(urth) fifth head owlet- wolf‏

Lee Berman severiansola at hotmail.com
Wed Apr 10 12:29:37 PDT 2013


>Marc Aramini: Gerry, are you seriously saying that I am creating 
>those patterns from scratch?  That it is all exclusively in my head?  
>You can't do this stuff with Hamlet or Sturgeon or To Kill a Mockingbird, 
>any attempt for me to do that would be pathetic. The text would never 
>support it.

But Gerry has suggested that Gene Wolfe and Mark Twain should be read and understood
in the same manner.(Twain did dabble a bit in SF). So, should they?

I think that is the more essential question which must be answered before any 
further discussion of Wolfe may be pursued. Marc, if Gerry finds complete
equality and congruence in understanding the work of Wolfe and Twain, it means you
two are speaking different languages. Heck you guys might even be of different species. 
I don't see how any meaningful communication is possible.

Personally, I don't find much value in intuition or leaps of faith in the real world, 
as I live my life (with the exceptions of family relationships and playing music). So, 
in a way, I think I get where Gerry is coming from. 

But when it comes to art and fiction, I find intuition and leaps of faith are necessary to
understand the work of most surrealists, authors such as Proust, Joyce and Wolfe and movie-
makers such as Bergman, Lynch and Aronofsky. But that's just me. If Gerry can find value in
Gene Wolfe's work without the need to grasp disguised or confusing symbolism, then more power
to him. Perhaps Wolfe writes intentionally for both his Gerry- and his Marc-type audience. 		 	   		  


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