin Bernays's -Black Athena-,
> which sent historians and archaeologists into fits of sarcasm and frothing
> at the mouth, might be very useful to a writer like Crowley in his Aegypt
> series.
>=20
> Here, picked almost randomly, are a couple of paragraphs from Jaynes:
>=20
> "The characters of the Iliad do not sit down and think out what to do. th=
ey
> have no conscious minds such as we say we have, and certainly no
> introspections. It is impossible for us with our subjectivity to apprecia=
te
> what it was like. When Agamemnon, king of men, robs Achilles of his
> mistress, it is a god that grabs Achilles by his yellow hair  and warns h=
im
> not to strike Agamemnon. It is a god who then rises out of the gray sea a=
nd
> consoles him in his tears of wrath on the beach by his black ships, a god
> who whispers low to Helen to sweep her heart with homesick longing, a god
> who hides Paris in a mist in front of the attacking Menelaus, a god who
> tells Glaucus to take bronze for gold, a god who leads he armies into
> battle, who speaks to each soldier at the turning points, who debates and
> tells Hector what he must do, who urges the soldiers on by casting them in
> spells or drawing mists over their visual fields. It is the gods who start
> quarrels among men that really cause the wars and then plan its
> strategy...In fact the gods take the place of consciousness."
>=20
> "Who were these gods that pushed men about like robots and sang epics
> through their lips? They were voices whose speech and directions could be
> heard as directly by the Iliadic heroes as voices are heard by certain
> epileptic and schizophrenic patients, or just as Joan of Arc heard her
> voices. The gods were organizations of the central nervous system and can=
 be
> regarded as personae in the sense of poignant consistencies through time,
> amalgams of parental or admonitory images...The gods are what we now call
> hallucinations. Usually they are only seen and heard by the particular
> heroes they are speaking to...."

Definitely sounds like the Soldier books, although I do think Wolfe wants u=
s to
at least two-thirds of the way buy into accepting that these deities are re=
al.
Not just seem real, but are--similarly, although Wolfe doesn't "cheat" by
having the Hand of God nuke the bad guys or something (a la King), the Outs=
ider
is plainly meant to be God, in the sense of the real God showing up as a
"character" in fiction.

> Etc. There's much more to it, on how crowds behave, for instance. Hey, ki=
dz,
> there's an academic thesis for one of you in this! Note that Jaynsean
> material is entirely absent in everything Wolfe wrote prior to the Soldier
> books, and informs everything he has written since.
>=20
> Interesting, for instance, Silk's blind faith in his Outsider, Mint's bow=
ing
> to the will of the god. Contrast with Hamlet's caution re the authenticity
> of the Ghost--which he actually saw. Hamlet is a modern man, Silk and Mint
> and Latro are archaic. (In my opinion, Wolfe is much, much better with the
> archaic than when he attempts to be modern, but that, O Best Beloved, is
> another story.) And Latro's and Auk's head wounds.
>=20
> Thanks, Mothman, this was fun.

Agreed.  I'll have to hunt down Jaynes--I half read part of it some time ag=
o,
looking something up, but never actually finished it.  As to Wolfe,
archaic/modern, I'd agree but note that the "archaic" in Wolfe's sense isn't
exactly lacking from the "modern" world.  Chesterton's old statement that
assigning times and places to ideas is unwise; in the end that particular k=
inds
of thought are more popular at particular times and places says more about
those times & places than the ideas...  And Wolfe's "Hamlet"ism comes in th=
at
he (usually) provides the reader an "out"--a way to say it wasn't a ghost at
all...  Latro's & Auk's wounds, Dr. Crane's hypothesis, etc.  It's clear wh=
ich
"side" Wolfe is on, but he doesn't force that interpretation on the reader.=
  So
the Jaynes idea is the Dr. Crane hypothesis to explain everyone who sees a =
god
in Soldier...
	Probably why Wolfe's easier to digest that somebody like Lewis or
Chesterton for those who disagree with the theology, etc.

--=20
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

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