Lupiverse(es)

Daniel Petersen · 16 Mar 2012, 15:58 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com (Daniel Petersen)
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:58:44 +0000
Subject: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W436521E20A737355C9F87ACF5E0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W436521E20A737355C9F87ACF5E0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <CAGB0RZ6FP6=74UnP526H5SQiU8aL5FRN8zmDZ9+HvGzKqXgJ+A at mail.gmail.com>

Ha, thanks everyone for engaging so profusely with my initial rant.  I
think all the angles have been well-covered.  I'll just add that any of you
who think Lewis and/or MacDonald have little literary merit and are
reducible to dishonesty and/or didacticism, well...

you can go suck an egg.  And I wish you speedy recovery from your literary
myopia.  :)

As to Lee's direct question:

Just as a thought experiment, what would the reverse bring for you? What if
there was, say, a deathbed confession by Wolfe that all his work was meant
to
subvert belief in Christ and promote worship of Satan or Dionysus. Would
you be
out?

This did happen to me in the past few years with one of my favourite
singers and lyricists, Nick Cave.  First I just loved his musical and
lyrical artistry - some of my all-time favourite stuff.  Then I noticed his
lyrics were consistently more and more 'God-conscious' and even
specifically 'Christ-conscious'.  Then he started professing to believe in
God and in Christ (if in an idiosyncratic sense) - then his lyrics became
even more blatantly 'Christian'.  Then he suddenly said in several
interviews on the back of his second novel coming out (The Death of Bunny
Munro) that he did not believe in the literal existence of a personal God -
contradicting quite clear statements in interviews in very recent years.
 Was I confused and even disappointed?  Yeah.  Have I abandoned enjoying,
following and analysing his work?  No way.  Do I think the discussion is
closed?  Uh-uh.

-DOJP

On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 7:30 PM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
> >Daniel Petersen: PLEASE (EVERYONE) LISTEN TO THIS IF NOTHING ELSE:
> >I'm worried that some here can only stomach Wolfe if he can be kept
> >ambiguous about Catholic orthodoxy and that if it could ever be shown that
> >HIS FICTION clearly 'favours' the Church, then they would be out.  I'm
> >beginning to wonder if the need to keep that at bay fuels a lot of the
> >debate here.
>
> Daniel, there has been much militant atheism found in the media in the past
> few years so I understand your concern. I don't think it is has a good
> basis
> when it comes to the Lupiverse though. Consider Peter Wright who, in
> Attending
> Daedalus, takes a deeply analytical view of BotNS which is entirely
> secular.
> Despite Wright's atheist leanings I don't think he is any less of a Wolfe
> fan
> when forced to acknowledge Wolfe's Christian influences on his writing. I
> suspect the same is true for any militant atheists who happen to reside
> here.
>
> Just as a thought experiment, what would the reverse bring for you? What if
> there was, say, a deathbed confession by Wolfe that all his work was meant
> to
> subvert belief in Christ and promote worship of Satan or Dionysus. Would
> you be
> out?
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