forlesen

forlorn

sorry I was sending an attachment of a word document to finish working on the write up and in my autopilot state I sent it to the urth list instead of myself. A big picture for Forlesen continues to elude me besides "work is hell" and an empty exploration of a creativity problem in which actors run through the motions of pointless working life on Earth. Oil everywhere, Forlesen finds a book detailing what he just went through with one word changed, glass and mirrors do not show what they should, the cop is hooked up to his cop car by tubes, the pillars holding up the road move, wild horses wind up in a dog food factory ... the whole set is constantly under construction like that one Theodore Sturgeon story where a guy accidentally sees the set up for tomorrow in progress. Forlesen thinks of his feet as shoes at first, as if he has put on the flesh as a costume. This is the only work of fiction written before 1987 that I feel there might be no objective bottom to.

Bah, I spent enough time in middle management for that to be enough to explain the story (I still think Peace embodies Wolfe's guilt for his part in creating the disgusting 'Pringles'). Aside from that, maybe echoes of Pohl's 'Tunnel Under The World'. - Gerry Quinn

Frick used his ill-gotten gains from oil and the railways to found a beautiful house and art gallery on the East Side of Central Park, which I visited this spring. It is an amazing building, with art from most of the pantheon of painters up to the Impressionists. I don’t really see any connection to Wolfe’s story, but is the gaining of wealth by dubious means in any way excused by setting up a collection of paintings for posterity. (It does seem likely that they were only meant for his own personal enjoyment, but we are lucky to be able to enjoy these pictures now, so who knows?) Allan

It's strange indeed, but the ubiquity of oil everywhere in Forlesen and the fences around the buildings as if for defense really do seem lifted from the life of Frick, the name of the man whom Forlesen believes he should be. I hope someone can do something with "Forlesen" to make it spring into focus a bit. Certainly the character Frick is the most important of his E.F. generation. If there is indeed any historical reference in the story, that one is much, much more subtle than naming a character Carnegie or Rockefeller. I don't even know that my write up explains anything at all, honestly. I do feel the wood in the building and the office room which smells of apples must be somehow culled from the apple tree on Abraham's farm - but does this business world have any knowledge of good and evil? And I am bothered by the name Emanuel quite a bit. There doesn't seem to be any hint of redemption save that the coffin has an engine and seems like a ship to set him free. The Creativity Group must be talking about creation as a holistic idea - perhaps even gnostically - a recreation of a debate that doesn't use the original participants, as if Forlesen is involved in an instructional movie or something. Thus the inherent problem of the influence of Kafka on Wolfe - they actually have very different cosmological artistic goals, and I am never sure if "Forlesen" should be approached as a Kafkaesque work of naturalism (in which case what we have is what we get and the dots don't ever have to add up) or a Wolfean bit of clever but subtle transmogrification which somehow does the opposite of what it seems to do and might possibly even serve the idea of free will and justice.

I> don’t really see any connection to Wolfe’s story, but is the gaining of wealth by dubious

Balzac claimed that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Perhaps the same is true for every great monument, art collection and Wonder Of The World.