"Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe

Jerry Friedman · 30 Apr 2011, 21:33 · from 2011-April.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 14:33:03 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
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> From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>

> On 4/30/2011 2:30 PM, Gwern Branwen wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 12:56  PM, Jeff Wilson<jwilson at io.com>  wrote:
> >>  I've seen this part of the interview before, somehow...
> > 
> > It's  been quoted at least once before:
> >  http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0012/0558.shtml
> > 
> > It's a  great quip and sums up a lot of people's impression of _The
> >  Dispossessed_ (at least, it did mine), so I suspect it's been alluded
> > to  or quoted before in other places.

Very different from my impression, though I don't think it's a flawless book by 
any means.  What book was a previous version of it?  And which planet did Wolfe 
think was Russia? 


> Yeah, I know that feeling. I read,  "Those Walk Away From Omelas," and thought, 
>"This is supposed to be some kind of  utopian/dystopian comment? Thhese people 
>have this tremendously prosperous,  liberal, industrialized society with the 
>only externality being train smoke and  the lower classes shrunk to a single 
>person! Boy, are those people walking away  in for a surprise."

Unlike /The Dispossessed/, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" isn't about 
practicalities.  I'd say it's a dramatization of the William James quotation 
about morality and moral feelings.

Since I assume Catholicism is on topic here, I hope I can compare it to another 
quotation:

"The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from  heaven, 
for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to  die of starvation 
in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I 
will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should 
tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse."

--Cardinal Newman, /Apologia Pro Vita Sua/

Jerry Friedman

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