Wolfe and Materialism

Marc Aramini · 13 Feb 2011, 19:17 · from 2011-February.txt.gz

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From: marcaramini at yahoo.com (Marc Aramini)
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2011 11:17:11 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (urth) Wolfe and Materialism
In-Reply-To: <C3DE61399A5146BB85051540DD0EC27F@jill>
Message-ID: <744594.44602.qm at web161809.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>

Okay, just a quick note.  Sure, the Outsider is the cause of the Enlightenment, but there usually is a mechanistic explanation in Wolfe to match the symbolic one.  The tent of the Pelerines: hot air producing a ghostly castle in the sky, its still a sign, but it has a physical cause, because the increate is there, in every physical cause and effect, if I read the beach scene correctly.

I just think in Long Sun this is inverted, Pas planted that little scene with Kypris a long time ago in Silk, but it actually served the plan of the Outsider, too, so that it was a physical enlightenment set about by Typhon that was like a blood vessel exploding and also a real enlightenment, just like the tent scene.  In support of this I can only say that at one point, Silk is very very sad because he realizes his enlightenment was just a vessel breaking as Crane posited, much later in the text, and this seems like a strange denial of the Outsider coming from him, unless it is true, but at the same time NOT true, if you know what I mean.

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