(urth) fifth head owlet- wolf

Marc Aramini marcaramini at yahoo.com
Thu Apr 11 05:28:10 PDT 2013


Your post has some good points that are well laid out, but I will only say that to me, a shape shifting or metamorphic species could very well have multiple stages to its life cycle, especially since the text confronts evolution, anti evolution, and animal mimicry.  A maggot can have no wings in the larval stage and then have them, so a "fantasy" maggot could very well develop other features like a barklike carapace in a later stage of its life.  Keep in mind both the shadow child and Sandwalker are confused about which of them was "long" and lived in the roots of trees.  Some animals have larval stages.  Do these aboriginals?  The anthropomorphized back story presented in a story indicates no, the subtext indicates yes, in my opinion. 

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On Apr 11, 2013, at 4:30 AM, "Gerry Quinn" <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:

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> From:
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> Maybe abos feet are more significant because their hands don't work so well. He's the viewpoint character throughout; it's not unnatural that most foot references are to him.  And you've elsewhere cited references to the legs of others.
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> But that's not really the point.  Assume Sandwalker's feet have some significance to be determined.  We know they are similar to human feet, as he thinks of the French landing party as men like him, only clothed.  Do you not think this is somewhat antithetical to the notion that Sandwalker is somehow a tree, or a maggot?
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> It seems to me that you are invoking a huge multiverse of interpretations and symbols, imbuing just about every word or phrase with deep hidden meanings.  And these 'meanings' are largely contradictory - which means surely, that most of them at least must be incorrect.  The whole is justified with appeals to Wolfe's crypticism - but this is circular, because Wolfe is not at all as cryptic as some people make out if the more bizarre interpretations are excluded.
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> I would say in Wolfe there is typically a surface narrative, and a secret history (as with most science fiction).  On top of this there is a symbolic structure not intended to be taken as literal truth for the most part, except that he often adds a fourth 'theological' level in which the symbolic structure can 'leak' to some degree into the first two levels (though I do not think this level is yet present in 5HOC).  Added to the mix are stories told by characters, and characters who sometimes use metaphor.
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> When I say 'symbolic' I mean all stuff that is not part of the 'hard physical reality' of the narrative, with or without external references; so, for example, it includes 5HOC as a thought experiment in colonisation etc.
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> The problem with some kinds of interpretation, to my mind, is that the 'symbolic leakage' I alluded to encourages people to look for it everywhere, and with this kind of stuff false positives are easy to find.  The subversion of realism only works when realism is permitted to support it. Reify symbols and allusions everywhere, and the whole thing collapses into a sludge where everything means everything and therefore nothing means anything.  We ask the question to ask the question.  Never works.
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> So if you want to show that abos are trees, or that feet are the key, or whatever, fine, but you have to distinguish what levels you mean it on and show how it works in a consistent interpretational structure.  If you think feet are important, you have to show how they work with trees or maggots. It's not enough to say that because of a few words or phrases *with natural interpretations* here and there, all those things are true at once and somehow nobody in the story notices.
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> Anyway, that is what I think.
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> - Gerry Quinn
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