Horn dies

James Jordan · 27 Feb 2001, 09:24 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at home.com>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Re: Horn dies
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 09:24:38
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0376 at digest.urth.net>
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At 12:23 AM 2/27/2001 -0500, you wrote:

>The characters are themselves, but they also act in the patterns of
>the Christian story (and, though it's less thematically central, they
>go about taking on the roles of Ulysses and Odin and others as
>well...)  I suspect that Wolfe doesn't even see this necessarily as a
>literary device.  If certain historical events are also the essential
>story of the universe, it is not a stretch to expect a God who acts in
>history to "retell" echoes of that story throughout time.  Or, as
>Chesterton says about God being "young enough" to enjoy telling the
>Sun to rise every day, not getting bored with it as we would*, Wolfe
>believes the Outsider could go on telling stories about exodus, the
>blind seeing, the lame walking, and death and resurrection.

This is called "typology," and it is the way Christians read the Old=20
Testament: various events and sequences of events anticipate by analogy the=20
events in Jesus' life. Similarly, events after Jesus' life reflect=20
backwards the events of His life. No surprise that Wolfe sees things this=20
way -- he's doubtless heard many homilies in church along these lines --=20
especially in a series of novels that are fairly explicitly "Biblical."

Pat. Nut.=20

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