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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=crushtv@gmail.com
href="mailto:crushtv@gmail.com">James Wynn</A> </DIV>
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<BLOCKQUOTE cite=mid:944700BE64674BAFA2F5935E9AE095DE@Rover type="cite">
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<DIV
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11/4/2011 1:01 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV>
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style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">The
significance of Silver is obvious, surely? The full quote
is:</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; TEXT-DECORATION: "><FONT
face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV><FONT
size=3 face=Calibri>But Tartaros generally turns them black and speaks. Silk
said he didn't speak </FONT></DIV>
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face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV><FONT
size=3 face=Calibri>or make the window change at all, pretty often. He just
looked on."</FONT></DIV>
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face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV>
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</DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>In contrast to Tartaros, Silk leaves the
windows the colour they are. Which is described the </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; TEXT-DECORATION: "><FONT
face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV><FONT
size=3 face=Calibri>first time we see one as “luminous grey”. ‘Luminous
Grey Silk’ lacks both poetry and </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; TEXT-DECORATION: "><FONT
face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">>
</FONT></FONT></DIV>alliteration; thus ‘Silver Silk’.</FONT><BR></DIV>
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<DIV style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; TEXT-DECORATION: "><FONT
face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV>Oh. I
thought your method relied SOLELY on the text. Now here you go and draw
connections
<DIV style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; TEXT-DECORATION: "><FONT
face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV>based on
cryptic word-smithing to derive intent from the author. Based on your model,
</DIV>
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<DIV style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; TEXT-DECORATION: "><FONT
face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV>shouldn't
we expect him to be called "Gray Silk"? "graysilk" has a certain poetry
does it not? </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; TEXT-DECORATION: "><FONT
face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV>Silver Silk
sounds like a comic book super hero. <BR></DIV>
<DIV>Here’s the difference between what I’m doing and ‘cryptic
word-smithing’:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>First point: the deliberately stated contrast with Tartaros. In
both the Tartaros and Silk sentences, both colour and sound were
referenced. In the case of both, Silk does something different from
Tartaros. Wolfe put in the Tartaros sentence so that we know exactly
what the Silk sentence is telling us about what Silk does – or doesn’t do -
when he controls a Window. He was afraid people wouldn’t understand what
he was saying.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So, we know Silk just turns on the webcam without doing anything visible
or audible. The screen stays its normal colour, which Horn describes in
his book as luminous grey (maybe he describes it elsewhere too, I just looked
for the first description), and of course we can easily picture what that
looks like. But that doesn’t mean someone who hasn’t read Horn’s book
(and in the Whorl they probably haven’t) will come up with exactly the words
“luminous grey” when describing it. Especially when creating epithets
for a god named Silk.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Let’s create some based on this behaviour. ‘Silent Silk’ comes
pretty easily and rolls nicely off the tongue. What else might he be
called? ‘Colourless Silk’? Not very positive. ‘Grey
Silk’? It *could* happen. “Pearly Silk” as suggested by David
Stockhoff? That’s pretty much there. But ‘Silver Silk’? I
think most devotees would prefer that. Silver is a semi-precious
metal. It alliterates with Silk, and in the same way as the other
epithet ‘Silent Silk’. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>This works, and it’s clearly what Wolfe had in mind in this
passage. No knowledge of obscure fauns needed, you just read the book
and imagine the things that Wolfe is describing and how his narrators see,
understand, and describe them. *That’s* my methodology.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I talk about reading the text, but I guess I mean reading it carefully
and thinking about and imagining what is described in it, and how the
description is affected by the situations and characters involved.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Another part of my methodology is to look for a better hypothesis.
And if it’s found, it strongly suggests that the weaker hypothesis should be
rejected. Yes, Wolfe *can* say two things at once, but he’s not always
doing it and if he is doing it I think he will tell us. (Again, he’s not
writing a secret text between the lines of the overt one.)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Wolfe isn’t trying to be obscure. Readers don’t need to go hunting
for cryptic clues, and in my opinion they are almost certainly wasting their
time if they do. If he’s afraid he’s being too subtle, he sticks in an
extra flag, like the Tartaros sentence. We’re supposed to read the
passage, and come away knowing what Silver Silk and Silent Silk refer
to. (And it is indicated that Tartaros is active on the Whorl – in fact
he seems to have come out of his shell a bit now that Echidna and her gang
have been purged. *That’s* a typical example of Wolfe saying two things,
and neither of them depend on onomancy... onomastur... onomasty.)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>When Wolfe wants to talk about Dionysus, he does, and he makes it clear
that he’s talking about Dionysus. He’s not talking about Dionysus
here. If he were, in the first place he’d actually say something about
Dionysus, and in the second place he’d have a proper reference and not just a
couple of random syllables shared with some fauns one of which was associated
with Dionysus.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>
<DIV style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; TEXT-DECORATION: "><FONT
face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV>How does
one cross the line between "drawing inferences from the text" and "extending
the
<DIV style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; TEXT-DECORATION: "><FONT
face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV>text in a
way that annoys"?<BR>
<DIV style="DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; TEXT-DECORATION: "><FONT
face=Tahoma><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">> </FONT></FONT></DIV>Typically,
the line is crossed when "he" does it, instead of "me".</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I think there’s a real difference here. In the first place, I look
in different places for possible inferences. In the second place, I
aggressively reject hypotheses when there are better ones. (I try to do
that with my own hypotheses too.) Another difference is that I am not
satisfied with ‘links’. ‘Links’ are an invitation to find stuff in
random noise. And another is that a ‘theory’ needs to be a theory.
Links to Dionysus would convince me more if I had some idea of what the
appearance of Dionysus is supposed to mean other than the overt meaning of the
references in the text, i.e. that he is or once was one of many
representations of God that are useful or appropriate in certain times or
circumstances.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So why did Wolfe put in Silver Silk and Silent Silk? Well, they
certainly don’t seem to be a major point of the story, but then they don’t
have to be. There’s a characterisation of Silk/Pas’s behaviour that’s a
little different from the other gods of Mainframe, but how much it means I
don’t know. And there’s an example of one way in which Man creates
representations of the gods. The little things add up.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>- Gerry Quinn</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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