Gender and creation myth

Marc Aramini · 24 Sep 2012, 13:20 · from 2012-September.txt.gz

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From: marcaramini at yahoo.com (Marc Aramini)
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2012 06:20:07 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Gender and creation myth
In-Reply-To: <506057C2.2070307 at verizon.net>
Message-ID: <1348492807.99798.YahooMailClassic at web160701.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>



--- On Mon, 9/24/12, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:


Not least the question of time, if Green is Urth, assuming that is your assumption. So far everything has been simple, then suddenly it becomes complex. Also, I doubt Wolfe intends "evolutionary tree" to be part of the metaphor. It's too recursive. And I doubt Quetzal would call inhumi "debased."

I think you're on the right track. I agree that Quetzal's story tells us something about men and trees and vines and neighbors---but it seems to me that it should be expressable in fewer words. Something more childish, with a moral of sorts. Like the original.
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All well and good, but ...
I'm not sure Short Sun/ what is going on can be expressed in a few pithy words.? "Paradoxes explain everything ...?they can't be explained".? 
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There are several time disjunctions, however, such as different passage of time between one visit to Urth and another when talking to Severian at the end of RTTW, and the odd presence of a Rajan figure in the ancient stories told at the beginning of In green's jungles, Oreb and all.? The power to "enter" people's stories seems game breaking.? Comments about how there is a similar feeling between Nessus and the city of the inhumi, and the inhumi's claim that "we are everywhere!" after visiting urth.? Of course they are.
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And, of course, the green man has access to the corridors of time.? It's not like Sevs story is a universe in which time travel is categorically impossible.
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Complexity is par for the course in short sun.? I honestly think Wolfe wanted to obscure who, what, why, how, when, and where in the novel.? Even the black/white shrinking/growing ring: first he says it is the same ring, then a different one - indeterminacy is the name of the game in Short Sun, though I think there is a bottom rung of meaning, of which the narrators are blissfully ignorant, because they cannot recognize where they are or themselves.
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