Digest urth.v030.n100

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 30 Apr 2001, 08:42 · from urth-v0030.mbox · original

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From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Subject: (urth) RE: Digest urth.v030.n100
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 08:42:20
Message-ID: <urth-v0030-0363 at digest.urth.net>
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I wrote:

>> Au contraire: I am in fact too sophisticated _not_ to be offended
>> by religious bigotry, whether it favors or disfavors mine own
>> belief-system. I find, e.g., books like "This Present Darkness"
>> quite as intolerable as, I suspect, I should find the Pullmans.

And Alga responded:

> You might not find them so intolerable. He's not drum-beating, he's
> just presenting the Gnostic PoV.=20

As well as (say) PKD does in the VALIS triplet? (Of course,=20
PKD's gnosticism is as quirky as anything else PKD wrote...)=20

> Considering the millions of reams of printed paper that have shored
> the other side, I think that's fair enough.

Millions? Billions. Sagans.

> Interesting, too. And, man, does he do suspense well!

Okay, I'm convinced to (at least) give them a try. Probably
be a while (I'm in the middle of half-a-dozen other things
right now, including the very bogged-down COMMEDIA, a=20
Sayers novel, CSL's volume of OHEL...)

But I suppose I ought to at least ask what you mean by=20
"presenting the Gnostic PoV." In the sense of showing the
Gnostic worldview? Fine. In the sense of "the evile Xtians=20
suppressed the good and noble Gnostics?" I have no more=20
tolerance for that than I do for "the evile Xtians suppressed=20
the good and noble Wiccans," where the "Wiccans" (at least as
presented) are almost entirely a 20th-century invention, or
"those horrible Muslims suppressed the good and noble Christians
and Jews," equally fictitious. (If you haven't caught the=20
pattern here, it's the "good and noble" far more than the
"suppressed" that I regard as an outright lie.)

> His villainess, Mrs. Coulter, starts out, you think, as a
> fairly standard Morgan la Fay-type heavy, but she gets a
> lot more complex as she goes along.=20

Oh, good. The ability to portray evil characters is all too=20
rare in fantasists -- Tolkien is redeemed here only by Gollum=20
(and to some extent Saruman); Lewis' villains, except for=20
Screwtape (and Weston, but only in _Perelandra_) are hideous=20
strawmen; and don't get me started about Donaldson. The=20
problem seems to be that, once the fantasist has characterized=20
a character (in his own mind -- and the "his" is deliberate)=20
as "evil," he then places that character beyond all sympathy,=20
and so all hope of sympathetic or realistic portrayal.=20

The alternative seems to be to have no conflict between "good"
and "evil" but rather between competing interests -- this is
for example the solution we find in Eddison's Zimiamvia books
(but not really in WORM), and to a lesser extent in Martin's
current "Ice and Fire" epic (wherein one faction is portrayed=20
with their own PoV but remains, nonetheless, pretty much beyond=20
the pale of the readers' -- and, I suspect, the writer's --
sympathies).

As for Wolfe (he said, desperately attempting to drag the
conversation back to something like topic) ... H'mmmm ... I=20
thought Typhon was pretty much a caricature in the NS books,=20
but LONG and SHORT seem to have refurbished him rather=20
severely, albeit offstage. Is there a single flat villain=20
to be found in Wolfe?

[...]
> What is "This Present Darkness?" Is that one of those
> "Christian best-sellers?"=20

Yes. Bad CSL imitation -- in fact, very specifically, bad
imitation THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, which is probably CSL's
single weakest novel.

> Did you read it?=20

Not all of it. Only up to the loud bang where it hit the
wall.

> I'm gonna read one a them thangs one a these days just
> outa curiosity.

Probably the best of the bunch would be JOSHUA, by a guy
named Girzione.

--Dan'l

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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