Preferring the Given

Michael Straight · 28 Mar 2001, 20:54 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (whorl) re: Preferring the Given
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 20:54:15
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0507 at digest.urth.net>
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On 28 Mar 2001, Dan Parmenter wrote:

> From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
> > So perhaps I can be forgiven for feeling, when Horn mentioned how the k=
ite
> > builder told them stuff they put in their book, that Wolfe was talking
> > directly to me, and, when Horn mentions it for the THIRD time, that
> > Wolfe thinks my bulb is particuarly dim.
>=20
> Hey, don't be so hard on yourself.  And if Wolfe really was reacting
> to you, I'd think you'd be flattered!  If anything, perhaps he was
> being hard on himself.

Chagrin at Wolfe being hard on himself was what I was really getting at. =20
I didn't literally think he was talking to me.  I was just a little sad
that he felt the need to spell all that out.  The question wasn't so much
"Can Wolfe cover all the narrative bases?" as "Do Horn and Nettle take
some poetic licesnse here and there?" and I was actually happier with a
few loose ends that seemed to point in that direction.  (Fortunately, we
can transfer all that now to wondering about the stuff by Hoof
et. al.) =20

Wolfe seems surprisingly less interested in that kind of
ambiguity--witness his willingness in interviews to directly undercut
Crane's point of view and say that, yes, the Outsider is real--considering
how good he is at creating it.

-Rostrum

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