(urth) GUTs and so on

James Wynn crushtv at gmail.com
Tue Aug 24 14:23:18 PDT 2010


  On 8/24/2010 3:34 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> Sometimes ... and I want to be clear that I'm not singling anyone out
> here ... nor is this a recent but rather a recurring thing ... I get
> the feeling that there's a competition going on, whose rules I am
> unaware of, but the objective of which seems to be the erection and
> successful support of the most baroque and prima facie implausible
> theory concerning some Lupine matter; the prize being simply the gasps
> and awed admiration of our fellow Wolfeans, and that this competition
> is rather like a circus act, in that the value is not in the thing
> done but in its difficulty.

I am feeling a little singled out.

Look, it's not really a baroque or complicated explanation. It's not 
intuitive, but it's founded on one pretty well-known event in text. And 
lots of little clues that many people have agreed were clues without an 
answer to unify them into anything. It doesn't require supposing vast 
histories that are undescribed or unalluded to. I'm surprised large 
parts of it was even a big mystery to anyone who has read to In Green's 
Jungles, even though it was a couple years after I first read "Short 
Sun" that the the bit about Hy occurred to me. But I can be a little slow.

The reason I'm not just laying it out on the fly is that I do know in 
advance that some people will _hate_ it -- on purely philosophical 
grounds, regardless of what the text says.  And I want to make it clear 
that I'm not singling anyone out here. ;-)

  So, I am at least going to get the textual references down before 
present it as a whole--although I mentioned parts before. Dave Tallman 
asked me to explain it and that's why I'm explaining it. If I'm 
performing a circus act, I'm performing on request. Wait. Then throw eggs.

J



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