academic commentary

Lee Berman · 02 Dec 2010, 04:11 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2010 23:11:10 -0500
Subject: (urth) academic commentary
Message-ID: <SNT123-W31F38F99F90CD91658DB4ACF270 at phx.gbl>

> "My impression is that Wright interprets BotNS from an atheist point
>    of view because he is, himself a devout atheist and perhaps
>    unwilling to acknowledge spirituality in the work of an author he so
>    admires, despite awareness of Wolfe's religious leanings."

>Okay. Lee called it an "impression", so he is acknowledging that his 
>assessment is not especially fact-based. But it would be an awfully 
>damning debility on Wright's part if it were true.

First, yes, I can't claim more than having an impression as I haven't
read Wright's book, cover to cover, though I have read significant 
portions online and read a number of reviews of the book. The portions
I read had a lot of interesting and even helpful insight.

Next, my apologies. My wording makes it easy to misconstrue my intended
meaning. In my opinion, Wright's analysis might be deficient if his
goal was simply to write a treatise on Wolfe's auctorial intentions in 
writing BotNS. But I don't think it was.

Instead, I think Wright's goal was to write an analysis of BotNS from
his point of view and in this he produced an interesting and successful
book. I can imagine him writing an analysis of the Bible, perhaps both
Testaments, and finding it brimming with metaphor and allegory for the 
religious, political and military exploitation of the masses. I would 
not necessarily consider this a "poor" analysis just because it neglected 
to acknowledge the spiritual reality of God.

I guess my contribution was meant more to explain the difference in 
interpretation between Wright and others rather than to assign a level of
quality label.

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