silk, the dancing toy, gods in the tunnels

Lee Berman · 28 Aug 2013, 17:33 · from 2013-August.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:33:59 -0400
Subject: (urth) silk, the dancing toy, gods in the tunnels
Message-ID: <BLU175-W31DDDBB6EF3F1F4C4F5151CF4B0 at phx.gbl>

Silk does only exist to convey details from Wolfe's pen to the reader's 
eye.

>Gerry Quinn: True in a technical sense. The question, however, is whether 
>some of those details relate to Silk as a character.

I will slightly disagree. More specifically I think the question is whether 
some of those details relate ONLY to Silk as a character and not at all to
plot or themes. Such details can perform double and triple duties, and with
Wolfe I think they often do.

>....all I have proposed is that Silk is endowed  with a small amount of 
>humanistic autonomy - the ability to occasionally dream random thoughts as he 
>falls to sleep.

I think it is a good proposal and one well worth considering. We can never know
what Wolfe's conscious intentions, not to mention any subconscious intentions, 
were during his writing. Surely some of Wolfe's writing is meant to perform only
tne single duty of character development. But which?

Perhaps there is consensus on some lupine issues, but where there is disagreement
and debate I am willing to guess that Wolfe's own answer, as a caring author,
might be, 

"Whichever way makes it a better read for you".

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