interview questions

Lee Berman · 06 Jan 2011, 18:59 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 13:59:22 -0500
Subject: (urth) interview questions
Message-ID: <SNT123-W243DACCE2B3FA27585F50CF0A0 at phx.gbl>


>Dave Muir-Bacon:   I'm enjoying the on-going discussion of Cerberus (sorry, 5HoC) having
>recently reread it, but could somebody please post a link to the
>original "interview" that prompted these questions?

Interestingly the thread has morphed from one interview question about Blue/Green/Urth to
a different interview about 5HoC.  
 
A lot of focus has been placed on the WOlfe quote that "Marsch has been replaced by a Shadow
Child". In the Larry McCaffrey interview wolfe phrases it as, "If you hire a shape changer as
a guide, there's a definite possibility that he's going to change into your shape at some point.
Which is what happens."
 
 
Such things are disurbing enough to the theories of some that they must claim explanations as 
"Wolfe mispoke" and "obvious typo".
 
This quote, also from the McCaffrey interview suggests the time period between the Sandwalker 
and Marsch episodes is a very great one; a mythological timespan rather than historical:
 
>Gene Wolfe: "Since the period in which the Sandwalker scene was?in terms of the "present" found 
>in the rest of the book?taking place in the distant past of the planet, it made more sense to say, 
>"Here's a legend that has survived from that period"
 
 
I find the quote below from the same interview to be of great general value to all Wolfe readings with
regard to the idea of logical "evidence", the value/purpose of lupine dreams and text stories and even 
the impact of Wolfean autobiography in his work (Pringles is a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble):
 
>LM: Your work often appears to rely on fantasy forms in order to find a means of dealing with these 
>"pre verbal" aspects of consciousness.... I'm thinking about, say, Severian's encounter with the 
>Wellsian man apes in The Claw of the Conciliator or his later confrontation with the Alzabo. These 
>scenes seemed to function very much like dreams or fairy tales in which our inner fears or obsessions?
>those non rational aspects of people that seem out of place in the mundane world of most realists?are 
>literalized, turned into psychic dramas.

>Wolfe: That's a good way to put it. One of the advantages of fantasy is that I don't have to waste a lot 
>of time creating the kinds of logical or causal justifications required by the conventions of realism. I 
>can have that Alzabo simply come in the front door of that cabin without having to justify his arrival 
>(keep in mind that even in a standard SF novel I would have had to do something like have a space ship land 
>and then have the Alzabo emerge from the ship). That's one of the limitations of forms restricted to 
>descriptions of everyday reality or of events that are scientifically plausible. Of course I'd argue that 
>while the Alzabo and those other creatures Severian meets may appear to be dream like, they also very much 
>exist within a continuum of human potential?they're not really "fantastic" at all, but embodiments of things 
>that lie within all of us. And it seems important for people to be able to occasionally confront these things 
>(that's what dreams and fairy tales have always done for people). The Alzabo is a monster, sure; but it's 
>something many people fear a great deal when they work for a major corporation: we fear we'll be swallowed 
>by Procter and Gamble,

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