(urth) The Sorcerer's House Questions (*Major Spoilers*)

[Eugene Zaretskiy]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:07 AM, John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe the point of the story is narrative desire.  In college, a professor
> asked a class I was in if anyone believed that Trystero was "real" within
> the world of The Crying of Lot 49.  I was one of the ones who did, and when
> asked to explain why, I sort of blurted "Because it's a better story."
>
> If Bax is a con man who made up all the fantastic elements, then the story
> is prosaic, dull, and flat.  If Bax is utterly honest with us and every word
> of the letters can be believed, then the story is straightforward.  If Bax
> is artfully mixing truth and lies, and some of the supernatural events do
> occur, then the story is fascinating and complex.  I want the best story to
> be the "true" story, and maybe that's the point.
>
> One thing that's significant about Wolfe's reliance on unreliable narrators,
> and I think this is most explicit in Long Sun and Short Sun, is that he's
> mirroring an important aspect of Christian religious faith.  Believers, for
> the most part, rely upon the Gospels, accounts that are, by their natural,
> unreliable.  Wolfe seems to think that this is or can be a rational choice,
> but he's not interested in soft-pedalling the complications this entails.
> But maybe there's a Chesteronian idea at work as well, which is that stories
> that are compelling are more likely to be true--that human beings naturally
> seek to order things into coherent and interesting narratives because we
> think that such narratives best help us to make sense of the world.

Awesome. Totally on board with John's reply.

>
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Eugene Zaretskiy <eugene.zar at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > In the end, I'm not convinced that the entire thing was a total
>> > fabrication.
>> > But I am convinced that Wolfe means us to think that it's a possibility
>> > since, otherwise, I have a hard time understanding why Bax should ever
>> > have
>> > been a con man at all, unless it was just an easy way to get the
>> > character
>> > into (and then out of) jail.
>>
>> This is what I think, too. Craig, earlier you said it made sense for
>> Wolfe to write a novel where the fantasy elements are fabrications.
>> Similarly, maybe his objective is more nuanced than that (Wolfe?
>> Nuanced? Crazy, I know) and he wants to "con" readers into believing
>> whatever they want about Bax's story. If there's a level to this book
>> where Bax is the compiler and made everything up, I don't think it's
>> the ONLY path to understanding the book as a whole, but I agree with
>> you that Bax's being a con man and other such details are placed by
>> Wolfe to add to this particular reading. I'm amazed that the "debate"
>> has gone on for so long, though; you either believe it and toss away
>> any hope of understanding the book as a puzzle box (this approach
>> being understandably labeled "lame" by some) or you don't believe it.
>>
>> I get this feeling GW would be highly amused by all this. (Does he
>> read this list?) Can't the "Bax made it all up" theory co-exist with
>> the puzzle box version?
>>
>> >
>> >
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>>
>> --
>> Eugene Z
>> http://blog.eugenez.net
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-- 
Eugene Z
http://blog.eugenez.net