barrington interview

Norwood, Frederick Hudson · 06 Oct 2014, 12:08 · from 2014-October.txt.gz

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From: NORWOODR at mail.etsu.edu (Norwood, Frederick Hudson)
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 12:08:25 +0000
Subject: (urth) barrington interview
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The readers who spotted Richard Nixon are clearly wrong.

More generally, I think most allusions and symbols in Wolfe are classical rather than modern.  His comments on modern politics seem blunt and obvious ? the world is going to Hell in a handbasket.  No puzzles there.

Also, I find Wolfe enjoyable on a first read.  The depths are fun to probe, but the surface is fun, too.  Thus I do not see Wolfe as a puzzle game, where unless you solve the boss puzzle you lose.  Rather as many layered fiction, with something extra for those who read the classics.

Rick Norwood

From: Urth [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On Behalf Of Ant?nio Marques
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2014 7:30 AM
To: The Urth Mailing List
Subject: Re: (urth) barrington interview

At the end of the day there must be more to a Correct Reading than that the author saying that's how he thought it out, which is an external factoid.

On 6 October 2014 12:18, Lee <severiansola at hotmail.com<mailto:severiansola at hotmail.com>> wrote:
>Jeffrey Wilson:  This does not make it sound any less reasonable to me.

>There is no particular need for all the puzzles to be of the same difficulty or the
>answers to have the same verifiability. Some of the easiest puzzles may
>have the hardest to verify answers if the hardest puzzles are built on
>them.

For me this is a dodging of the essential question here. Which is:

Who is right?

In another interview, Wolfe said something about all the crazy theorists of his

work but that there were some readers who basically understood all his work.

There are thousands of Wolfe readers who have spent much time and thought

trying to understand his work. Which are the ones who have the correct understanding?

Who are the ones who are way off base?

Without an authoritative identification of who is getting things right and wrong, we are

each given an open invitation to assume that one of the readers who does get Wolfe

correctly is, of course, ourselves.

If Borksi were still posting on this board I'm sure he'd be able provide multiple reasons for

why he is right and Marc is wrong. If there is truly to be some sort of assessment of correct

 interpretation, there needs to be auctorial authority or at least a  firm majority consensus to

base it on. On most of the issues which are discussed here, I don't see either.
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