Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

David Stockhoff · 16 Dec 2011, 21:39 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:39:53 -0500
Subject: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?
In-Reply-To: <C9214EA6F0CB4522912BE2AD857ED723@Rover>
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Message-ID: <4EEBBAA9.3020105 at verizon.net>

On 12/16/2011 4:05 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> *From:* David Stockhoff <mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net>
> On 12/16/2011 3:31 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> > *From:* David Stockhoff mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net
>
> >
> >
> You?ve accused me of illiteracy twice recently, if I recall correct.
> >
> > On both occasions, you were attempting to make far-fetched
> >
> > correspondences between fairy lore and elements of the Solar Cycle
> >
> > (which in fact uses fairy lore less than most Wolfe). When I refused
> >
> > to discuss the Neighbours as if they were literally fairies (because
> >
> > they are different
> >
> > from them in numerous ways), you accused me of illiteracy.
> >
> > And today, you claimed that the House Absolute is a fairy palace, and
> >
> > accused me of illiteracy when I demurred.
> >
> > On neither occasion were you able to elaborate your contentions into
> >
> > anything meaningful. Hence, I suppose, the descent into insults.
>
> >
> No. I was simply pointing out that you seem to know nothing about
> >
> Faerie, being unable to recognize it when it appears, but feel free to
> >
> behave as though you do, and yet also to abuse anyone who brings it up
> >
> in discussing Wolfe.
> I have never abused anyone for bringing it up (it must require a hard 
> neck for you to accuse me of abuse in this thread). What I have done 
> is asked you to be specific with regard to what you are arguing. In 
> the case of the Neighbours, for example, in the context of what a 
> Neighbour whose consciousness had entered that of a man would notice 
> as odd, you demanded that I answer in terms not of Neighbour 
> characteristics, but in terms of fairy lore. The absurdity of this can 
> be pointed up by considering the question of whether he would miss his 
> wings.


Ha! You demonstrate my thesis with your very first lunge. "Fairies have 
wings, therefore the defense must prove that his client has wings, else 
he be no fairy and must hang." But some of us have actually read books, 
Gerry, /without the Disney logo on them./ And we know that true fairies 
lack wings. Except, of course, when they don't.
> Or how about his underground life? Because *today*, of course, it 
> seems that fairies live underground, in accordance with your 
> ill-thought out argument du jour. Do the Neighbours live underground? 
> If not, where does that leave your argument on that occasion? Wingless 
> and buried, it would seem.

The Sidhe were always associated with barrows. Other, more literary and 
Victorian fairies tend to disdain burial mounds and live in glens. Yet 
others are matronly women who live in cottages, while others dwell in 
shining towers. Perhaps this confuses you. It confused me until I 
realized that the literature of fairies, like that of the gods, is 
complex and contradictory and is derived from many different sources and 
has been put to many different uses.
> Your accusation of illiteracy is a transparent device to divert the 
> discussion from the works of Gene Wolfe, into some nebulous body of 
> extra-textual material which need never be defined.

It's not just the fact that you have never read any literature, even the 
literature Wolfe has demonstrably read and deliberately echoes. It's 
that you insist on the very actual and concrete relationships that 
intertextual literature cannot offer. You cannot seem to imagine more 
than one sense of the word "is."

It's this aggressive insistence on a childish literalness that makes it 
very difficult for the rest of us to discuss the literature of Gene 
Wolfe in your presence. I never said the Neighbors were *actually* 
fairies, but your pretense that I did gave you an excuse to mock the 
very observation that they behave in Wolfe's mythological schema very 
much as fairies. And yet you demand that I stick to pointing out 
concrete, 1:1 relationships that simply do not and cannot exist outside 
of textbooks. You hobble us, Gerry.

You're like a playground bully who has been held back so many times he 
has a beard in third grade and is twice the size of his classmates, and 
who says, "Beat me in arm wrestling or I'll take your lunch." Since no 
one can do this you fancy yourself the king of the playground.

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