(urth) Fish and Caves

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>
>>Gerry Quinn: I thought you raised some interesting associations, but there 
>>was nothing
>>really specific to grasp. Some of those fish associations are likely 
>>meaningful - others
>>probably are not.  How do we decide which are which?
>
> Gerry, once again I won't pretend to understand the basis of your 
> probability estimates.
> Treating fiction like a scientific assessment seems to miss the point. I 
> suspect you are not
> actually counting and calculating anything in your estimates but simply 
> using your intuition to
> decide what you like and, most often, don't like, just like the rest of 
> us.

I made no estimates - I just noted that if one free associates ad infinitum 
on the subject of fish, a proportion of the associations that come up will 
probably have no meaningful relation to the text.


> Now for me, ever since I learned that Wolfe did not invent any of the 
> strange terms or names which
> are found in BotNS I have been operating on the basic assumption that 
> there is not a single passage
> or word which does not have significant meaning, with most having meaning 
> on several levels.

Even if this is assumed, not every association of every word will be 
meaningful.


> So you asking which parts of the book are meaningless is, for me, an odd 
> question which betrays
> an unfulfillng quest. I consider it a possible goal to read BotNS and have 
> none of it seem like
> pointless gibberish (as parts of it must, to the first-time reader). I'm 
> actually pretty close
> to this goal. I have a long way to go for Long and Short Sun though. Your 
> quest to maintain
> meaninglessness is sort of interesting but not really something I could 
> ever share.

Where do I suggest that parts of the book are meaningless?  I have said that 
some possible interpretations of parts of the book must be wrong.  I 
wouldn't have thought that would be very controversial.

- Gerry Quinn