Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

Craig Brewer · 23 May 2011, 16:27 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 09:27:08 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?
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>>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.

This is often where I end up with many of the "puzzles" in Wolfe stories. For 
example, it's important to me in _The Sorcerer's House_ that Dunn *might* just 
be putting on an elaborate con. I don't think he is in the final analysis, but 
that book seems to me so thematically forceful on the point that magic involves 
as much deception and confusion as supernatural power, that it has to at least 
be a possibility that the text offers.

The same with Severian and his true nature. It seems important to how that book 
presents religious truth as often dark and misleading that Severian himself has 
to be at once a potential Messiah and a potential dupe of aliens. The 
possibility that he might be both at the same time is way more interesting (and 
says a lot more about human relations to the divine, even for an orthodox 
believer) than if he's just a Christ allegory.

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