(urth) PF as YA

Fred Kiesche recursive_loop at yahoo.com
Mon Apr 20 09:25:39 PDT 2009


If you are a deacon (we have four in our RC parish) and your wife dies, you've made a committment to become a priest...


F.P. Kiesche III
"Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at The Lensman's Children and TexasBestGrok!

--- On Mon, 4/20/09, "Fernando Q. Gouvêa" <fqgouvea at colby.edu> wrote:

From: "Fernando Q. Gouvêa" <fqgouvea at colby.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) PF as YA
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Monday, April 20, 2009, 11:29 AM

I don't quite remember the rules, but isn't there some special provision
for men who were married before becoming priests?

Fernando

Allan Anderson wrote:
> Henry Eissler wrote:
>> Fernando Q. Gouvêa wrote:
>> 
>>> See my other comment about "YA". I'm not sure what
that means any more. But I still think the themes in PF are appropriate for
young adults, and especially young men. This seems to be a concern of
Wolfe's. Our society seems no longer interested in "manliness",
but Wolfe is.
>>> 
>>    I think I would have worded that differently, but that in the end
we'd be talking about the same thing.  I agree.  I hadn't thought the
novel was intended for a younger audience, but it could have been.  I think the
spectre of "Treasure Island" helps that impression.
> I should ask my sister the youth librarian what she thinks. She's
pretty much of the, "hey, if it gets them to read, it's okay"
school when it comes to sex and swashbuckling in novels. But would it draw in
and reward a Young Adult audience, that slippery category?
>>  
>>> That is my reading as well, though I think that we're also
expected to see that some of Chris's choices are pretty bad choices. The
business at the end about the vow of celibacy is a particularly discomforting
one.
>>    I realize now that I was somewhat stating the obvious.
>>    I didn't get the part about Chris making bad choices.  His plan
to break the vow of celibacy, for instance- didn't disturb me.  At that
point Chris was long past having decided that his own relationship with God was
unique.  Perhaps the danger of that is part of what the book tries to explore. 
But also, the woman in question was his wife.  Why he made such a vow in the
first place, I don't know; but the idea of breaking it bothered him enough
to mention it in his "confession".
>> 
> You make some very good points! Hey, do you think he took his vow
partially because he thought, "there can be no other woman for me but
Novia"? IIRC, he doesn't figure out that he can possibly go back until
after doing so; I'm not 100% on this chronology, though.
> 
> It's still creepy. Hey, you know that old monk guy who's living
with you? Well, he's really the same person as your dashing teenage pirate
husband! On the up side, you have someone to help take care of the baby
(possibly with a lot of loot). On the down side, you've traded in your
handsome young man for someone much older (something you ran away from, if I
recall). Plus, there's this priest who keeps checking out your ass.
> 
> At what point does Chris wearing the cassock become seriously deceitful?
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
> 
> 

-- =============================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea             Carter Professor of Mathematics   Colby College 
                   Editor, MAA FOCUS
5836 Mayflower Hill               Editor, MAA Reviews
Waterville, ME 04901              http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/
http://www.colby.edu/~fqgouvea

It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to
utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful
mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.  -- George Bernard Shaw


_______________________________________________
Urth Mailing List
To post, write urth at urth.net
Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net



      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090420/ae24831d/attachment-0004.htm>


More information about the Urth mailing list