Another Avern for you

James Jordan · 29 Jul 2002, 22:07 · from urth-v0207.mbox · original

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Subject: (urth) Another Avern for you
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 17:07:14 -0500
Message-ID: <urth-v0207-1477 at digest.urth.net>
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At 05:17 PM 7/29/2002 -0400, you wrote:

>Great post.  Great title.  Great discussion.
>
>Maybe Ascia is what you get when Mao reads Orwell.

Though the discussion is fun, I do think that's all it is. Any writer knows=20
Orwell and Mao and thought control; Wolfe surely knows Plato's hostility to=20
story and myth. Attempts by extreme tyrants to cut people off from their=20
pasts, and from story, narrative, and myth, are pretty ... well ...=20
timeless! (Typhon did not go so far.) Trying to go much beyond this and=20
say, "Wolfe is building on Mao, not Orwell" etc. strikes me as=20
overinterpretation -- though we can do it here for fun, planting averns --=20
unless I'm missing something significant.
         Wolfe's "point" is that story and narrative are inescapable=20
aspects of human life in the real world, and that they will break through=20
somehow even in the most mathematically "timeless" and philosophical=20
cultures that tyrants can ever attempt. Attempts to freeze history and=20
eliminate story are fruitless. Homer and the Bible win! Plato and=20
Pythagoras (seventeen) lose!
         I'm more inclined to see this as a "Christian narrative view of=20
reality" defeating a "Philosophical-gnostic timeless mathematical attempt=20
to control reality."
         But for Wolfe's "sources," well, it's all of the above, lupinated.
         Yet, another thought also: The Marxist motif in connection with=20
the Ascians is obvious, and as I say I don't think we need to try and=20
pinpoint it to Mao or anyone else. But though "Ascian" sounds like "Asian,"=20
in addition to that allusion it actually means "shadowless." Shadowless,=20
directly under the sun, seems to me a good symbol for a timeless=20
philosophical worldview. The shadows, however, are inescapable, as is=20
narrative and story. Stories are shadows cast by persons, with the sun=20
behind them, so to speak. "Loyal's" story isn't much, but it's still a=20
story. Even with the sun directly overhead, you have a little shadow.=20
(Plato does not like shadows; he wants us out of the cave.)
         Wolfe takes up shadows in "A Solar Labyrinth" (which came first?),=20
and I wonder how much light (or shadow) that tale casts on the Ascians and=20
Loyal. The shadows are cast by various objects, and block approach to the=20
true center. A nice image, if intended by Wolfe (?), of how wrong=20
narratives and culture myths mislead people into wrong patterns of life and=20
thought. Yet some of the shifting shadow-narratives-myths move people=20
gradually to the center.
         Anyway, that's an avern from me, to add to the thousands!

Nutria



--=20

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