(urth) the prime calcula/his citadel and oreb

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "Marc Aramini" <marcaramini at yahoo.com>
--- On Sun, 1/16/11, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:
> > I think the more obscure clues can often be pointers to the
> > ideas Wolfe is getting at, but I also think that in his SF
> > it's the concrete events and details - the stuff that
> > actually happens - that holds the key to
> > understanding. It's not the Mystical Kabbalah - it's a
> > science fiction story, guys!

> I think we have to agree to disagree about his style.  He elides
> habitually.  He just does it, he isn't a concrete straightforward
> writer and these cryptic little visions operate almost exactly like
> Kabbalah to some degree.  When you read Peace did you read
> it already hearing that the narrator was dead?

It's a long time since I read Peace, and I can't remember whether I had 
already been exposed to other peoples' ideas about it or not, so I am not 
claiming any exceptional perspecuity in this regard.  But I think I decided 
almost from the start that the narrator was dying or dead, and eventually 
settled on dead - being punished, or at least troubled for his sins in life. 
In the context of the kind of book it is, both dead and dying can work, but 
dead is simpler, more elegant, and opens up more possibilities.  Because 
Peace is *not* a science fiction story.

If Peace were SF, on the other hand, I'd have looked for ways in which he 
might be dying, or at least dead but still materially conscious in some way, 
like the characters in Ubik.  There are different kinds of stories, and they 
require different kinds of analysis, or at least different emphasis.

[Let's not get diverted by the fact that soime books cross genre boundaries; 
the fact is that authors write to communicate with readers and this means 
that there is a kind of implicit contract that is only seriously broken in 
special cases.  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd may be a fine book of its kind, 
but Agatha Christie would soon have lost her popularity if every one of her 
books used the same gimmick.]


> I hope someday some merciful publisher decides to publish my stuff [--]

Good luck!  Have you submitted it anywhere?


> Some people write that way, and Wolfe has proven to be one of
> those guys, or his narrative would not be so confusing.

In my opinion, it's often less confusing than people make it out to be.


> He is a cryptic writer, and these gaps and mysteries (ie - saying Silk
> is a grown embryo, then showing us two sets of parents, then Silk
> saying "I found out something about how I came to be in the tunnels")
> - might mean that we CAN infer his parents - or there would not be
> these abominable hints, location stated and all. Why bother to show
> us two sets of parents if we couldn't at least propose plausible 
> identities?
> Just for the heck of it? Maybe sometimes he doesn't want them assembled,
> but other times he has a concrete solution in mind. He is a far more
> mystical writer than the usual Hard SF writer, and a far more interesting 
> one.

Well, the reason there are two sets of parents is that he originated as an 
embryo placed on the Whorl before launch.  So showing them is not 
necessarily an important hint in itself, any more than showing that Oreb has 
feathers.  There is no secret in Oreb having feathers, the incident in which 
they are mentioned is to do with Silk's pen.  And Silk's pen probably isn't 
a hologrammatic guide to the history of the Whorl either.

Does that mean there's no reason to look for plausible identities?  Of 
course not!  It's entirely possible and even likely that Wolfe has an exact 
family tree in mind for Silk.  But the clues could be anywhere, and the 
correct solution must fit ALL the facts (within reason, some discrepancies 
can always be reasoned away if a solution works otherwise), not just the 
clues in the place where one has a feeling that the clues are hottest.

And the other thing that has to be remembered, I think, is that the book 
isn't *about* Silk's family tree.  Knowing it, if it's knowable, may 
certainly enrich the story.  If there's some genetic connection to Typhon, 
it may provide explanations for certain plot events.  But if one's ideas 
about Silk's family tree can only be made work by disintegrating most of the 
facts in the other 1000-odd pages of the story, then there's something wrong 
with them.  The clue may be there, it may be real, but it has led one in a 
wrong direction.


> But there IS a way to make the dream statements true, just as
> there is a way to make the "riding a beast with three horns"
> symbolically true, with a few associations and applications.  If
> they were random, we couldn't make them true so easily.  Jokes
> don't have extensive textual resonance, dream statements that
> are random don't corroborate other comparisons in the text

But if you wind up with two obviously different planets having to be the 
same planet, then there's clearly something wrong!  Either the clue wasn't 
what you thought it was, or it was intended in a different manner, or you 
followed it correctly for a bit but at some point veered off in the wrong 
track.  It doesn't prove the clue was false or the insight was useless, it 
just shows that it doesn't work the way you first thought it might work.

- Gerry Quinn