(urth) Horns abilities

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

Daniel Petersen wrote:
> I too am an adult convert to Catholicism, among
> other things

> You've converted as an adult to other religions as well?  Heh, heh, just
> jokin'.

Other philosophies, to be sure.


> Well, I admit I didn't expect you to go there, but, yeah, if we're talking
> about a Logos-cosmos when we say things like 'the world is text' or what
> have you, then I'm right there with you.  That's the metaphysics I think
> Wolfe brings to his craft - and the craft is richer for it in my opinion.

I agree.

> (Incidentally, I accept such a worldview as well, though not myself RC - a
> lowly Proddy I'm afraid - we can't seem to make any great authors of our own
> so we are ever the barnacles on the great RC writers - though I'm proud to
> steal a ride from such legendary vessels as Chesterton, Wolfe, O'Connor,
> Percy, Lafferty, etc.)

Oh, but! You have such giants as LaHaye and Jenkins!

(Ducking and running...)

Seriously, there are some pretty darn good Protestant writers,
starting with Lewis and Williams (though they're both pretty
high-church, in Williams's case so high it's basically Catholic Lite).


>> I think that to understand what
>> Wolfe is doing here we must understand not only the textuality of the
>> text but the _radical_ textuality of the "internal" reality of his
>> stories.

> Don't think I understand this bit.

What I am saying is that inside the text there is nothing but more
text. If there is anything "extra-textual," it is what _we_ bring to
the text. ("Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts.") The
text is composed of signifiers, which (can) signify only because they
are part of the web (_textus_) of other signifiers that constitutes
the text. As above, so below: the text is fractally textual, when you
dig down into it you find the structure of the larger text, repeated
to infinity (or as close to infinity as a human creator can manage).


> What _is_ there
> for us to interpret, but the text and its intertextuality?
>
> I'm not sure Wolfe ever gets so far down inside a narratological rat's nest
> that he or we can never emerge.

What would it mean to "emerge"? To emerge from Wolfe's text is merely
to return to the larger textus of "reality," of which we are
signifying nodes ... but then, so is Wolfe's text, it is embedded in
the larger textus which allows it to signify.

> From interviews I'd say he definitely
> envisions us going all the way through the labyrinth and out again,
> bewildered and humbled, yes, but also wiser and nobler.  We readers have a
> hard time trusting him about this and even wonder if it's just one more lie,

I think Wolfe is a very tricksy writer, but honest in his way. Even
his unreliable narrators have their reliability -- once you decrypt
_why_ they are hiding you can decode _what_ is hidden. But Wolfe is
sometimes too tricksy for his own good and it can be hard to figure
out all the "why"s.


> I think.  But I have to say, without any thought as to whether I ever
> understand even a small percent of the intertextual mysteries he delivers, I
> do trust his face-value claim that he's not just trying to irretrievably
> confuse his readers.  (I'm not saying this because I think you, Dan'l,
> mistrust Wolfe's claim - I don't know one way or the other.  It just occurs
> to me in thinking of being potentially locked only into his 'internal'
> text.)

I do indeed trust Wolfe's claim, but distrust his ability to _deliver_
on it. I don't think he deliberately creates insoluble puzzles, but I
suspect he becomes frustrated with our inability to find what, to him,
is so obvious. There's a passage in Campbell and Robinson's "Skeleton
Key to Finnegans Wake" where they say that Joyce is driven to his
obscurity because he is desperately trying to tell us something too
obvious for clarity, or something like that. I think that Wolfe is in
his way as obscure, and as brilliant, as Joyce -- and _far_ less
impressed with his own cleverness than Joyce was.


> I guess I mean that I don't think unreliability is the last word in Wolfe,
> even though he has made such extensive use of it.

I don't know if there can ever be a "last word" in any text as rich as
the Solar labyrinth, but I agree that, if there were, it would not be
unreliability. Wolfe is striving for clarity.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes