(urth) Seawrack and the Mother

Wed Sep 19 05:12:16 PDT 2012

So:  this might be the thread I've read with the most avid interest.  (But
I've skipped and sketchily skimmed many.)  My keen interest is not about
seeing what theory works best.  Rather, what amazes and delights me is that
*some* such theory like those being proposed *must* be posited - Wolfe's
fiction here clearly requires the reader to join him in the storytelling
and, even more essentially, to join him in the work of building up the
storyworld.  We all know he does this, so what's hitting me fresh?  Well,
first of all just a more full and palpable conviction that this is the
case.  That goes a long ways.  It is truly a literary wonder to see this
done at the scale and to the degree that Wolfe does it.  One pauses and
wonders and exults.  And that leads to the next and more crucial thing
that's hitting me fresh here.  It's that reading Wolfe *requires* an
ongoing imaginative and ludic (playful - as children 'play') communal
experience and participation - such as happens in part on this discussion
board.

I'm interested in not only hermeneutic but *aesthetic* approaches to
reading, and I see possibilities for that here in Wolfe.  What all this
interpretive sparring is clearing the ground for is a deeper and more
'playful' reading of his Solar Cycle, together in community.  What I'm
struggling to say here is that we are together experiencing ourselves being
invited into *making Wolfe's Solar Cycle world together with him as an
ongoing project that outlasts the master craftsman himself*.

How might we go about this?  You may be tempted to think we're doing that
already (and more than enough!) by our discussions here on this board.  I
do not think it is enough, and really I do not think it is the actual work
of co-world-building.  It is only preliminary rubble removal and
scaffolding construction and the like.  Say we were to agree roughly on an
interpretation of the origin and nature of Seawrack.  (A big 'say', I
know!)  What would remain to do then, in an aesthetic and ludic approach,
would be to carefully and clearly write out just who and what she is in
solid prose.  This would of course lead to cogently writing out all the
characters and and flora and fauna and physics and metaphysics and so on
that connect to just this one character, simply in order to thoroughly
account for and explicate her.  It's easy to see this task would be
essentially infinite as each piece of writing connected to a myriad of
others.

What form could such a project take?  Well, I think many here would be
inclined to take it in a gaming direction.  I respect that, but I am not a
gamer myself.  A Solar Cycle gaming system of some variety would indeed be
the one thing in the world that could tempt me to change my lifestyle into
one of a gamer.  But even then, it's just not going to happen for me
logistically and life circumstance-wise.  I'm sure I'm not alone in this
among Wolfe fans.

My own inclination would be to undertake the project as one of creative
writing, beginning to see a series of new stories emerging from writers,
each piece bent toward fulfilling this world-building in cooperation with
the Solar Cycle 'Bible' that Wolfe has himself already written.  This,
however, like the gaming, is too narrow and of special interest.

What then?  Something like a descriptive and narrative encyclopaedic work
comes to mind.  Michael Andre-Driussi has, of course, already begun massive
work on such a project.  What I'm thinking of would be slightly different
though in the nature of the writing - something between the scholarly
approach of Andre-Driussi and a more artistically descriptive approach.  It
could also be more artistic visually with professional illustrations for
most of the entries, perhaps sometimes even a variety of visual
interpretations for just one entry (one can imagine there would be a
variety of artist's interpretations of Seawrack's unusual face, for
example).  Plus, rather than in print, I would imagine this being a
controlled internet site, like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
site, say.  (There could, of course, be various print editions that are
published from time to time, but none could ever be definitive and final by
nature of the project.)

Such a project could easily be the base for many others:  gaming, creative
writing, and so on (action figures and playsets?!).  Indeed, it probably *
should* lead to this further 'play'.

I'm just thinking out loud about the possibilities.  It would probably take
some other form than I can imagine right now.  And I'm sure most here would
be sceptical whether there could ever be enough agreement in interpretation
to ever take it to this next phase.  I'm more than a little sceptical of
that myself.  But dreamers don't usually get bogged down by scepticism,
even quite warranted scepticism.

My point is that we are being literarily 'called in to play' here.  Will we
answer that call and create alongside Wolfe, filling out the world he has
established for us?  That has been my joy in reading this thread:
 experiencing, by means of the creativity of the various theories put
forth, and by their accumulative effect, greater heights and depths and
breadth in Wolfe's worlds than I have previously known.  My imagination has
literally gone on a further journey than what Wolfe initially provided in
his own prose.  And it works!  It feels 'real', solid, substantial, not
merely a temporary and ephemeral flight of fancy.  My engagement with
Wolfe's works, and with the *worlds* those works create, is going to be
permanently changed by this, changed for the better, developed, enriched,
evolved.  (I could easily get into 'virtue ethics' and the like here and
describe how this is making me a 'better person', etc., so that a project
like the one I'm suggesting actually promotes 'world peace' and so on.  No
joke!)

This 'further imagining' is something that happens in most works of
speculative fiction, I know, especially epic ones (LotR being a seminal
case).  But there's something unique about the way Wolfe has drawn the
reader into this further imagining of his world, something to do with
actually *playing* there in creativity, specifically the creativity of
world-building.

I can't help but think this is something of a sort of sacramental way of
reading Wolfe, a ritual sort of way of employing the signs and symbols he
has provided for us in order to always be going 'further up and further in'
(to borrow from another myth-maker), both making and inhabiting his
secondary world.

An intense but highly enjoyable academic essay on this ludic, invitational,
world-building way of writing and responding to fiction can be seen in this
essay by Andrew Ferguson (linked below).  It is about the fiction of R. A.
Lafferty (whom Wolfe called a genius and the most original writer from
America and who Neil Gaiman thinks very highly of and has attempted to
emulate).  If you can wrap your head round the jargon, it very effectively
describes in more technical terms what I'm trying to say here and I think
it would apply in interesting new ways to Wolfe's fiction.  (If there are
any literature students, profs, academics, etc. in our midst, this is
seriously a very good tool for Wolfe interpretation, I think.)

*Lafferty and His
World<http://virginia.academia.edu/AndrewFerguson/Papers/288013/Lafferty_and_His_World>
* by Andrew Ferguson

If you've made it this far, you are a legend.  Thank you for listening to
the arcane mystic in the group!

-DOJP

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 4:42 AM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

>
> On 9/18/2012 10:43 PM, Lee Berman wrote:
>
>>
>>  Mark Millman: alternate hypothesis- The pirate ship is just that:
>>> a pirate ship....Horn's shot kills or knocks overboard the girl pirate,
>>> who (or whose body) is then used by the Mother to create Seawrack, her
>>> agent.
>>>
>> At first glance I can see why this hypothesis seems more parsimonious.
>> But I don't think it accounts for much that is in the text. Seawrack
>> does seem to feed Horn two storylines. One jibes with Mark's hypothesis-
>> that she was born a regular human and adopted by the Mother. But so much
>> else of what Seawrack says suggests she has spent most/all of her life
>> with
>> the Mother, eating fish and drowned sailors, being cloistered and
>> comforted
>> within her massive body.
>>
>
> Not a problem if the pirate woman's body is now inhabited by another
> being. Which would not be surprising. This is Wolfe, and it best explains
> how the girl could become Seawrack so quickly.
>
>
>
>> If Mark's hypothesis was correct, all that backstory, maternal connection
>> and sense of child development would have had to take place in the space
>> of
>> the few days between when the pirate girl was shot and Seawrack joins
>> Horn.
>> Not to mention that in the same short time, the Mother would have had to
>> revamp
>> the girl's body to possess working gills and imbue her with mystic singing
>> abilities and superhuman swimming abilities. If she could do all that in a
>> few days, why not also grow back Seawrack's arm?
>>
>
> Yes, except that when gods inhabit human bodies in Wolfe, they give those
> bodies their godlike abilities. I don't see this as a problem: not gills,
> singing, swimming, or facial features. They are all minor. But if regrowing
> a limb is not the in possessor's power, it won't happen. On the other hand,
> most human women would die in hours after getting a limb torn or shot off.
> (Yes, a limb can get shot off if the gun is big enough. I don't think
> Horn's gun is.)
>
>
>
>> Horn pointedly notes how foreign and exotic Seawrack's face looks. I don't
>> think she is from Whorl stock. Moreover, Horn speculates on how the
>> Vanished
>> People must have worshipped this Mother/sea goddess. He says:
>>
>>  She shaped herself, I believe, a woman of the Vanished People so that
>>> they
>>> would love her. We are here now, and so she shaped for me a woman of my
>>> own
>>> race....
>>>
>> I think all the above supports the hypothesis that the Mother grew
>> Seawrack
>> from the start rather than quickly reforming an existing human body. I
>> feel
>> Mark's hypothesis serves mostly to undercut the idea that the pirate ship
>> might
>> be akin to the Naviscaput. But why would you want to do that?
>>
>> The Naviscaput is associated with Abaia who seems to bud off undines who,
>> like
>> Seawrack, have siren and mermaid connotations. Why would you want to make
>> an
>> effort to ignore such a connection as that? I don't find the reality of
>> the
>> pirate ship important enough to preserve in the face of that evidence.
>>
>
> I agree that this is a difficult question. A separate pirate ship does
> little but provide a dead woman. The ship was mostly full of women---which
> the Naviscaput theory explains but nothing else does. But Horn told us
> there were pirates.
>
>
>
>> As far as Seawrack's real name, I think it is a great mystery. My best
>> guess is
>> that it is English/Latin wordplay on the part of Wolfe. I think the
>> similar-
>> sounding name Wolfe is hinting at is "Siren" or "Sirenia" (the genus name
>> of
>> manatees). It makes sense that Vironese Horn would find either
>> incomprehensible
>> and give her a seaweed plant name which sounds similar.
>>
>
> I think it's a small problem that Seawrack is clearly labeled a siren.
> Sirens don't fall in love with one man---they lure and kill in series.
> Another small issue is that sirens are not technically goddesses. But this
> is semantics, and it seems Seawrack changed her ways with Horn. I'd guess
> she was in another body before the pirate woman's body came along.
>
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