(urth) theories

[Sergei SOLOVIEV]

I would like to say a few words as well -

I mostly agree with Gerry when I look and wonder at the endless 
discussions where (almost)
everybody tries to push forward his own theory and usually pays very little
attention to the solidity of his own arguments
 >Gerry Quinn

 >I think you (and some others) greatly misunderstand the nature of 
Wolfe’s books. You seem to think >of them as some sort of puzzle in 
which a hidden underlying story, cloned from some ancient myth or 
 >other, is disguised as a science fiction story. The object (you think) 
is to peel away the extraneous >matter and locate the crossword clues to 
the true story you think is lurking underneath. You clutch at >every 
possible classical reference because with those there’s always some way 
to play six degrees of >Kevin Bacon towards whatever scheme you are 
trying to impose on the story.
 >Why would Wolfe engage in a complicated, arbitrary, pointless scheme 
such as this? He is writing >his own stories.

There are especially many theories trying to declare that different 
personages are
identical, many theories trying to see incest everywhere... And theories 
are often so similar -
it reminds me a short story where a poor guy wanted to kill himself
and invented more and more methods - then went to a priest (the poor guy
was a believer) to ask, whether this new method is a suicide. Of course 
the answer
was "yes" - and he tried to invent another.

Question: the popularity of such theories, is it in some way a 
consequence of American cultural environment/tradition? I have seen a 
very similar situation at Nabokov's Forum, and much less - in the Forums 
that are mostly European or Russian (they have of course their own 
obsessive trends).

Best regards,

Sergei Soloviev