Heresy

Spectacled Bear · 27 Feb 2001, 14:51 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: Spectacled Bear <spectacled.bear at pobox.com>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Heresy
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 14:51:59 +0000
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0374 at digest.urth.net>
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At 11:34 2001-02-19 EST, BMeyer7 at aol.com wrote:=20
>>>>
OK, reading this list, it=20
is striking that after 7 books in this series, the very, very, smart people=20
posting cannot come up with a consensus about what the hell is going on wit=
h=20
respect to key issues.
<<<<
...
>>>>
 Has Wolfe crossed the line from not giving all the answers=20
to creating texts that must be pored over by talmudic scholars rather than=20
actual readers of novels?  Is Wolfe writing for a smaller, and smaller=20
audience of  expert Wolfe-interpreters?  Discuss. =20
<<<<

I strongly suspect that the inability to reach a consensus is *because*
of the very smart scholars here, not despite it. There's too much
invention and over-interpretation going on in those fertile brains,
and the straightforward interpretation is lost among the possibilies.
It's like quiz programs, where most people can answer questions like
"which species of white bear roams the unspoiled wastes of ..." because
they have only ever heard of one kind of bear being white. Bear experts
are less certain because they know black bears can be white, even without
being albino.

Spectacled Bear.

"...it represents for me all that monomaniacal fabric of argument, so
tightly woven that not even the tiniest objection or spark of light can
escape its net, in which human minds become enmeshed whenever the
subject is one in which no appeal to fact is possible" - _Sword_, Ch. 38

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