(urth) fifth head owlet- wolf‏

Marc Aramini marcaramini at yahoo.com
Thu Apr 11 06:07:26 PDT 2013





On Apr 11, 2013, at 5:42 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> 
> 
> The rub comes with the use of the phrase "false positive". This implies there is some sort of 
> scientific testing process for fiction and we know that isn't the case. If the idea of "peer
> review" is being invoked that's okay, but the word "peer" implies equality. No one person's 
> opinion is better than another. We may be peers but nobody has been appointed judge or other
> 
I really enjoyed your post Lee; just had to comment on this part. 
I would love to agree with this egalitarian view, with all the speculation I do, but I do still believe in actual misprision.  ;) 

I have the feeling that Gerry and I can both be absolutists.  Conclusions that are non-repeatable observations are usually only correct in the most unintentional and relativistic way.  A student who is convinced Hamlet's father must be an alien who later replaces Horatio would have an immense burden of proof to maintain that misprision.  I would not say his insights would equal a Shakespearian scholars.  The problem is that at least some think that is what I am doing to Wolfe's text, when he really is an intentionally structural symbolist.  

I never bought into the death of the author when that author was a unique genius of subtlety.  I just maintain Wolfe loves puzzles and will always be an engineer.  He follows patterns as well- identity and personal motive occluding objective narration, with enough hints about the subjectivity (usually) to achieve an objective situation.

This is why There are Doors, Castleview, and An Evil Guest are challenging for me - limited third person omniscient viewpoint is hard to delineate a subjective bias since narration is unfettered by any character's knowledge or bias, in theory. "A story" would have been difficult as well if we didn't know who wrote it. 


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