delany, etc.

maa32 · 29 Jul 2003, 06:15 · from urth-v0307.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) delany, etc.
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 23:15:11 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0307-3804 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0307/3804.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

I had to comment on one statement that was made -
that Wolfe might think that Borges and Delany are better writers than him? =
 I=20
have the suspicion that Wolfe doesn't like Delany's writing that much - he=20
said he couldn't get through Dhalgren and much preferred Report on Probabil=
ity=20
A by Aldiss.  I'm sure he admires Borges, but I wonder how much of his=20
humility is at times fake: "Everything I write is wonderful" - I know he sa=
id=20
that at a convention.  If I had to go out on a limb and say that Wolfe felt=20
like a lesser writer than anyone, it would probably be Dickens, Proust,=20
Shakespeare, or Chesterton - who were kind of prolific.  And I don't think =
he=20
really believes that.

Yes, it was absolutely awful how Mr. Wolfe was treated at Odyssey.  People=20
take their manuscripts personally.  Having read just about everything Wofle=20
has written except perhaps 10 stories, I have come to the conclusion that=20
there is one reason that I might find Wolfe a difficult teacher: he really=20
doesn't like to explain himself.  I was blessed some time ago: Mr. Wolfe=20
perused one of my manuscripts.  He said, "You have a wonderful idea here. =20
Many wonderful ideas.  But you will have to get much better at writing befo=
re=20
you can do justice to them.  You explain yourself way too much."

I was infinitely grateful for his input - and I regard it as extremely=20
positive - yet here is the rub: everyone who has ever read my work says I n=
eed=20
to explain more, because it doesn't make sense - that I make too many quant=
um=20
leaps that should be explained.

I'm sure Wolfe is a wonderful teacher. On the other hand, I knew many=20
brilliant research scientists at my undergraduate college who weren't as go=
od=20
at teaching as some high school or community college teachers because they=20
couldn't simplify in terms that a student could parse and digest.  I mainta=
in=20
that some people are too brilliant to be teachers, because those who can't =
do,=20
teach.  Like me!:) Unfortunately, talent isn't a contagious disease.  I wis=
h=20
it were.

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