The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned byRudesind

David Stockhoff · 08 Jul 2010, 03:24 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:24:26 -0400
Subject: (urth) The mystery of the image of an astronaut
	cleaned	byRudesind
In-Reply-To: <011001cb1e42$e4e6d900$08cf4a0c@rclackey>
References: <SNT123-W256DB5C8585628C8109423CFB30 at phx.gbl><520E36C4-BC0B-4DFE-8F64-BC9EB1D9BF4C at liftingfaces.com><4C34A1F4.6030501 at gmail.com><F7C7A8D7-66C9-4746-9662-C742E53311FE at liftingfaces.com><AANLkTilkfznBstbta55hgfGmNqnPuJiBaxTBg1nk4CNf at mail.gmail.com><4C34C6AF.9060709 at gmail.com>	<4C34C8AF.70507 at gmail.com><152f839bbd02f83fc03a5318462443d7.squirrel at brunians.org><4C34D82D.5070500 at gmail.com>	<4C34DA51.8040901 at gmail.com><4C34ED71.2020108 at gmail.com>	<4C34EDED.3070502 at gmail.com><4C34EF25.7030109 at gmail.com>	<4C34F4E3.9020109 at gmail.com><CE561AAB-21F2-499F-B49A-4F53EA6F441B at liftingfaces.com>	<AANLkTilycxXW-LhpDPTxDpHDWeoeJ2KcSN_epXSqmVsj at mail.gmail.com>
	<011001cb1e42$e4e6d900$08cf4a0c@rclackey>
Message-ID: <4C3544EA.4050301 at verizon.net>

There needs to be a principle of, I don't know, conservation of 
explanation or something. And we need to call each other on it.

For example, if a mysterious figure gains powers (expert acting, 
sharpshooting, shapeshifting, timetripping) to explain specific textual 
features, that in other contexts begin to overlap and become redundant 
(i.e., a feature can be explained by any of these powers), then we have 
a condition of overexplanation. There are more explanations than there 
are problems and they contradict one another. Why would the burglar use 
his powers of disguise if he could simply go back in time to when the 
apartment was empty? And so on. Wolfe's characters often address this 
issue directly.

Overexplanation is a violation of form. Sometimes the most mundane 
explanations are best, because they require the least effort and never 
lead to redundancy. One asks questions not to challenge but to test.

I'm afraid I'm not expressing myself well, but does this make sense?

Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> John Watkins wrote:
>   
>> I'm not sure that anyone has said that there's nothing to be found in all
>> the various clues about Inire.  The question is whether it makes any sense
>> to assume that every candidate for being Inire-in-disguise is in fact
>> Inire-in-disguise, and the dialogue has gone much like this:
>>     
> [snip]
>   
>> At some point in that conversation, the burden of proof was shifted to the
>> skeptic and the argument that X is Inire became non-falsifiable.  If Inire
>> is an immortal shapeshifting, time-travelling bilocating liar, it's
>> impossible to demonstrate to anyone's satisfaction that any given
>>     
> character
>   
>> is not Inire.
>>     
>
> Excellent! That is exactly the way the argument has gone, both now and in
> the past.
>
> Ant?nio wrote:
> [snip]
>   
>> To show a pattern is viable in a Wolfe book is like showing
>> there are stars in the sky. "It couldn't work because..." is all but
>> impossible - especially when all contrary evidence can be just ignored, as
>> in this Rudesind/Inire case - and "Here's something else that fits that
>> pattern...." is essentially gratis. [snip]
>>     
>
> Ditto.
>
> Things that get ignored tend to be anything in the text that that doesn't
> fit or contradicts the pattern. It's okay to go on about monkey features and
> noses, but when, say, the old man at Casdoe's says of Fechin "His face
> wasn't a monkey's face at all. Fechin was handsome--the handsomest around.",
> that gets waved away. The old man also said that Fechin was "A tall, wild
> boy with red hair on his hands, on his arms. Like a monkey's arms, . . ."
> (SWORD, chap. XV) But the old Boatman said of Inire, "Just a little man he
> is, with a wry neck and bow legs." (SHADOW, chap. XXII) "Tall" doesn't fit
> with "little" and "bow legs", but I guess that's where the lying comes in.
> Or the shapeshifting.
>
> Fechin seems to connect the old man at Casdoe's with Rudesind; that much is
> in the text, but that doesn't make any or all of the three men Inire.
>
> -Roy
>
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