<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18999">
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I think if the Short Sun trilogy has a
one sentence theme, it is man's inhumanity to man. That, after all,
is the condition on Blue, and it underlines the secret of the
Inhumi.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>As for things that are "obviously the truth", for
me one of those things is that Urth and Green orbit different
stars.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>- Gerry Quinn</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=marcaramini@yahoo.com href="mailto:marcaramini@yahoo.com">Marc
Aramini</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=urth@lists.urth.net
href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">The Urth Mailing List</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, December 27, 2010 3:28
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: (urth) themes, one sentence
solutions etc</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD vAlign=top>
<DIV>Let me just defend something really quickly, and then I want to
move on to more fruitful discussions, because I am a bit taken aback by
the consistency of throwing away ambiguous statements as
meaningless or statements with words like "I believe" in the text
as certifiable definitive disproof of one claim or another.</DIV>
<DIV><BR>For me, Wolfe's novels have an explicit main idea that can be
concisely stated for the most part, a main idea that explains a whole
lot of the recurring motiffs and themes and mystery of the work and
transforms it. For example, John Marsch is an abo, Number Five is
a clone; Weer is dead, etc. These understandings transform the
text but are usually a straightforward identity acknolwedgement, with
the important caveat that the narrator really doesn't know it or doesn't
want it known. So the hints are logical but scattered and somewhat
intuitive </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>One more example, I have had the feeling that Latro is Pleistorus,
who has been missing from the pantheon, who is Ahura Mazda, who is like
a stand in for God, and that the God of War's disillusionment with war
as a Roman avatar will herald in the coming of Christ with the Pax
Romana (ie - the Old testament God gets fed up with blood through the
experiences of the avatar of the God of War, and heralds the death of
Pan).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I always thought what brilliant interpretations people had made the
first time I read Peace, then I realized ... when I read Shadows of
the New Sun, Wolfe admits Weer is dead there, and explains the
mechanics, too, and I thought, wait a minute, did we get that or did he
give it away? So I always aproach his books with a look at "what
don't I understand?" "do any words seem supercharged with amiguity
or symbolic resonance?" "Do patterns repeat in the stories (as in
the ghost stories of Peace)?" "What is the theme and how can that
help explain the mysteries?" "What do the narrators know and what
are they inferring?"</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So anyway, when I had read Short Sun I was sure the theme of the
book was "you can't go home again." Home has changed, and so
have you. Silk doesn't believe he is Silk, Horn is shunted off in
some poor beastie, but I was POSITIVE that the theme applied in general,
that the people of the whorl had come back to their home world and where
simply unable to recognize it because they had forgotten who they
were. This does say something very negative about Severian's
rejuvenation, but, as I said, the reason I could not prove that Blue was
Urth and knew that I did not have that proof was that Wolfe
operates by rules. There had to be a way to prove either Blue was
Urth or a parallel between them that would explain the mistaken
translation across time and space. And there wasn't one! I
looked everywhere, There was no mechanism. But as soon as
"green is urth" came up, lo, there it was, the mechanism, Silk was
thinking of Green and wanted to take his people there, the city of
Nessus is compared to the city on Green, and know I can't see that city
as anything but Nessus. It's so obviously the truth, just as Horn
is in Babbie, that to argue about horns versus tusks seems so
unbelievably asinine and to assert the text says he rode a beast with
three horns on green robs it of its mystery and its ability to explain
Babbie's later actions that I am shocked. Its just obviously the
truth. </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>The problem I addressed to Gene, that I can't find a mechanism for
why they wound up on Urth in the past of Blue, was instantly solved by
his three words, so it is obviously the truth.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So the waters receded and the heat allowed these protoforms of the
green man to arise. All this refutation is like bad comedy to
me. I'm sorry Roy, your fundamentalist and
encyclopedic approach to Wolfe is fabulous for shutting down
incorrect theories, but it does not allow ambiguities to attain any kind
of solvent cohesive explanatory power that the ambiguities in Wolfe
point to, and it seems to shut down correct readings, too. (Horn in
Babbie under a neighbor tree at the end of OBW explains WHY Horn says
goodbye, where he ends up, why Babbie says huh huh huh and reacts
violently when Horn's son threatened, the narrative shift to
positivism, why Silk says I won the game, why the text of IGJ has almost
no flashback, and against all that expositive power we have, "the text
says he rode that beast on Green." and "Babbie has tusks, not
Horns." For real?????? Are you serious?)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I know that I am right, from the stage of my comprehension of the
text at the time I ran into my barrier, and the fact that three words
overcame the barrier to my satisfaction. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Marc</DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR>
<P>
<HR>
<P></P>_______________________________________________<BR>Urth Mailing
List<BR>To post, write urth@urth.net<BR>Subscription/information:
http://www.urth.net</BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>