Extended Meditation on Rorschach Novels (was RE: (urth) Coldhouse Banshee)

Andy Robertson · 27 Aug 2002, 17:08 · from urth-v0208.mbox · original

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From: "Andy Robertson" <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Extended Meditation on Rorschach Novels (was RE: (urth) Coldhouse Banshee)
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 18:08:29 +0100
Message-ID: <urth-v0208-1614 at digest.urth.net>
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>
> I looked a post about the coldhouse prank and the Banshee
> story, and saw a correspondence I'd never seen before -- that,
> to the best of my knowledge, nobody had ever seen before. Did
> Wolfe put it there? Consciously or unconsciously? How could we
> even know? Wolfe wrote the book thirty years ago; chances are
> he doesn't know at this point.

Writing is like all other ways of dealing with reality.

Ultimately, you know, we write our own narrative of life:  we create our own
book, as we live,  perceiving this and ignoring that.   We form our own
reality.

Which is why, I think, we are able to read books at all.

Writing good stories is a matter of *subtracting* everything unnecessary
from the tale.   But so is remembering.  So is understanding.  So is
perceiving, even - in this whirlwind world we are endlessly forced to filter
out all but the core elements of reality.

And so a story that is written down may consist *only* of those core
elements and may work very well.

This is how a thread of ink conjures up a universe.

How does Wolfe attain his unique effect?   By going just a little furthur
than others.

In his stories, the process of memory and storytelling (they are the same
process, actually, they are the thing we all do)  has gone on a few steps
furthur, a few layers deeper.

It has become dream, metamemory, vision . . .   Wolfe.

But it is still organically  the same thing.  recognisably the same thing.
It feels right.  It is what we all do, all the time.

And this is why he is so good.

    hartshorn

--=20

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