(urth) silk, the dancing toy, gods in the tunnels

Lee Berman severiansola at hotmail.com
Wed Aug 28 11:03:59 PDT 2013


>Dan'l Danehy-Oakes: One other thing about the dogs/gods -- given that 
>they eat the sacrifices,are they a slam at priestly castes who grow fat 
>on their flocks?

I'm comfortable with that level of interpretation. What I think of as the 
"social commentary" level.

>Marc Aramini: Lee, I take it back.  I do feel that what he is doing in Long 
>and Short Sun is actually directly related to his biography.  Rosemary and 
>Wolfe marry, and Plant Engineering provides for their future.  

Heh, funny Marc. My first response was going to be  that I think the 
"dogs as gods" was indeed more of a punny aside than the addressing of a main 
theme.

But thanks for reminding me of how much I consider Long and especially Short
Sun to be among Wolfe's most autobiographical works. There are the plant and
animal names, Horn and Nettle marriage connection. And after Plant Management,
might the Horn family's paper making (and of course writing) represent Wolfe's 
later career as an author?

Along the same lines, I find what happens between Horn and Seawrack to be
brutally, painfully honest. And even from first reading I got the sense that
what happens with Horn's kids, Sinew, Hoof and Hide, and his adoptive kids,
Krait, Jahlee and perhaps Fava is meant to be reflective of his own family
reality in some way. The emotions involved seem so raw and real.

I was just last night reading the section of RttW, where Horn kills Jahlee
when he finds her feeding on Nettle. We can't know what might have inspired
that tragic family scene but it can't have been good.

>David Stockhoff: 
>If there is any one thing about the Solar Cycle that truly and persistently 
>amazes me, it is that Wolfe does indeed deploy literal meanings (and any or all 
>possible puns orthogonal to those meanings) just as you say, Marc---perhaps 
>especially when they are so obvious as to be invisible. And yet he also relies 
>on myth for deep narrative structure AND psychological and descriptive realism. 
>His characters are indeed puppets, often openly and significantly so, and yet 
>feel almost real. (Maybe because we all feel like puppets sometimes.)
>
>Such complexity simply should not be possible. And yet bumblebees do fly!

Very well worded, David. Exactly how I have often felt. I can't count the number 
of times I've been reading Wolfe and had to stop, with the realization of the level 
of complexity hitting me and thinking, "he can't DO that". 		 	   		  


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