(urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

[David Stockhoff]

On 12/16/2011 5:16 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> *From:* David Stockhoff <mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net>
> *> *On 12/16/2011 4:05 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
> > > > Ha! You demonstrate my thesis with your very first lunge. 
> "Fairies have
> > > > wings, therefore the defense must prove that his client has 
> wings, else
> > > > he be no fairy and must hang." But some of us have actually read 
> books,
> > > > Gerry, /without the Disney logo on them./ And we know that true 
> fairies
> > > > lack wings. Except, of course, when they don't.
> > > Or how about his underground life? Because *today*, of course, it
> > > seems that fairies live underground, in accordance with your
> > > ill-thought out argument du jour. Do the Neighbours live underground?
> > > If not, where does that leave your argument on that occasion? 
> Wingless
> > > and buried, it would seem.
>
> > The Sidhe were always associated with barrows. Other, more literary and
> > Victorian fairies tend to disdain burial mounds and live in glens. Yet
> > others are matronly women who live in cottages, while others dwell in
> > shining towers. Perhaps this confuses you. It confused me until I
> > realized that the literature of fairies, like that of the gods, is
> > complex and contradictory and is derived from many different sources 
> and
> > has been put to many different uses.
> In which case demanding that I express my thoughts on what an amnesiac 
> Neighbour consciousness inserted into a human body might sense as odd 
> in terms of fairies, rather than what we know of the Neighbours, is a 
> bit stupid, isn’t it? Given that the sort of fairies they were 
> supposed to like was not ever defined. Yet you even demanded 
> references to literature about fairies.


I asked you to cite any evidence outside your own head.
>
> > > Your accusation of illiteracy is a transparent device to divert the
> > > discussion from the works of Gene Wolfe, into some nebulous body of
> > > extra-textual material which need never be defined.
>
> > It's not just the fact that you have never read any literature, even 
> the
> > literature Wolfe has demonstrably read and deliberately echoes. It's
> > that you insist on the very actual and concrete relationships that
> > intertextual literature cannot offer. You cannot seem to imagine more
> > than one sense of the word "is."
> I have no problem with various senses of various words, so long as it 
> is made clear what sense is being used. As for the issue that was 
> under discussion then, which was to do with James’s theory about what 
> happened Horn in the pit and what Horn might have been expected to 
> experience thereafter, I don’t recall you contributing anything 
> regarding it.
> As for literature, I may not have read as much as you, but perhaps I 
> read it better. Now I recall it, there was another time you accused me 
> of illiteracy: when I disputed your characterisation of the ‘Hunter of 
> the east’ as Orion. My offence was to read the poem itself, rather 
> than churn out a risibly mechanical correspondence between ‘hunter’ 
> and ‘Orion’, ignoring the clear Sun metaphor in the poem itself. If 
> the latter is what constitutes ‘knowledge of literature’ in your mind, 
> I’ll pass.

It's impossible to "read better" if you haven't read enough. I don't 
hold it against you.