This week in Google alerts

Gerry Quinn · 04 Nov 2011, 15:38 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2011 15:38:51 -0000
Subject: (urth) This week in Google alerts
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W61AA73087FF4CC07656EC2CFDA0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W61AA73087FF4CC07656EC2CFDA0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <DF6390E025FB40748A98CF46069FACC1@Rover>

From: Lee Berman 

> > James Wynn: Incidentally, I really like Lee's identification of Silent Silk and
> >Silver Silk with Silenus and Silvanus. That's an excellent catch, and I'm kicking
> >myself I didn't see it first.

> Heh. Thanks for remembering that James. Yeah, I was familiar with the Silenus and
> Dionysus connection but the silent/silver thing got me motivated to dig a little
> and find Silvanus.

Right.  Some woodland god who shares one syllable and no etymology with the English word silver, and has at best a tenuous connection with Dionysus.  Of course that must be the explanation!  Why worry about the quite plausible derivation of Silent Silk and Silver Silk (for a single god, not two) that Wolfe gives us in the text?  Only jealous, negative people bother with the text!

> But the deepest layers of an onion are not more real or true or necessary than the
> more superficial layers. The same is true about people and works of art, imho. An
> author adds depth and richness to his/her work by creating at multiple levels so I
> don't see why the audience perceiving and appreciating those levels should be seen
> as debasing it.

I see a problem when a continual torrent of supposed ?levels? are proposed by readers who don?t appear to recognise the need for or even validity of any methodology for assessing the difference between a genuine correspondence or some spurious ?link? dreamt up out of random noise while trying to confirm some other highly questionable theory.

- Gerry Quinn
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