(urth) Wolfe being clear on 5HoC

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

On 9/10/06, Daniel D Jones <ddjones at riddlemaster.org> wrote:
> I largely agree with you on this, but I would add that one needs to
> distinguish between the symbolism/message of a text, and the actual
> events the text describes.

An interesting but ambiguous point.

Delany writes, somewhere, of a passage in one of his books
that begins: "The city, now deserted..." Due to a typo (not caught
by the dyslexic Mr Delany), in the first several editions of the
book the phrase read: "The city, not deserted..." It was called to
his attention by a student writing a thesis on the paper, whose
argument depended heavily upon the as-printed reading. That the
city (which certainly _appears_ to be deserted) is "not" deserted
formed the root of a strong argument for a particular interpretation
of the text.

Delany's reaction was to congratulate this person on the acuity
of his reading, agree with his interpretation ... and correct the
typo in future editions.

Where does the author's intention lie? Delany is, to be sure, an
oddly modest man, but that he accepts the interpretation as
completely valid for the book as printed illustrates something that
seems obvious to me: once the book is out of the writer's hands,
interpretation is solely the responsibility of the reader.

To put it in a slightly different light, have you read Norman
Spinrad's THE IRON DREAM? If not, you probably should; if
so, you'll understand what I mean when I say that, after reading
it, you can never read a generic swords'n'sorcery novel in quite
the same way as before: you'll perceive in it entire classes of
meanings that the author almost certainly did not intend, and
that, just as almost-certainly, are really and truly and clearly
present in the texts. (THE IRON DREAM is one of the most
brilliantly subversive books I've _ever_ read...) One odd
consequence is that the (almost any) generic S&S novel is a
significantly different object of interpretation in the hands of a
reader who has read the Spinrad, from what it is in the hands
of one who has not: yet the words on the paper have not changed,
and certainly the author's intentions (assuming the author had
any intentions beyond three-cents-a-word) have not...

> What started this exchange of observations, as the subject still shows,
> was Wolfe's comments on the issue of whether or not there is an
> exchange of narrators in V.R.T.  In this case, I'd say that
> Wolfe's comments are of primary rather than tertiary value.

I'll grant you secondary. If Wolfe says that there is a change of
narrators, and there's no evidence otherwise in the text, I'll grant
that Wolfe has privileged knowledge that can be usefully applied
here. If there's significant evidence in the text that militates against
Wolfe's interpretation, I'll argue happily that he is _not_ privileged
as over against the text.

If a writer claims that "What I _meant_ to say is...?" then my
question is, inevitably, "Then why didn't you _say_ that?"


> There are many of Wolfe's works where a primary challenge is to
> determine exactly what occurred.  If Wolfe can not answer with
> authority as to the actual events of the story he wrote, then certainly
> no one else can either

I'm comfortable with that. Ambiguity is part of life. Hell, we can't
say for certain whether one man or several committed a murder
in public, in front of thousands of witnesses, in Dallas in 1963.
"What happened?" is never simple, and there may be no way to
achieve a clear answer. I believe Wolfe's texts reflect this aspect
of reality, and even if he has a clear idea of what happened, his
writing is so "realistic" in this sense that it may well be that there
is no authoritative solution to be found in the text. If so, then that
won't be changed by auctorial fiats after the fact.

> and discussing or trying to solve the puzzles degenerates into
> instances of navel gazing.

Trying to solve, perhaps; but perhaps the point of the puzzle is
not the solution but the process of trying to solve it. Like a
Rubik's cube: when you solve it, what have you got? A cube.
The solution matters not at all; the process of solving (or trying
to solve) is all.

If you have a crossword puzzle in front of you, and the answer
is in the back of the magazine, do you immediately look at the
answer? I think not; the answer is itself meaningless. It is the
process of solving that matters.

I'm not suggesting that -- if Wolfe's cunning ambiguites _do_ have
solutions -- the solutions do not matter. I am, however, suggesting
that if they do, the value of the solutions is to a significant extent
to be derived from the process of seeking them, and that a shortcut
like consulting the author deprives the solution of some of its value.
When stumped, an external clue from the author may help set us
on the right path, but I won't accept the external statement as
"true" until it's verified from _within_ the text.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
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