(urth) This week in Google alerts

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Sat, 11/5/11, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at clueland.com> wrote:

> From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at clueland.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) This week in Google alerts
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Saturday, November 5, 2011, 10:02 AM
> On 11/5/2011 11:23 AM, Marc Aramini
> wrote:
> >
> > We can agree it's not simile! that would have been
> cool and more clear.
> > "No, no, no! Green is like or as Urth!" bwa ha ha ha
> ha ha.
> > The fallout from that chain of events is why I stopped
> posting for
> > YEARS. (and there was a point in Wizard Knight where
> it said "Garsecg
> > was [someone]" and when I pulled that quote out
> someone asked the editor
> > of Tor if it was a typo, received confirmation it was,
> and I realized
> > the list was no longer a useful place to discuss Wolfe
> to achieve a
> > deeper understanding; I would have to do it on my
> own)
> 
> Why would that occasion disqualify the list in that way?
> 
> 

Insights were actively quelled, dismissed as irrelvant by editors, close analysis of the text was cosntantly being put to Occam's razor in a way that is simply not viable when discussing a cryptic author like Wolfe concerned with identity, lying, and obscurity, and the crash of the list at that time had me defending the same points over and over and over - when anyone can re-read and see that the ruined city on Green, once pointed out, is the physical remains of Nessus.

Gever's unethical behavior had angered me to an immense extent.  I was going to wait to get Gene's permission to share the information, yet Gevers proposed a small private exchange of information which I assumed would be secure until I had attained that permission, and in my avarice for "secrets" I agreed, sharing it with him.  He laughed and said it was just a big joke on me, (on a Christmas card, no less) told me his secret was Gene was not going to write any more Sun books, then confronted Gene about it immediaately, an event which prevented Gene from ever sharing anything about his works with me in the future.  

The point is that Gene liked me and my interpretive style, and that was a VERY specific correction to a VERY specific theory, and there was immediate corroboration in the text. He corrected nothing else about my Short Sun theories. In addition, Gene didn't want to put out the final word on this- he hid it hermetically for a reason, to be an endring but not insoluble mystery, so I SHOULD have just kept it to myself, but it is difficult when you care about something as much as I care about Gene's work.

I realized that, even when confronted with the truth, the list could not see it and would disagre; not until Dave Tallman started posting on An Evil Guest years and years later did I see much interesting interpretive work being down in the fashion that Wolfe's work requires.  I would see soemthing like, hey, these trees are fishy five years after I extolled my theory and quell the urge to retread the same worn paths of disappointment.  

I sound like a prick, I know; sometimes you are right and no amount of disavowal can change that.