Standard Wolfean riddle

James Wynn · 12 Aug 2010, 15:09 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:09:55 -0500
Subject: (urth) Standard Wolfean  riddle
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>> David Stockhoff- On the use of the word "cognates":
>> I think this is a standard low-grade Wolfean riddle. If a Wolfe
>> character says to a narrator, "I once met a man very like you, who had the same look and carried himself the same way, and held his cigarette just like that, but he called himself by a different name then," how would you interpret that?
>>
>> "Once upon a time, there was a race of beings with two arms and two legs who called themselves Men. They were very like you, with the same hopes and dreams, but they lived far away from here, both in space and in time." How would you interpret that? I read both as strong hints of the obvious, with a dash of doubt.
>>      

If it is a Wolfe novel, it is almost certainly not a 1 to 1 mapping. I 
the other fellow might have been a phyiscal or psychic clone. Or 
software epitome that was created long ago. It might be a potential 
future version that will never enter into the story. Or it might have 
been someone else in possession of the same body. Or it might have been 
an impostor who didn't realize that he was a psychic clone. Much of 
Wolfe's writing career has been picking away at the foundations of Identity.

> Lee Berman - Speaking of SilkHorn, isn't that a prime example of what we are speaking of? We have a guy who keeps insisting he is Horn, searching for Silk, while everyone around him keeps saying, "Uh, dude, you are a tall, slender guy with white hair and a black bird named Oreb on your shoulder".
>
> In that case (like the Dorcas riddle), I think most readers figure it out. Other Wolfean riddles are more difficult to solve, as we've seen. 		

This is an excellent example. I'm not convinced most people do 
understand what is going on. Silk is dead. He slashed his wrists and 
killed himself in front of Hyacinth's casket. Silk's body and memories 
are present. But Horn's memories are present as well. Wolfe would say 
they are both truly there. And then there is that "other" who communes 
with the face on his staff and can initiate dream-travels across Time 
and Space. Yeah, Silk is there. But I contend he not the way people seem 
to think he is.

Surely he is as much a "cognate" as a race of beings in a universe whose 
history and individuals are almost the same as another race of beings in 
another universe.

Wolfe is not just adding a dash of doubt. He is probing what it means to 
be the "I am". The cognate race is as much humanity as Jahlee was the 
Rajan's sister. As much as Silk was Tussah's son.

u+16b9

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