(urth) Re: urth-urth.net Digest, Vol 3, Issue 8

[Nathan Spears]

Good grief.  I feel like I'm drowning in ideas.

> <(Gee ... I hope you're male under that name...)
> 
> What if I'm a girl?  I'm not but we really can't tell under the internet.  This is
> kind of a joke, and I'm not suggesting anything that you do, but I have noticed
> some people feel its dishonest to pretend to be the opposite sex online, not that
> I've ever pretended to be a girl. But unless you are going to meet in person, I
> dont know if it matters. I do think bodies are important, but in text we are
> genderless.

I buy this.  I'm not sure what he's getting at, except that your name isn't exactly
flowery.  Also, I don't think people like genderlessness; The Left Hand of Darkness
derives power from it precisely because the idea is so inhuman.  I think we assign
genders to people in our imagination if only to comfort ourselves.

> <That much is clearly true. In fact, there are times when he comes
> <parlously close to Poughkeepsie, to borrow Le Guin's trope.
> 
> What is poughkeepsie??? Le Guin is a very interesting person with a very
> interesting family history.

The only time I've ever heard of Poughkeepsie was in the film The French Connection,
where Popeye Doyle says,

"When's the last time you picked your feet, Willy? Who's your connection Willy?
What's his name?...I've got a man in Poughkeepsie who wants to talk to you. You ever
been to Poughkeepsie? Huh? Have you ever been to Poughkeepsie?"

Ursula LeGuin wrote a book called From Elfland to Poughkeepsie.  I can't find a
summary of what it's about, but you can buy it here for the reasonable price of
$400.

http://www.arcadiabooks.org/leguin/bibliography/abebooks_titles_editions/1973-from_elfland-Pendragon-1973.htm

Speaking of buying books, has anyone gotten this one yet?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618517650/103-3599354-1920666?v=glance
 
> I think Tolkien did think about the socio-political though not as much the
> economic situation in Middle-Earth during the Third Age in depth.  Back to the
> racial complaint, if you look at the military technology of Sauron's human
> soldiers, the Haradrim, Corsairs of Umbar, Southrons, and Easterlings they are
> very similar to Zulus, English privateers, Indians (of India), and Mongols.  With
> the exception of the pirates, South Africa, India, and China were all British
> colonies.  Sauron's chief servants are black Numenoreans, which represent
> Atlantis, the hypothetical mother culture of Indo-europe, just as the Quenya
> language was supposed to be to a certain degree an imaginary reconstruction of
> Indo-european.  Sauron is if we must make comparisions, industrialized, imperial,
> colonial Britain, where everyone is either a wage slave, an actual slave, or a
> bureaucratic and elite slave. In fact Sauron's most powerful servant and
> commanders, the Nazgul, are the greatest slaves.  Of course Tolkien believed in
> free will and not social determinism and so they are culpable (but so are the free
> peoples in their isolationism) people have been lied to, coerced, and enslaved by
> a stronger force.  Tolkien is not a luddite though, in several essays he
> distinguishes between two "magics" which also apply to culture and technology, Art
> and the Machine, and I don't know what else to call magic but benign technology
> which works with rather than against natural forms.  It seems information
> technology, nanotech, and genetics can create the extremes Tolkien is talking
> about.  The Lord of the Rings, though was written before all of these ideas, but
> it has a cybernetic feel to it. I believe Wolfe to a large degree bridges this
> gap. 

When I said that Tolkien didn't consider his politico-economic background, and
framed some potential questions, I was trying to present Mieville's viewpoint, and
not my own.  Honestly, although I like some of the things said here about his world,
I could care less.  Analyzing The Lord of the Rings for political, economic, and
social models seems to me to be like studying each facial feature of a woman from a
distance of one inch.  I'd miss the beauty for looking too closely.

You really lost me here.  I can get behind most of what you're saying, except for
that business about magic as benign technology and the cybernetic feel to LotR, but
I can't follow your train of thought.  Did you just want to get back to Wolfe by any
means necessary?

> I dont know if I want to read anymore of [Mieville's] work, not because of his
ideology,
> but just how heterogenous and manic his style is of writing is.

Hear here.  Also, his stories aren't very satisfying.

> Wolfe is an
> exception for me. So far Ive liked everything Ive read, and he is very prolific. 

He has been prolific over a long period of time.  It seems that he writes short
stories very quickly, but he works on his novels patiently; I remember reading that
he did four passes on Book of the New Sun, tying everything together.

>  That is a convention of romance, of obscuring the most important parts, because
> they are inexpressable.

I like the way you said that.


		
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