Truth in fiction

Lee Berman · 07 Jan 2011, 21:07 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2011 16:07:17 -0500
Subject: (urth) Truth in fiction
Message-ID: <SNT123-W22C4EBA2DF177241AFB77DCF0B0 at phx.gbl>

>Andrew Mason: There is no such thing as the truth about what actually happened on
>Sainte-Anne, etc., but there can be a truth which is relevant to the
>discussion; the truth about what the author meant and intended us to
>see. That is a fact about what happened in some human being's brain.
>here isn't always such a truth; perhaps he intended it to beambiguous; 
>perhaps he just didn't think about some question. But
>sometimes there is. You need not take an interest in it if you don't
>want to, but I think many of us here do care about it.

Andrew I care very very much about what Gene Wolfe intended his readers to understand.
So much so that I have devoted a lot of hours of study to obscure aspects of mythology
and the Bible and demonology and gnosticism etc. that I never had an interest in, solely
to try to understand Gene Wolfe better.

But, as you elegantly outline through the whole of your post, we can't truly know all his
intentions. He doesn't want us to know them. He almost surely correctly knows that if we
knew all his intentions his work would be quite ruined.

I apologize for the condescending tone here, but darn it, there is a manner of learning and 
growing and becoming a sophisticated, mature reader of literature. Young readers demand concrete 
"correct" answers to mysteries in what they are reading. Adults are supposed to have the wisdom 
to realize that in books, as in life, there isn't always a "best" answer for everyone.

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