Stephen,<br><br>And, of course, I did not believe you <span style="font-style: italic;">were</span> appealing to authority. <br><br>Hemingway does, indeed, represent a kind of sea-change in attitude and<br>values, which we might as well call "modernism" (though the application
<br>of that term to others, like Joyce and Proust, leaves me gaping, wondering <br>if the term actually means anything at all!) But that change was not as <br>universal, by any means, as academic modernists seem to believe; not
<br>only is it generally untrue of conservatives (whom academic modernists<br>tend to think of as ignorant and discount in any survey of attitudes), but of<br>a surprising number of folks who would identify themselves as liberal.
<br><br>In this particular group, you've got everything from traditionalists to<br>modernists to some pretty serious pomos.<br><br>I take Wolfe's comment -- "a country where honor, courage, and<br>fidelity actually mean something" -- not as a general statement that
<br>they do not in the here-and-now, but that they are disvalued by, well, <br>modernism. They do mean something in the here and now: try <br>suggesting to a United States Marine that they do not. (I promise to<br>send flowers.)
<br><br>Before Hemingway, the medieval knightly ideal had been far better <br>dissected and shown as flawed by other writers, notably Twain (who<br>skewers it gorgeously in "A Connecticut Yankee") and Cabell (any
<br>number of his "comedies"). <br><br>But the problem with the m.k.i. is not its failure as an ideal, but the<br>failure of humans to live up to it: in short, the same problem that <br>any serious ideal tends to face. I believe that Wolfe, to his credit,
<br>does show Able at times in a light that suggests that, even with <br>all the helps and cheat codes he's given, he is not able to live up <br>to it. (Able believes he does, but that's a separate matter, and is<br>
the reason I mentioned, earlier, the unreliability of Wolfe's <br>narrators. Of *course* Abel believes he is a parfit gentil knicht.<br>But he isn't.)<br><br><br>> And I certainly will maintain that, in today's world, that idea -- the one
<br>> pointed to by both Hemingway's sentence (negatively) and Wolfe's sentence<br>> from the Gaiman interview (positively), and which I argue is pointed to in<br>> Wolfe's Wizard Knight -- I think that that idea is, in fact, quite troubling
<br>> and dangerous. Which, again, is not to say that there aren't other types of<br>> honor, courage and fidelity which remain perfectly valid, indeed crucial,<br>> values. <br><br>May I inquire, gently, _why_ you find the knightly ideal
<br>"troubling"?<br><br>-- <br>Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant<br>-----<br><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer">http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer</a><br><a href="http://www.danehyoakes.com">
http://www.danehyoakes.com</a><br>I am miserable, he is miserable,<br>We are miserable.<br>Can't we have a party? Would he rather have a party?<br>