(urth) interview questions

[Jordon Flato]

Lee, though, really now.  Turn a little to the left and try to see that you
are capable of doing the exact same thing as everyone else in this regard.

Hey, I was totally willing to go along with the idea that The Fishes Mouth
was Blue, or Green.  Gerry came along and presented some textual evidence to
the contrary.  It got me thinking, and hey, you know what?  It didn't hold
water anymore (oh man, no pun intended...or can I claim that pun in
retrospect?).

For me, the big 'killer' on that theory is that I have every confidence that
Blue/Green weren't even in Wolfe's mind when he wrote that passage about the
Cumaen.  I just don't credit him THAT far.  So why should we try and shoe
horn significance to Blue/Green on that passage, when such significance
didn't even exist in the mind of the author (most likely) at that point?
It's not a matter of trying to prove that Fomalhaut is a meaningless
throwaway reference that Wolfe tossed in just for fun.  Just that it no
longer makes any real sense to try and shoehorn it with Blue and Green.  So,
I don't BURY that mystery, I just leave it unsolved and put it back in the
pile to try and fill in the whole puzzle.

To be indelicate, I sometimes sense that some on this board (turning your
metaphor around a bit), take a piece they are SURE fits somewhere and jam
and jam and jam it until it awkwardly sits in the puzzle, edges bent and
twisted up against other pieces that just don't fit with it, but they are
both BLUE or RED so they MUST belong right next to eachother! ;)   Some of
us are more liable to say:  hmmm....that doesn't really fit, let me throw
that one back into the mystery pile.

That said, I'm no literalist.  I think the 'third level' of meaning in this
book is the most important, and is what interests me the most.  But I don't
think you and I are building the same picture.  I sure do dig the hell out
of watching you build the one you're building though!

And your metaphor about the puzzle pieces is a good one.  But you need to
see, I think, that you are every bit as guilty of holding onto puzzle pieces
that don't fit your big picture as anyone.  Or at least as some.
 Generalizations do suck, I admit.  Your pieces may be different that Roy's
or Gerry's, but when Gerry responds to you, he's trying to sharpen his view
of the puzzle against yours.

I welcome that sharpening, even if I don't always accept it, because it
causes me to reflect and really try to dig at whatever scab I was picking
at.  Gerry helped me to see that I'd ignored some really clear evidence from
the text, and that made me realize how I was pretty foolish for trying to
hang my hat on something the author couldn't have possibly intended given
the chronology of New Sun/Short Sun.


I really love your contributions to the general weft of theory on these
books.   Oh man, I've gone too meta...

So, on to Sev's Humanity vs. Monstrousness.  While I conceed the point about
heroes of old often or nearly always being the product of Gods/Men Demon/Men
hybridisation, I think that very fact (and the fact that we DO see such
cross breeding throughout the books) is an argument in strong favor of
Severian being purley and utter human, not a hybrid.  If the Hierogrammates
wanted a hybrid to be the epitome of earth, they could have chosen
Baldanders, who is certainly a monstrous hybrid of his own creation.
 Severian matters because he IS a man, the epitome of man.  Unlike many, I
think Severian's journey and transformation shows him to be a man
increasingly good, increasingly willing to give up his own petty will to the
greater will of the increate.  He is also a man who carries other men and
women around inside of himself.  Monsters have tried to get in on the game,
and steer him one way or the other, but this MAN stays the straight path to
the end.

He mates with Apheta, who is ABOVE him, which is lawful.  It is the lower
looking to the higher.  (This is also why I think the Rajan says it would be
wrong to mate with the inhumu...that is the higher lowering themselves to
the lower in an inappropriate way, but this isn't the place for that).

This idea of the ladder of being, the chain of being, and the neccesity of
putting someone on the step below you you just occupied is a strong one to
me.  But it requires that Severian be a man, who rejects the base monsters
below him, and instead more and more casts his eyes upward toward that which
is higher.

Also, if you identify Severian and Noah at all, Noah was a Man right?  Isn't
that one of the reasons God loved him?  he hadn't yet been tainted?

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> >Marc Aramini: Lee, I don't think Roy is a skeptic.  His encyclopedic
> knowledge of every
> >Gene Wolfe text reminds me way more of a biblical fundamentalist.  He
> knows his Wolfe,
> >he just doesn't allow any ambiguity or contradiction, and any such
> ambiguity is refutation.
> >Roy knows these books inside and out with an admirable capaciousnes I
> could only hope to emulate
> >... but his quotes are always so black and white, and these narrators are
> SO fallible in Wolfe.
>
> Marc, I have the utmost respect for Roy and his lupine knowledge. I call
> him a "skeptic" because
> of the more recent years of his contribution here, which is to jump in only
> when there is a chance
> to undercut a theory. In the older days, Roy had his own theories he
> contributed. I think perhaps
> criticism of one's theories stings a little and some people have decided
> which side of that sting
> they prefer to be on.
>
> As you suggest, unreliable narrators are a trap for text evidence
> detectives. I'll use my recent
> example of Aunt Jeannine who firmly asserts that Dr. Veil has hung 50
> pounds of theory on nothing
> in hypothesizing that abos have replaced humans. Then we find Aunt Jeannine
> IS Dr. Veil. How much
> more unreliable can one be than that? And all that was just in 5HoC the
> novella.
>
> You'd have to be a super-hyper genius or something to conclude that Veil's
> hypothesis is actually
> correct from the information Wolfe gives us in 5HoC the novella. All we get
> is that Number Five is
> able to scare off Dr. Marsch by calling him an abo. Who the hell could
> figure that out, especially
> as we are distracted by the clone/Mr Million story. Wolfe had to write the
> full novel before we could
> figure it out, and even then, only toward the end.
>
> I liken it to a jigsaw puzzle. WOlfe throws all the pieces into the text
> and we are supposed to find
> them and sort them into a picture. BUT he also throws in contradictory
> evidence. Basically these are
> puzzle pieces that don't fit into the big picture. Wolfe ALSO expect us to
> identify these as false
> evidence and discard them (like Aunt Jeannine's 50 pounds). This is where
> the skeptics are fooled
> over and over again. They hold onto the false pieces, ignoring the big
> picture, and using the fake
> evidence to discredit the big picture.
>
> These false leads can be identified because they never lead to a big
> picture. They are orphans out
> there by themselves, treasured only by certain people to undercut the
> theories of others. I guess maybe an
> example would be the focus on the planet around Fishes Mouth in the
> constellation Pisces. Some point to
> there being "one surviving planet". Some to the red sun status mentioned.
> What is the point of that?
> To prove that Fomalhaut is a meaningless throwaway reference that Wolfe
> tossed in for fun? Fish. FISH!
> Look at all the fish; they are everywhere. Don't throw away the fish
> picture. Throw away the fake pieces.
> They lead nowhere.
>
>
> FWIW, I can imagine Gene Wolfe deciding to write this way after a career
> surrounded by engineers who,
> tried to assemble their God and Jesus (or deny the existence of God) using
> the nuts and bolts evidence of
> the physical world, oblivious to the need for a spiritual leap of faith to
> see the big picture. (God, like
> Wolfe, throws us some false evidence, like fossils, to prove to the naive
> materialist that God does not exist)
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