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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=dstockhoff@verizon.net
href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net">David Stockhoff</A> </DIV></DIV></DIV>
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On 12/15/2011 2:23 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:<BR><BR></DIV>
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What we have learned of these things from fairy-tales doesn’t really <BR></DIV>
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help us here. They don’t mirror their fairy-tale counterparts. BotNS <BR></DIV>
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really isn’t a fairy-tale in any strong sense. Or so it seems to
me.<BR><BR></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">What
strikes me about the perspective amply revealed in this post is <BR></DIV>
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when others try to make one-to-one correspondences between Wolfe <BR></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">and
myth this approach is derided, but when it's done to prove a <BR></DIV>
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<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">negative,
it's OK. Look, 1:1 logic fails to work 100%, so there must be <BR></DIV>
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there.</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">That’s
not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that fairy-tale logic seems to work
in the region of 0%. That’s the opposite of one-to-one
correspondence. </DIV>
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<DIV><BR> </DIV>
<DIV>> You'd have to be blind not to see it. Terminus Est DOES have "magic"
<BR>> powers that are clearly defined in the text. </DIV>
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<DIV>What powers?</DIV>
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<DIV>> Dorcas IS a sleeping <BR>> beauty---so what if we don't understand
what she is until long after we <BR>> meet her? </DIV>
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<DIV>What does a purported correspondence between Dorcas and the Sleeping Beauty
tell us, or add to the story? Dorcas was under no enchantment, Severian
did not set out to find her, there was no wall of briars. She was
beautiful, she got resurrected – that’s not enough to equate the stories.</DIV>
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<DIV>> Fairies live underground in barrows, just like the House <BR>>
Absolute, indicating otherworldly power. </DIV>
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<DIV>And that’s nothing to do with anything. Man-apes live
underground. And miners. And worms. And who says all fairies
live underground, or that fairies correspond to kings? You can’t just
point to a random correspondence and claim it is significant. You need
correspondences with meat on them. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>> If it seems that "the logic of fairy-tales will be of limited
<BR>> application" in BNS, then perhaps one's grasp of that logic and its
uses <BR>> is to blame. I totally sympathize with the feeling that fairies
are <BR>> "clinically insane" (see _Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell_) and
accept <BR>> that apparently-insane fairy logic is stronger in obviously
fairy-driven <BR>> Wolfe stories like _Sorcerer's House_, but knowing this is
not much help <BR>> even in those cases. We barely understand fairies, if at
all, except to <BR>> know that they are bound by absolutes. And that IS the
point.</DIV>
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<DIV>No, that’s not even *a* point, unless you can point to a real
correspondence in the particular story at issue.<BR><BR></DIV>
<DIV>> The demonstrable facts remain that BNS uses fairy tale elements
<BR>> (alongside S&S and many others derived from fairy stories) and its
<BR>> universe, like Faerie, cares little for what individual humans think of
<BR>> it and its modes of reasoning. This is the essence of
"otherworldly."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It uses elements of bakery too – Severian and other characters eat
bread. That doesn’t mean that bakery is particularly relevant to
understanding it. Even if mould on bread cares little for what humans
think. </DIV>
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<DIV>All I’m saying is that if you want to make a viable case for fairy tales,
you need to do more than say there is a girl in the story who was dead, which is
a bit like being under an enchanted sleep, and she looked okay, and therefore
it’s about the Sleeping Beauty. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was also pretty
and blonde and dead and got resurrected – so was Series 6 of Buffy about the
Sleeping Beauty too? No more so than BotNS, in my opinion. It’s too
easy to find endless random coincidences of that sort in any large work.</DIV>
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<DIV>- Gerry Quinn</DIV>
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