This week in Google alerts

James Wynn · 04 Nov 2011, 20:10 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:10:22 -0500
Subject: (urth) This week  in Google alerts
In-Reply-To: <4EB43CF2.1080106 at verizon.net>
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On 11/4/2011 2:28 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> To me, the movie The Matrix uses gnostic logic if not actual 
> references to gnostic mythology. This hardly means that the writers 
> thought gnosis was way cool. It does suggest they smoked a little dope 
> in their time.

Actually, I found The Matrix to be profoundly Calvinist--although 
largely inadvertent (but not so inadvertent as the creators claimed). 
Other than the Nicholas Cage movie "Knowing" I can't think of another 
that provoked that response from me.

On 11/4/2011 2:40 PM, Sergei SOLOVIEV wrote:
> To me,
> if you try to turn every detail into the key to all secrets, it is 
> exactly what will happen. 

Yes, but no one does that. This is a strawman argument. In fact I have 
seen people refute Lee by saying that he IGNORES important details. So 
which is it? Does he turn every detail in a 'key', or does he carefully 
select quotes to subvert the text?

Here's the deal. If I read a story story in which a blonde girl in a 
blue and white dress met a couple of fat twins, and if there were a 
discussion of "Lorina Liddell's sister" and rabbit-hole's I would 
correctly deduce that the author is making some intentional riff off of 
Alice in Wonderland. Now someone who knew very little of the story and 
background and made no attempt to educate themselves about it might say 
"Hmm, I don't really see those references." And that would be true. And 
expected.

In Return to the Whorl we have discussions of "Thyone's son" and 
Silent/Silver Silk. There are others. Even before I read tBotSS, I was 
explaining that the character Quetzal and the word "inhumi" were 
references to Dionysus.

I don't know what to say. But it's fine with me if anyone doesn't see 
references. If you know nothing about trees, you are not likely to note 
the difference between a pecan or a willow. Fine. But I *do* know what 
I'm talking about here, and Wolfe is throwing reference after reference 
to Dionysus. I can't say I know exactly why. I'm saying he's doing it. I 
don't know what it is a "key" to. I think Wolfe's work has lots of 
"keys". It's information available to you whether you use it or not.

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