(urth) Graves etc.

[JWillard]

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com wrote:

>On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:24:06 +1100 Marc Aramini 
><marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>sorry roy, hadn't checked my email for a few days.
>>
>>Yes, I was about to post something to that effect -
>>Wolfe is a reader of fiction, and while he researches
>>his novels, I think we would be surprised to note how
>>much time he has spent exclusively writing rather than
>>amassing a huge collection of esoteric and obscure
>>books that he peruses in his infinite time.  
>>
>>I think he once told me he hadn't gotten far in War
>>and Peace, nor read the entirety of Brothers
>>Karamazov.  However, to be fair, he has certainly read
>>all of Dickens and Proust and Herodotus and
>>Chesterton, and the other obvious influences.
>>
>>But you don't have to have read everything to be a
>>great creator, eh?
>>    
>>
>
>Some people seem to think it would have been a good thing if Wolfe 
>had intended to rewrite Graves, Nabokov, Dostoyevsky, Borges, 
>Joyce, Dante, The Green Knight, Parsifal, The Magus etc etc etc. 
>
>I've never really understood that. Apart from anything else, I get 
>the impression that Wolfe thinks he can do a lot better than most 
>of these supposed models. 
>
>_______________________________________________
>Urth Mailing List
>To post, write urth at urth.net
>Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
>  
>
And some people would seem to prefer that Wolfe's work was 
parthenogenic, thus blocking the troublesome avenues of unexplored 
possibilities in the work of an author who seems to constantly invite 
speculation.  I would be more sympathetic to such an argument if this 
were Isaac Asimov.  But this is a book where a torture device in the 
corner is lifted from Kafka and the blind librarian Ultan seems to 
invoke Jorge Luis Borges.  I have never understood the cut-off point 
here or the threat felt by such explorations, but there does seem to be 
a correspondence between the act of 'faith' and the belief in 'story' as 
a self-enclosed, inviolate unit.  It has the whiff of a flat-Urth mentality.

Forgive me if I step away from the dark ages.  If anyone is still in 
charge, please remove me from this list.