Wolfe and Materialism

Lee Berman · 11 Feb 2011, 18:15 · from 2011-February.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:15:37 -0500
Subject: (urth) Wolfe and Materialism
Message-ID: <SNT123-W343BE9249A430D219BAF5BCFEF0 at phx.gbl>

>James Wynn: Initially, Wolfe did not intend to write "Urth of the New Sun" 
>and fought against the idea.

>Now, do you believe it was really possible to come to an unequivocal 
>conclusion from the four volumes of 'The Book of the New Sun' that 
>"Severian would travel through time to become both the Conciliator and 
>Apu Punchau, rather than being a reincarnation, avatar, or descendant. 
>And that the world would drown with the coming of the New Sun"? Yes, 
>after "UotNS" one can see that the clues were there. But would anyone 
>have chosen those conclusions over all the other possibilities?

James makes an extremely good point. UotNS may be as close to a "test"
or "experiment" as we'll get with WOlfe literature. We know he never 
meant to write UotNS so we can go back to the first four books and
find the places Wolfe expected us to find clues to solve the mysteries.

I'd say those places primarily are:  1.Dr. Talos' incomprehensible play; 
2. the cosmic ramblings of Malrubius; 3. Random one offs and self-musings by
Severian scattered all through the text in ways difficult to connect.

>Gerry Quinn: For example, I think that in BotLS Silk is 
>enlightened by the Outsider, and Crane's theory about a mini-stroke is wrong

While I think that Crane's theory about a mini-stroke is correct. AND Silk
was enlightened by the Outsider. Both levels are correct. The mini-stroke 
allowed the rearrangement of neural patterns which led to the enlightenment.

Is it silly to think that the deity may have a purpose in what we consider
simply a health problem? Dr Crane is a very competent doctor. Where he
makes a mistake (in Wolfe's eyes) is in thinking a mini-stroke can ONLY be
a blood vessel breaking and nothing more.

(hm...weer had a stroke. Was he enlightened? Or perhaps were we?)

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