If I already like ...

Marc Aramini · 18 Apr 2012, 19:03 · from 2012-April.txt.gz

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From: marcaramini at yahoo.com (Marc Aramini)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:03:47 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) If I already like ...
In-Reply-To: <1334771289.54055.YahooMailNeo at web84518.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <1334775827.63518.YahooMailClassic at web161804.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>

Well, with for me the difference between Wolfe and Crowley is probably one of the underlying ethos and actual belief in the supernatural.
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>From Crowley:
"I myself don?t believe in fairies, or ancient magic, or secret histories ? any more than I believe in the Pickwick Club, or Gormenghast, or Winesburg, Ohio."

Nothing in Crowley has led me to the astonishing moments when I realized, wait just a dang minute, these trees are eating people and spitting out copies, or wait just a minute, Peter Palmer was born in 1931 - never have I felt that there were infinite possibilities lurking under?Crowley's prose of any spiritual profoundity, though Engine Summer and Little Big come close.? The conclusion of the Aegypt cycle really led me to that conclusion - underneath it all was banal decisions of everyday life, no transcendence, no permanence, metafiction without transformation, without a profound organizational principle that honestly and truly believed in itself, instantiated itself,?without independent existence.
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Crowley never really talks about the things that really interest me outside of Engine Summer.? Wolfe does, all the time.? 
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I guess I liken it to the difference between cleverness and the stereotypical academic's attitude I read in Crowley and the true spiritual longing I feel when I read Wolfe.? Crowley is decent - he just doesn't speak to me that way, especially in Aegypt, which had some great parts but could have done without that ending.
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--- On Wed, 4/18/12, DAVID STOCKHOFF <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:

From: DAVID STOCKHOFF <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) If I already like ...
To: "Craig Brewer" <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>, "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, April 18, 2012, 10:48 AM

Again, well put. The few times I encounter negative personal (i.e., nonprofessional) reviews of LB, the same causes are cited: repetition, inaction, lack of resolution. These are at least observable and therefore superficially real---but they are the kind of challenges that made me reread it again and again. What DID happen? How DID it end---or did it? To me, a thousand pages with only a few gorgeous glimpses of something exalted and unreal just behind the veil are well worth it. 

Some people may not get it that the story eventually turns back around to themselves. What are they left with when the Tale moves on, to wherever it goes, and they return to their own lives? Truth and meaning will not be delivered to the reader as on a plate---maybe can't even be achieved, merely sought and approached. Readers of Wolfe should not find this situation unfamiliar.
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