On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 4:24 PM, James Wynn <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:crushtv@gmail.com">crushtv@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
wynn: Redemption through _love_ is a major common theme of Wolfe's works.<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
enamel: What sort of love? Love of something higher, sure.<div class="im"><br>
Romantic love of someone else, not so much.<br>
</div></blockquote>
<br>
Disiri? Lara Morgan? Nettle? Hyacinth?</blockquote><div><br>Dsiri and Lara are both goddesses from another dimension, and fall in love with someone of a higher category. Their boyfriends are facing their love the wrong way - they should be loving up. Nettle and Hyacinth are more-or-less equals, and have the vast majority of their relationships off screen. None of them are protagonists, or get a lot of internal development.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Also, in a Wolfe novel, romantic love is an Earthly sacrament for the love<br>
of Something Higher. It's actually a far more developed view of love than<br>
that presented in soap-operas like the arcs in the BSG finale.</blockquote><div> <br>Three words: mating with giants.<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Oops! I see Mark Millman explained this better than I could.<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
enamel: Who is the great love of Severian's life, through whom he finds the<div class="im"><br>
strength to undergo his trials? Heck, when does Severian ever just sit<br>
down with a girl and watch the sunrise while they talk? Wolfe may not be a<br>
young man, but his heroes often are, and that's what young people do.<br>
</div></blockquote>
<br>
Well, Severian-the-narrator (as with the Narrator of the Short Sun) is not a<br>
"person" in the conventional sense. The Great Love of Severian of course is<br>
Thecla, and they spend a lot of time in Thecla's cell (an interesting twist<br>
on your sunrise scene). It is the genius of Wolfe that Thecla is also the<br>
narrator of NS. It is also why NS might be impossible to "dramatize" on film<br>
or TV. It is also important to remember that we think of Severian as the<br>
Protagonist, but even more so, he is "merely" the Narrator. The story is not<br>
so much about him as the people he encounters -- Severian merely provides<br>
the POV. This is to a greater or lesser extant the case of Wolfe's other<br>
first-person novels as well. So the question is not whether Sev experiences<br>
"realistic" romance and how he is changed by it, but regarding those who<br>
love him.</blockquote><div> <br>I agree that Severian not somebody to look for as a model for romantic love.<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Well, nothing could be more complicated than a Wolfe romance.</blockquote><div><br>A Wolfe plot? :-)<br> <br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
enamel: They may think that already. In any case, my (current) theory in<div class="im"><br>
short: Able is a 14-year-old in an 18-year-old's body. He's horny as hell<br>
and starts getting it regularly from a hot older chick (who has magical<br>
enchantment powers to boot).<br>
</div></blockquote>
<br>
Actually, he doesn't "get it" from her, until the end of the novel when she<br>
is human. </blockquote><div><br>In _The Knight_, he ends chapter 7 kissing her and begins chapter 8 lying on the grass with no clothes on. I went with the obvious. It is a little less obvious a few paragraphs up, but is hinted at there, too.<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">He hopes that he will, but in the meantime he sublimates his<br>
sexual worship of Disiri into something harder (denying himself of both an<br>
edged weapon and the advances of all non-Disiri women and the horny Fire<br>
Aelf). Also, Able thinks of himself as a 14-year-old, but he has spent<br>
years in Aelfrice as Disiri's playmate. He's been "dialed back" to the age<br>
and memory of when he was taken by the Moss Aelf between the time The Knight<br>
starts and when he is "grown" by Disiri.<br><div class="im"></div></blockquote><div><br>It's not clear how much choice he has in the matter. Dsiri boasts near the end of chapter 7 that men she has kissed cannot leave until she sends them away. I think he is trying to remain faithful, and is being helped in this by that spell. He sure acts spell-bound.<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">No, no, no. Wolfe's point is that Abel's method truly Loving Disiri --rather<br>
than finding her available and appealing-- was a stand-in for loving the<br>
Most High God of which he stills knows almost nothing of at the end of<br>
double novel. It ultimately led him to Skye as a great hero. Wolfe's<br>
perspective certainly does jibe with a lot of things C.S. Lewis wrote and<br>
illustrated in 'The Last Battle', 'The Great Divorce', and 'The Four Loves'.</blockquote><div> <br>If it were a stand-in, why not have him love a human woman, or one better than him?<br><br></div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">But once again, there are two sides to this romance. You cannot ignore<br>
Disiri's motivations in loving Able (which we find she does although she has<br>
a strange way of showing it in her initial scene). Disiri loves Able<br>
because she recognizes that he is Higher than she. Her love is certainly<br>
properly directed, right? </blockquote><div><br>Yes. And the ontological distance between her and Able renders her love for Able suspect at best (IMHO). Their differing levels in the heirarchy simply preclude the sort of relationship that people have with each other. That, and the whole being under a spell thing.<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">To say that Able was wrong in loving Disiri is to<br>
say that Christ was wrong in loving mankind. It's much more involved than<br>
you are portraying.</blockquote><div> <br>a) Christ is God and is categorically immune to charges of wrongdoing<br>b) Christ came because the Father sent Him. Able is acting on his own.<br><br>
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enamel: There are Doors - have sex and die<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
wynn: In TAD sex is truly an existential event and it requires far more<div class="im"><br>
sexual development than the drunken encounters that so typically occur in<br>
BSG.<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
enamel: By sexual development do you mean being dragged into the<div class="im"><br>
back of a parade float?<br>
</div></blockquote>
<br>
Green doesn't know what the woman in the parade float expected of him, nor<br>
the implications of that agreement, and she doesn't know he is not aware of<br>
that. It would have been a very existential moment for a man who actually<br>
accepted her offer in fact.</blockquote><div><br>Yes, but not one that _requires_ more development.<br><br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
enamel: Latro - he may have sex, but can never really have a relationship<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
wynn: When his love is killed, Latro mourns over her long after he has<div class="im"><br>
even remembered why he's mourning. Talk about your<br>
character-development-through-sexual-relationship.<br>
</div></blockquote></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
enamel: Not knowing why one is mourning is not character development. It's<div class="im"><br>
just weird. It's not even clear whether one can mourn for no reason. One<br>
could be depressed, but to mourn would seem to imply mourning something or<br>
someone.<br>
</div></blockquote>
<br>
Well, you are merely rejecting Wolfe's premise. That's fine. But you can't<br>
reject the premise and then ascribe some other meaning to his narrative.</blockquote><div> <br>Darn. I though the author was dead.<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Wolfe is arguing that we are more than our memories. That Love itself is<br>
more than what we remember about it. That is hardly evidence of an<br>
"unhealthy" relationship, or as you stated here No Relationship At All.</blockquote><div> <br>Wolfe is going to have to do a lot more arguing before the idea that you can love somebody you don't know is very convincing.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
human - there is evidence of interbreeding with humans.<br>
They bear a lot of resemblence to Jonas.<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
Granted. But the same is true for Seawrack. However, Gaelin doesn't see it<br>
that way in the end, and he helped design the skinjobs. He says that the<br>
Sharons are "all the same because we made them all the same". He laments<br>
that after 2000 years he still can't remember that. There's a case to be<br>
made that he is wrong, that the Sharons in particular *can be* something<br>
more. But you can't deny the authority of his claim.</blockquote><div><br>Galen (like Latro, a little) has little/no memory of 2000 years ago. If he recovered that he might feel differently. His authority in this matter is not much greater than any other normal person's.<br>
<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
enamel: If interpreting St. Paul as anti-sex is insensitive, at least I'm<div class="im"><br>
in good (and extensive) company. St. Augustine is in the lineup next if<br>
you want to pitch around Paul.<br>
</div></blockquote>
<br>
I confess, that I feel genuine pity for those who have honestly approached<br>
Paul's writings without understanding them. However, I don't think they are<br>
in the majority of Paul's critics. I recommend to a re-reading of Paul, and<br>
Augustine too for that matter. Granted the starting point of Augustine's<br>
worldview on sex and marriage --founded as they are on Roman mores-- are<br>
unrelatable to modern Western/Christianized eyes; however, it was Augustine<br>
who prayed, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."</blockquote><div><br>Given that Paul is not around to comment, how do you know who has genuinely understood his writings and who hasn't? He seems pretty clear. Augustine was mocking/repenting of his former attitude.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Athena/Helo<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
wynn: This is a relationship engineered deliberately and deceitfully by<div class="im"><br>
the Cylons in order to get a baby out of Helo. Sharon is actually<br>
pre-programmed to have her fall in love more easily. This relationship was<br>
one of those on my mind when I said that in BSG sex only occurs out of<br>
treachery or cruelty.<br>
</div></blockquote></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
enamel: "Only" is too strong a word. The Cylons (especially at the<div class="im"><br>
beginning) are the bad guys. Of course they use sex as a weapon.<br>
</div></blockquote>
<br>
Ah! Then you admit at least that my assessment is not far off the point?</blockquote><div><br>Yes. Characters in BSG often act treacherously or cruelly, and sometimes they act that way sexually. They also act other ways and act those ways sexually, also. <br>
<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Saul/Ellen Tigh:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
enamel: It was said in the series "All Ellen ever wanted was to be with<div class="im"><br>
Saul". If one accepts this, then huge swathes of her bad behavior gain<br>
meaning as a cry for him to pay attention to her instead of the bottle and<br>
the ship. Now that they only have each other, maybe that is all over.<br>
But, again, open for interpretation.<br>
</div></blockquote>
<br>
It was during her time closely confined with Saul on Galactica that she had<br>
affairs with both Baltar and Zarek.<br></blockquote><div><br>She has two rivals - the ship/Adama, and the bottle. Saul is on the ship. IIRC, he has started drinking again, also.<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
wynn: If I were to ascribe a moral to sex in BSG it would be "sex<br>
invariability causes people to act treacherously or cruelly."<br>
</blockquote></blockquote>
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</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
enamel: "Invariably" is too strong. I cannot remember a time where Anders<div class="im"><br>
acted treacherously or cruelly (to a fellow BSG fleet member) due to his<br>
relationship with Starbuck.<br>
</div></blockquote>
<br>
I suppose "invariably" is too strong. But every BSG sexual relationship (with the exception of Roslin/Adama which is barely a sexual relationship at all) *involves* treachery or cruelty. So comparing it with Wolfe and saying BSG portrays is at ease portraying "healthy" sexual relationships and Wolfe only uses it to show people as bad, just doesn't wash at any level.</blockquote>
<div> <br>BSG has some healthy sexual relationships. They need not all be. Wolfe has so many bad ones that it takes some serious interpretive work to make any out as good. Even his throwaway relationships are bad - see near the end of chapter 9 in _The Knight_, where Able sees a man being cuckolded. That's just gratuitous.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Okay, I'll buy that BSG tackles many of the same themes as Wolfe. But BSG did not tackle these themes with the consistency and plotting we expect from Wolfe. </blockquote><div><br>Agreed.<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
The romance arcs in the finale (especially) IMO were the opposite of a reason to recommend the series. </blockquote><div><br>One could say the same for Wolfe.<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><div class="h5">J. </div></div></blockquote><div> </div><div>Enamel<br><br></div></div>