No, I didn't find Adult Chris to be sympathetic and I'm not sure I was supposed to. I don't really have a developed argument for that, though.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Jonathan Goodwin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:joncgoodwin@gmail.com">joncgoodwin@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">I think by the time that he's writing his narrative, in America, as a<br>
traditionalist priest, he is meant to be a wholly sympathetic<br>
character by Wolfe. I do not find him so, for any number of reasons,<br>
but my feeling is that Wolfe does intend him to be. I solicit other<br>
reactions to this, from those of you who read the book and still care.<br>
<br>
Also, about the wiki, while I have you on the horn here: The "Seven<br>
American Nights" entry ends with the following line:<br>
<br>
"It shows us that Americans could behave as horribly as the<br>
third-world people they look down on, were the roles reversed. "<br>
<br>
I know it's a wiki, etc.; but is that what whoever wrote it really meant to say?<br>
<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 4:19 AM, Mo Holkar / UKG <<a href="mailto:lists@ukg.co.uk">lists@ukg.co.uk</a>> wrote:<br>
> At 23:47 15/04/2009, Jonathan Goodwin wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> I know that "didactic" has a pejorative connotation in many<br>
>> circumstances (which might be derived from New Critical orthodoxy, at<br>
>> least in part); but I meant it only descriptively.<br>
><br>
><br>
> It seems to me likely that Wolfe means all of his work to have a didactic<br>
> element (in that descriptive sense). Otherwise, what would be the moral<br>
> purpose of writing it?<br>
><br>
> And to go back to your slightly earlier question -- while Chris surely isn't<br>
> held up as a moral exemplar, he does seem to me to be portrayed<br>
> sympathetically, and his exploits laid out in such a way that instruction<br>
> might be drawn from them. So this might be a more sophisticated take on the<br>
> identify-with protagonist of simplistically didactic YA. I'm not an expert,<br>
> but I'm sure there must be a tradition of other such in the YA canon.<br>
><br>
> Mo<br>
><br>
><br>
> # ~ # ~ #<br>
><br>
> WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe<br>
> <a href="http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/" target="_blank">http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/</a><br>
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