Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 23 May 2011, 16:12 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 09:12:50 -0700
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?
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On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 9:06 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is inevitable that people will try to work out what these
> elements are...even though it is likely (based on the solution to the Apu
> Punchau mystery) that they can be resolved beyond further dispute.

I'm guessing you meant to write "not likely."

At any rate, I want to think that anything we can't resolve is not (in
any ultimate sense) important to understanding what Wolfe wants us to
understand -- that is, if there is ambiguity in the story, then he
intends ambiguity in the "meaning" of the story. Sort of like the
cosmological equivalent of a "choose your own adventure" book.

For example: I am convinced (and have held forth on this before) that
every universe Wolfe creates is in some way _embedded_ in orthodox
Catholic theology. That is not provable from the texts, and someone
who disagrees will not take the same "meaning" away from the texts
that I do.

(This is also, I suspect, intended as a lesson about Biblical
exigesis... what we come away from the texts with depends on what we
bring to the texts, and we can't impose one reading on all readers.)

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

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