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-----Original Message-----
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <danldo at gmail.com>
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: 4/13/2007 1:38 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) Vonnegut (1922-2007)
6 quoted lines
On 4/13/07, don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com> wrote:
"Stuff happened" is almost everything. "Someone made
stuff happen" is usually laid over it by people trying
to make sense of that "stuff". Christians hardly have
a lock on interesting fiction, nor are athiests
excluded from it.
The last point is certainly true; the first has some truth to it -- but, really, in terms of narrative (and we are creatures of our narrativity), intentional actions are far more interesting than agentless actions.
One of the most impressive narrative tours-de-forces I have ever read was Fire, by George R. Stewart (author of the SF classic
Earth Abides), which took a firestorm as its more-or-less protagonist, and managed to give it agency without personializing it. He did the same thing, less successfully, for a storm in a book called (of all things) Storm.
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
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http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer http://www.danehyoakes.com Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.