(urth) Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod

[DAVID STOCKHOFF]

"I mentioned dialog because narrative is the opposite. "

Agreed.

"It's meant as a full description for an unknowing audience."

Usually. Not here. 

A well-known author---I can't recall who, but it wasn't Wolfe---once commented that storytelling isn't about providing information, not even in a strategic sequence. (I forget how it was put, so I'm paraphrasing.) It's actually about withholding information. Or, if you will, releasing it only in a carefully controlled manner.

Or, in any discussion of Wolfe, not releasing it at all. (Or as Lee says, releasing it and then denying it. See also "leaking.")

I understand that you think the Hiero makers are our homologues, but there's no real reason to think that. It's just one possibility Wolfe doesn't really address. In fact, it's based on what I'd say is an excellent example of a naive reading.


--- On Thu, 8/12/10, António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> wrote:

From: António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Thursday, August 12, 2010, 1:57 PM

DAVID STOCKHOFF wrote (12-08-2010 18:25):
> "When reading dialogue one must pay attention not only to what is said
> but to how it is expected to be said."
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> If the intent was "They were very like you, but with one major
> difference," then I would expect to read "They were very like you, but
> with one major difference...."

Not at all. The dialog doesn't go that way. It doesn't focus on how they are different, that's mostly a by-product.

Sometimes you want to know if it is late and you ask what time is it, instead of whether it's late or not. Communication is built on context; your inner context, which leads you to ask only for the small subset of data you think you need - it often leads to others having to ask you to say what it is that you really want to know, instead of the specific datum you demanded -, and the outer context, which leads you to provide only the small subset of information that you think can't be inferred - it often leads to people misunderstanding what you say.

I mentioned dialog because narrative is the opposite. It's meant as a full description for an unknowing audience.

> Also, I should add that "cognate" is itself an invitation to suspect
> identity. The term denotes a word or thing of identical or shared
> origin. Recall that the narrator is part-Translator. And who knows what
> the Men of Urth actually call themselves?
> 
> A race of women would by definition be cognate to a race of men; a race
> of Green Men would be the same as a race of Men: one must be derived
> from the other. A race cognate to Homo sapiens might be Homo habilis.
> But it can't be something too different.
> 
> And yet it allows some doubt.

By cognate I simply read 'filling the same niche'. Homologue, if you like.
Though I also think that Briah's humans are not readily distinguishable from ours.
_______________________________________________
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/20100812/0201f3a8/attachment-0004.htm>