(urth) Drotte-Roche mixup

David Stockhoff dstockhoff at verizon.net
Sun Apr 17 18:13:38 PDT 2011


On 4/17/2011 7:28 PM, António Marques wrote:
> David Stockhoff wrote:
>> Wolfe as a writer has been working against the kind of analysis that
>> allows for authorial error in the case of obvious discrepancies that
>> have no possible meaning consistent with the rest of the work? That,
>> i.e., authors are infallible?
>
> I wasn't even commenting on that, rather on your 'the chapter might 
> have been insufficiently rewritten' bit. Wolfe has been working 
> against the kind of analysis that wants art to be shaped according to 
> certain parametres. The chapter is what it is; barring some strong 
> evidence to the contrary, it is just how the author intended it to be.
>
> I'm talking about critics who go on about how a particular work should 
> have more of this or less of that based on what they think would be 
> more didactical to the target audience. Do they think when the author 
> reads their critic, he'll slap his forrid like 'Damn, if only I'd 
> though of that!'? Certainly it's a rare work of art that its author 
> will think is perfect; but if there should have been anything 
> different - and most of the time there isn't any identifiable thing - 
> it's seldom if ever what such critiques suggest.
>
> Certainly I think the Book of the Long Sun has 135% the length it 
> should have, but I wouldn't know how to correct that. 'Editing' isn't 
> an answer, unless it means returning the manuscript with the single 
> recommendation of 'shorten it' until the author could find out how to 
> do it himself.
How do you know "Wolfe has been working against the kind of analysis 
that wants art to be shaped according to certain parametres"? Seriously.

Certainly he struggles against assumptions of what SF is. But these 
topics have little to do with one another. If characters are introduced 
and described in chapter 1 and chapter 2 does not repeat these 
descriptions, and subsequently chapter 2 becomes chapter 1 (by the 
publisher's decision), then the author faces a very practical problem of 
reworking the text so that readers aren't confused in a way that is not 
"intended" by the author. ("INTENDED.")

Your assumption that the chapter is always "just how the author intended 
it to be" regardless of actual historical fact is what I was satirizing 
as an assumption that the author is infallible even when in error. The 
first assumption leads to the other.

In fact it's possible the error was introduced in just such a reworking.
>
>> Or was Drotte momentarily Roche, or Roche Drotte?
>>
>> Is Severian to be seen, on the basis of one passage, as a clumsy
>> bumbling oaf who can't remember anything? Does it mean that he really
>> doesn't have a good memory at all but that he pretends and makes things
>> up and isn't even very good at it, except that 100% of the rest of the
>> time he's extremely good at it?
>
> No, he isn't. His memory is convincingly good in what regards 
> recollecting even minor events, but can be faulty when it comes to the 
> details of those events (usually the unimportant ones, but who knows).
I think if Severian can't keep his sole boyhood companions apart then 
he's a bit more far gone than you allow. Their identity is not an 
"unimportant detail."

But can you give an example of such an error? Such an example might help 
your case.
>
>
>> Hey, maybe he made up the whole
>> acid-trip to Yesod.
>>
>> It's not OUR theory that would make analysis of BOTNS impossible---it's
>> yours. It's certainly possible that we could discover "errors" that are
>> explained by Thecla's or some other's presence in his brain, but this is
>> not one of them. YOU are going to have to convince US, Antonio.
>
> I am going to have to convince YOU in order for ME to remain convinced 
> of what I am convinced??
Now that's just weird. First, I am suggesting that you proffer your own 
theory explaining the discrepancy, since you are "unconvinced" by the 
one presented. Second, I am pointing out that the bad result you say 
follows from Tony's assumptions actually follows from your own.
>
>> Or maybe we could agree that GW the translator screwed up, but Wolfe can
>> commit no error.
>
> You seem hung up on the idea that the opposition to the idea that this 
> is a mistake entails the belief that GW the real person doesn't make 
> mistakes. I'm yet to see where you got that idea from.

 From you, Antonio. Although you are exaggerating it for effect.
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