(urth) interview questions

[Gerry Quinn]

I have always thought it should have been called   A Story, by "John V. Marsch".  But perhaps that would have been giving the game away too easily.

The problem is as you say, it doesn't work if we take it as maximally unreliable, because it is our only source of information for so much; we have no means of testing the reliability of the narrator with regard to the different elements.  Not giving it credit would render the full book basically meaningless.

We also have Word of God on the issue:
"I decided to present the Sandwalker story as a legend or story that Marsch had uncovered, rather than as straight reportage, because I wanted to keep all three stories set in roughly the same time frame-the "present" of the opening novella. Since the period in which the Sandwalker scene was-in terms of the "present" found in the rest of the book-taking place in the distant past of the planet, it made more sense to say, "Here's a legend that has survived from that period" rather than simply jumping into the past and presenting it directly."
< http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/wolfe46interview.htm >

If I am interpreting that correctly, there's nothing unreliable there personal to VRT/Marsch, and really no indication of anything unreliable except in terms of characters presented within it, as would be the case if it were presented directly, which is an option Wolfe avoided only for stylistic reasons.

- Gerry Quinn

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jerry Friedman 
  To: The Urth Mailing List 
  Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 7:02 PM
  Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions


  I'm interested to see people taking "'A Story', by John V. Marsch" as a source of factual-in-the-fiction information.  I took the title to be a strong indication that it's maximally unreliable and that to the extent we get information from it, it's information about what Marsch believes or wants to believe or especially wants his fictitious readers (who are they?) to believe.  Or just what he thinks would be cool.



  Of course, this led me to the wrong conclusion (that there were never any abos or Shadow Children), and when I learned I was wrong, it led me to think puzzling over "'A Story'" would be too hard, so maybe that's why people aren't doing it.

  Jerry Friedman

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