Wolfe and Materialism

Lee Berman · 11 Feb 2011, 15:09 · from 2011-February.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:09:12 -0500
Subject: (urth) Wolfe and Materialism
Message-ID: <SNT123-W540DE54F5AB3656B255952CFEF0 at phx.gbl>



>Gerry Quinn: The mistake some people make is to believe that some mythological resonance 
>they find in elements of the story can serve as an alternative to 'nuts and bolts' explanations.
 
Gerry I get the impression you consider yourself a man of math, logic and science and that for you, 
these explanatory philosophies are always superior to spiritual, religious or mystical explanations.
 
Nothing wrong with that, but you are claiming that those who find paramount meaning in the myths, 
stories and dreams of Wolfe's work are making a "mistake". To demonstrate this you will need to 
prove that Gene Wolfe shares your materialist point of view. (you have said God, if he exists, 
must conform to the physical laws of the universe, yes?)
 
>materialism- a : a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being 
>and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter 
 
There is a section of BotNS where a Pelerine chides Severian for being a materialist. But I am further
drawn to this excerpt from the Brendan Baber Wolfe interview:
 
>Gene Wolfe: Materialism is one of those things that's so barren you can't do much with it.
>There was a materialist philosophy student who used to write to me, and would argue all of this stuff. 
>He'd get enormously mad. (Do you know Tree's Law? Sir Tree, the famous British actor, coined the law, 
>"Madmen write 
>eight-page letters.") So this guy would send me these philosophical tracts, and they were full of outrageous 
>pieces  of bullshit, like, "Everybody wants to live!" 
 
>And I would say, "A guy jumps off an eighteen-story building. What could he do to convince you that he wants 
>to die?" I tried to get him to answer that question, and of course he wouldn't. He'd dodge around, and he'd 
>get madder and madder. 
 
>So he'd say, "A piece of paper is really just hydrogen and oxygen and six other elements, and that's all it 
>is." And I said, "I believe it's actually a piece of paper." And he'd say, "No no no, it's a bunch of elements!" 
>So I wrote him, and said, "Okay, but remember now, every day of your life you'll have to adopt my viewpoint to 
>live, to go down to the store and buy a ream of paper." 
 
>Then he said, "We cannot get along without logic." Hell, half the people I know are getting along without logic! 
>Most of 'em are doing just fine! All of the animals do it, except on a very basic level. No, the one thing that 
>we really can't get along without is the realization that a piece of paper is a piece of paper. If you're a mouse 
>you've got to say, "That's cheese. Nobody's fooling me about that. That's not chemicals, it's not gas, it's not 
>some sort of fake cheese. I know cheese." That's what you've got to do to live on the animal level. http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfeint.html
 
>From this, I conclude that Gene Wolfe considers the way a person experiences life is more important than a scientific
reduction of life to its component elements. Gene Wolfe, by all accounts, is a religious man. He is also well versed
in mythology and has stated that he considers the gods of mythology to be real. Why then, would he throw this away in
his writing to make the material "evidence" of his stories of singulary, primary importance and include mythological 
references only as throwaway, unimportant items?
 
Gerry, I think it is perfectly acceptable to interpret a Gene Wolfe story in the materialistic, logical manner in
which you understand your own life. But I think you step out of bounds when you claim that others who find 
significance in the mythology of Wolfe stories are making a mistake; saying they are doing something which needs to 
be corrected.

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