(urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

[David Stockhoff]

On 12/15/2011 2:23 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> *From:* Lee Berman <mailto:severiansola at hotmail.com>
>
> > Gerry Quinn: Certainly there are fairy-tale elements. But we are also
> > > left in no doubt about the deep-future background against which 
> these tropes
> > > must be interpreted. The logic of fairy-tales will be of limited 
> application.
>
> > The "limited application" is all in your head. There is probably an 
> anti-Gerry somewhere
> > who thinks the futuristic science aspects of the story are of 
> "limited application".
> > Regardless of personal bias, the fact remains that both elements are 
> intrinsic and
> > essential aspects of the book. There is no basis for diminishing 
> either of them
> > except for an individual reader's likes and dislikes.
> You said: “a sword, a giant, a sleeping beauty, magic, palaces”. But 
> none of those are really much like their fairy-tale counterparts. The 
> sword has no magic powers. Baldanders, fair enough, Severian even 
> fights him in his castle, though not for gold. Dorcas isn’t really a 
> sleeping beauty – we don’t know she was dead until she is already 
> leaving the narrative. Magic is tech. Palaces... the House Absolute is 
> underground.
> What we have learned of these things from fairy-tales doesn’t really 
> help us here. They don’t mirror their fairy-tale counterparts. BotNS 
> really isn’t a fairy-tale in any strong sense. Or so it seems to me.
> Conversely, understanding magic as technology does help us see what’s 
> going on.
> - Gerry Quinn


What strikes me about the perspective amply revealed in this post is 
that when others try to make one-to-one correspondences between Wolfe 
and myth this approach is derided, but when it's done to prove a 
negative, it's OK. Look, 1:1 logic fails to work 100%, so there must be 
nothing there.

You'd have to be blind not to see it. Terminus Est DOES have "magic" 
powers that are clearly defined in the text. Dorcas IS a sleeping 
beauty---so what if we don't understand what she is until long after we 
meet her? Fairies live underground in barrows, just like the House 
Absolute, indicating otherworldly power. The absence of "mirroring," 
i.e., a direct and literal correspondence, doesn't indicate a lack of a 
relation. It merely signifies an absence of identity. Wolfe's fictions 
are not fairy tales as we know them. Did anyone think they were?

Many beings in BNS tend toward the angelic, but no one complains that 
"angelic" logic is useless. Who knows what angelic logic is---and isn't 
that the point?

If it seems that "the logic of fairy-tales will be of limited 
application" in BNS, then perhaps one's grasp of that logic and its uses 
is to blame. I totally sympathize with the feeling that fairies are 
"clinically insane" (see _Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell_) and accept 
that apparently-insane fairy logic is stronger in obviously fairy-driven 
Wolfe stories like _Sorcerer's House_, but knowing this is not much help 
even in those cases. We barely understand fairies, if at all, except to 
know that they are bound by absolutes. And that IS the point.

The demonstrable facts remain that BNS uses fairy tale elements 
(alongside S&S and many others derived from fairy stories) and its 
universe, like Faerie, cares little for what individual humans think of 
it and its modes of reasoning. This is the essence of "otherworldly."