academic commentary

David Stockhoff · 29 Nov 2010, 19:26 · from 2010-November.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 14:26:02 -0500
Subject: (urth) academic commentary
In-Reply-To: <4CF3F872.3050800 at verizon.net>
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Message-ID: <4CF3FE4A.4070707 at verizon.net>

Or, maybe Wright does not fully understand fantasy as a form of 
literature and believes it amounts to escapism. It's a common error.

For Wolfe, fantasy is plainly the opposite of escapism, except that he 
enjoys his material and probably gets to escape into it while he writes.

On 11/29/2010 2:01 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> I suppose that's as good a guess as any, but I'm guessing that you are 
> guessing, Antonio. Perhaps you think his atheism got in the way? I 
> don't see why---my atheism doesn't get in my way. But that's still a 
> valid guess.
>
> I'll rephrase my remark: It seems odd that Wright would be a student 
> of literature and a fan of Wolfe and not be able to see what Wolfe 
> does with mythology/fantasy and what he does with narrative itself, 
> and see where they lead. The patterns are clear: the trees form a 
> forest whose shape can be seen.
>
> There are so many writers of classic science fiction who are Jewish, 
> and their work could almost be called atheistic. Wolfe obviously is 
> not one of them. Reading Wolfe as a whole leaves one little 
> opportunity to miss the forest.
>
> Let me make my own guess: Wright is uncomfortable dealing with 
> authorial intent---he was trained to avoid it, as so many grad 
> students were in recent decades---and so he does. Here's another: for 
> some reason, Wright is unfamiliar with Wolfe's work outside BOTNS/LS/SS.
>
> To those of you who have read Wright---any guesses? Are either of 
> these possible?
>


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