Silk's narrative ubiquity

maa32 · 17 Feb 2002, 17:32 · from urth-v0202.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subject: (urth) Silk's narrative ubiquity
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 10:32:07 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0202-166 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0202/166.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Rostrum stated

> I have a
hard enough time believing that the Narrator recounted whole conversations
to them verbatim, much less that he told them in detail about all the
dreams he had in the Whorl. So I'm guessing that they made up this dream,
for "literary" reasons, forshadowing Silk-in-Pig, etc.
>

I said briefly before that I believe one of Silk's special attributes is hi=
s=20
ability to inspire other people, who have not even met him, to write about =
him=20
in a way that is true in spirit if not in letter.  He can affect Fava's sto=
ry,=20
enter it, and CHANGE details as she tells it. I believe that Silk has alway=
s=20
had this power, from the first chapters of Nightside the Long Sun, when=20
suddenly everybody knows he's been enlightened, even if he hasn't told many=20
people yet.  Stories about Silk spread like wildfire.  I believe he has the=20
power to inspire stories that reflect the truth, and that these dreams may =
not=20
have been directly related to Hoof and Hide, but that his spirit works thro=
ugh=20
them to produce these texts.  As I said, I asked Wolfe about this ability t=
o=20
influence the narrative of others, and he didn't deny it, and said that Sil=
k=20
would use this power for emphasis, not to hide anything in the portions he =
did=20
not directly write.  My opinion for the factual status of the Book of the L=
ong=20
Sun is that Silk actually inspired it, and that it can therefore be relied=20
upon even if Horn's information might have been inaccurate or skewed, where=
as=20
the narrative written about Horn by Silk and Horn together can not be entir=
ely=20
relied upon because the auto corrective powers of Silk do not extend to Hor=
n's=20
life.
I don't know if that helps ... I like the idea that the Book of the Long Su=
n=20
parallels the conception of the gospels in that it is divinely inspired and=20
true without suffering from the onus of literal truth (from a Catholic=20
perspective, of course; and no offense to those who would maintain its lite=
ral=20
truth as well -> the faults of the narrator as a fallible man could certain=
ly=20
creep into the narrative if it is not taken as "literal truth" without=20
destroying the spiritual truth)
It is difficult to identify exactly what makes Silk so special ... obviousl=
y,=20
his special gift is NOT his leadership skills, or he would not have faced s=
uch=20
political problems from his closest friends as Calde of Viron, leading to h=
is=20
eventual resignation and exile.
Marc Aramini

--=20

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net