(urth) Horns abilities

[Daniel Petersen]

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

(Ducking and running...)*


I laid myself bare and you took full advantage.  As soon as I recover from
this dirty below the belt winding I shall thrash you soundly if I may but
find a way... (I was laughing aloud truth be told.)  Yes, the high churchman
Lewis and Williams are great and I'll happily claim them for my 'camp' (the
fine Cordwainer Smith fits here too I believe).  Of course, with Bunyan and
Milton we have some of the BEST EVER writers on our team.  Something just
seemed to go drastically wrong after the 17th century.

Good thoughts on the rest.  I'll have to ponder it all.  Especially some
idea of 'emerging' from Wolfe's text - a sense of 'completion' or having
journeyed *somewhere* during the immersion into his narratives.  I think
there must be something like this going on - no matter how otherwise
ever-open his texts remain.  (Probably something similar to going from Briah
'up' to the 'higher' universe (I forget the name - starts with 'Y'?) - the
journey's FAR from over, but you're definitely NOT where you started.

And I agree with you that Wolfe is probably sometimes too tricksy for his
own good - I trust his intentions but not necessarily his ability to deliver
- yes.  Good connection to Joyce studies too.

-DOJP





On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 7:09 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
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