(urth) Silk's origin

[Gerry Quinn]

From: Lee Berman 
Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2011 5:23 PM
>Antonio Pedro Marques: 

[to Marc]
> > I find your approach radically different from Lee's. 
> >You're a bit like Sherlock Holmes, trying to make sense of the evidence, 
> >trimming out the impossible and putting your trust in the however improbable. 

> I agree that Gerry and I have different approaches but I'm not sure this 
> characterizes the difference. I see Gerry's approach as imbued with an 
> essential reliance on parsimony, much like Roy C. Lackey's before him.
> He works very hard to find evidence to contradict what seem like improbable
> explanations in favor of more pedestrian ones. If there is a mantra to be
> found in Gerry's posts it is "very unlikely".

Fair enough, except that I do not consider the opposite of “improbable” to be “pedestrian”.  “Probable” is of course the natural opposite, but while a probable explanation is clearly better qua explanation than an improbable one, there are aesthetic values involved too, such as economy.  And an imagined world that works of itself, not as the stumbling puppet of some bizarre ruling equation that is secretly encoded in the text.  

I do not consider, for example, that a theory is more “fun” as a function of how absurd it is; it is hard at times to avoid the feeling that something like this forms a large part of your aesthetic.  You will appreciate that such ideas are hard to reconcile with more traditional critical approaches. 


> There was a recently
> illustration of the difference between my and Gerry's approach. I found a Wolfe
> quote which contradicted an idea of mine. So I posted it and said I was wrong.
> Gerry recently noted a Wolfe quote which contradicted his interpretation and he
> said Wolfe was in error.

I’ve noted it before, and I noted it again as an argument that might be made against the idea that the Shadow Children are the descendants of the original human discoverers of Sainte Anne.  Wolfe referred in passing to the shapeshifters as the Shadow Children (I think that was what he said) in an interview some fifteen years after the book was published.  I think he just made a mistake in the interview, yes.  Read the book and pay attention to the what the Old Wise One says (paying attention also to who he is composed from, which varies over time) and we are told the story straight out.

- Gerry Quinn
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