lots of stuff

Jerry Friedman · 10 Jul 2010, 04:07 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 21:07:46 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) lots of stuff
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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>

> Some thoughts on Jerry's stuff.

>> (Somebody asked why /Father/ Inire.  I still want to know.  And I'm with 
those
> who think he isn't sexually interested in girls, or any humans.)
>
>I have assumed from the beginning that it was a religious title. But
>then, I'm a mackerelsnapper.

And though I'm a back-wheel skid, that was my first thought too.  But why is he 
the only one with a decipherable title?  And are any caloyers, sannyasins, etc., 
ever addressed or referred to as "Father"?

>> People, I think Ryan Quinn especially, have been saying they think that since
>> Wolfe spent all that time on TBotNS, every detail must be significant.  I 
>don't
>> think that's necessarily true.
>
> I repeat my citation of Alan Moore re: _Watchmen_: "Not everything means 
>_much_.

A good one.

>> Executive summary: When he mentioned a monkey, he might not have remembered
>> every other time he mentioned a monkey.
>
>Yet ... we are faced with Wolfe's insistence on not repeating clues.
>He seems to _think_ he has this level of control over his material.

Exactly.  But he doesn't.  We can't tell the difference between his single clues 
and all the other things that might be the single clue to something else.

Which is why everyone finds his stories so frustrating and ultimately 
uninteresting, including us, so we're not even having this discussion.

Which brings me to more stuff--/The Silmarillion/ this time.  In addition to the 
flaws people have mentioned, much of it is too ordinary.  It doesn't have the 
pervasive nostalgia of LotR.  More to the point, for large stretches the elves 
are just like people.  In LotR, Tolkien was very careful to hide things about 
the elves--the hobbits have fields as well as food, for instance, but there's no 
mention of fields in Lorien where the grain for Lembas would be grown.  Likewise 
Elvenhome was only hinted at.  In /The Silmarillion/, we see Elvenhome, the 
elves are onstage all the time, and they can't live up to our imaginations.

Normally Wolfe displays complete mastery of mystery.  He describes things that 
will be impressive or beautiful, and leaves other things as hints.  In /TUotNS/, 
to the extent that I haven't blotted it out of my memory, this didn't work for 
me.  A lot that I enjoyed imagining in /TBotNS/ is now spelled out, as you said, 
and it doesn't measure up.  The worst is Yesod, mentioned in one almost 
thrown-away line in /Citadel/.  In /Urth/ we go there, and Yesod looks a lot 
like Earth or Urth.  Of course Severian's human mind can't assimilate what's 
there and Wolfe's human mind would have great difficulty describing a higher 
universe.  But that was a reason not to try it.

The puzzles, intentional or unintentional, are a big part of what keeps us 
occupied here.  (The same is true on NABOKV-L.)  I wonder how much time we'd 
spend on Wolfe if he communicated exactly what he wanted to most of his readers.

>> I too was horrified by the flood in TUotNS (though I'd stopped enjoying the 
>>book
>> long before that because I felt the writing was far below Wolfe's standard).
>> The afterlife doesn't mitigate the disaster unless the victims got as good a
>> chance to repent as they would have if they hadn't been killed.  True, the 
>>Bible
>> says God caused a flood, but he seems to have thought it was a bad idea
>> afterwards, which he apparently didn't after the flood Severian caused.

> I think it is intended to be horrible.

> I also think that there's an important point you're missing -- God
> doesn't cause this flood; Severian and the Hiero(foo)s do. God
> responded to the Noachian flood by promising that he would never again
> destroy the world this way; but he doesn't promise that creatures
> won't do likewise.

But if Urth is in a past universe, then God saw what a worldwide flood was 
like.  You would think if it displeased him when he did it, it would have 
displeased him earlier when Tzadkiel and Severian did it, and he'd have known 
not to do it on his own.

Of course I'm picturing God as responding to events, which seems to be the 
picture in Genesis, not as omniscient the way modern Judaism, Christianity, and 
Islam see him.

Jerry Friedman

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