Forlesen

Marc Aramini · 15 Sep 2014, 16:09 · from 2014-September.txt.gz

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From: marcaramini at gmail.com (Marc Aramini)
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 09:09:23 -0700
Subject: (urth) Forlesen
In-Reply-To: <A775A9F1D2ED43BDA040F00A4FF8B2A5@AllanHP>
References: <A775A9F1D2ED43BDA040F00A4FF8B2A5@AllanHP>
Message-ID: <CAF1072x0ZWUEsH_JWcRE649TxE8+bToBKYJdSDPiMNj6dDm1WQ at mail.gmail.com>

It's strange indeed, but the ubiquity of oil everywhere in Forlesen and the
fences around the buildings as if for defense really do seem lifted from
the life of Frick, the name of the man whom Forlesen believes he should
be.  I hope someone can do something with "Forlesen" to make it spring into
focus a bit.  Certainly the character Frick is the most important of his
E.F. generation.  If there is indeed any historical reference in the story,
that one is much, much more subtle than naming a character Carnegie or
Rockefeller. I don't even know that my write up explains anything at all,
honestly.

I do feel the wood in the building and the office room which smells of
apples must be somehow culled from the apple tree on Abraham's farm -
but does this business world have any knowledge of good and evil?   And I
am bothered by the name Emanuel quite a bit.  There doesn't seem to be any
hint of redemption save that the coffin has an engine and seems like a ship
to set him free.  The Creativity Group must be talking about creation as a
holistic idea - perhaps even gnostically - a recreation of a debate that
doesn't use the original participants, as if Forlesen is involved in an
instructional movie or something.

Thus the inherent problem of the influence of Kafka on Wolfe - they
actually have very different cosmological artistic goals, and I am never
sure if "Forlesen" should be approached as a Kafkaesque work of naturalism
(in which case what we have is what we get and the dots don't ever have to
add up) or a Wolfean bit of clever but subtle transmogrification which
somehow does the opposite of what it seems to do and might possibly even
serve the idea of free will and justice.

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 2:42 AM, Allan Lloyd <a.lloyd748 at btinternet.com>
wrote:

>   Frick used his ill-gotten gains from oil and the railways to found a
> beautiful house and art gallery on the East Side of Central Park, which I
> visited this spring. It is an amazing building, with art from most of the
> pantheon of painters up to the Impressionists. I don?t really see any
> connection to Wolfe?s story, but is the gaining of wealth by dubious means
> in any way excused by setting up a collection of paintings for posterity.
> (It does seem likely that they were only meant for his own personal
> enjoyment, but we are lucky to be able to enjoy these pictures now, so who
> knows?)
>
> Allan
>
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