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[Matthew DeLuca]

-----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)

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
-----
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.
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