(urth) South America
Jerry Friedman
jerry_friedman at yahoo.com
Thu Nov 3 20:18:32 PDT 2011
>From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>>Jerry Friedman: The Commonwealth is clearly in the southern hemisphere,
>>and there are far more suggestions of South America than of Africa or
>>Australasia, but I don't think we're supposed to connect it with the
>>real present-day South America, still less connect the mountains with
>>the Andes or Nessus with Buenos Aires.
>
>Interesting! The debate does carry on after all. I would agree with the
>assessment that there are far more S. America references than to any other
>geographic location on earth. This includes extant and fossil animals and
>human cultural references.
>
>So I guess the question becomes: if Wolfe didn't intend us to associate the
>Commonwealth with South America why did he use such an overwhelming volume of
>South American references?
Color and flavor. These things aren't incidental--you remember that BotNS
started with a cool costume for a con, and the storyteller in "The Tale of the
Rose and that Nightingale" says that "fantasy, color, and pathos are the
chief" merits of a tale. Writers have to give to airy nothing a local habitation
and a name.
A good source of solid details is real places and cultures. South America worked
well--it's not overdone like medieval Europe, it's different from Byzantium, it
ties in with the character who has resemblances to Borges.
I agree with something David Stockhoff said--we can see the continent as
the result of a glance at a map of South America, not detailed study of the
map. I put it too strongly when I said I didn't think we were supposed to
connect it with South America, but I still see no reason to connect the
mountains with the Andes or Nessus with Buenos Aires.
Jerry Friedman
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