(urth) Disingenous Gene

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

On 7/25/06, b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Is it just his evasive personality, which is thus reflected in both his
> writing and his speech? Or a deliberate attempt to make sure nobody can ever
> understand his stories?  Or..?

More than anything else, I think it's a matter of not wanting to give the
game away -- he has repeatedly claimed that everything we need to
know is there, and he doesn't want to tell the answers. I think he
sometimes takes this to frustrating levels: no, I don't believe he ever
actually _lies_, but I believe he sometimes responds in ways that ...
how shall I put it? ... use the truth in misleading ways.

Take the Kaballah thing. He never actually said he wasn't familiar
with it; he said he had used it for "some names and ideas." That
sounds dismissive ... but what does "some ideas" mean? Ideas can
be big or small; he can mean the idea of multiple universes or he
can mean the whole four-worlds, ten-sephiroth structure of the
Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Or anything in between, or outside that
range entirely.

Again, I refer you to the essay on Onomastics in _Castle of the
Otter_. Wolfe states plainly: A thing's name states what it is. I guess
that's my bottom line; he makes a firm rule like this, puts it in print,
and then ignores it _only_ for naming worlds? Seems unlikely to
me, at any rate.

--Dan'l

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
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"Shovels are essential to the fantasy genre.
However, they are primarily used by the authors rather than the
characters." -- Stephen R. Donaldson