<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>I believe the difference is quite clear. While 'proselytising' authors present their worldview as being superior - which is quite lame and irritating, since the reader has no control over events and can merely, aware of it or not, watch them unfold in the way the author wants them to so they will support the author's views -, authors like Wolfe build upon their worldview to enrich their work, not to dictate its shape. I don't think one needs to share Wolfe's beliefs, or even tolerate them, or even find them interesting, in order to derive pleasure from Wolfe's work. Wolfe is not writing books to show Catholicism is great or offend non-Catholics, at all. Wolfe's stories do not unfold in certain ways so that catholic ideals are vindicated and others put to shame. Rather I think his perspective on religion poses certain questions and provides certain answers, and he tries to build on that in order to weave more questions and a number of equally valid answers into his work. If you happen to share his beliefs, you'll find that certain questions and answers resonate and lead you to an increased appreciation of those same beliefs, but if you don't, you're only losing because you can't enjoy resonance of something you don't have, not because someone is locking you out or trying to influence you.</div><div>I'm very ignorant of Lewis in order to know how he compares. I know Tolkien well enough to have much the same opinion of him as I have of Wolfe - though I also see a lot of differences.<br><br></div><div><br>No dia 14/03/2012, às 22:36, Daniel Petersen <<a href="mailto:danielottojackpetersen@gmail.com">danielottojackpetersen@gmail.com</a>> escreveu:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite">Well, I'm way behind in all the gritty details of this debate, but (that's where you all stop reading - ach, well)... Just because Wolfe is no Card (is that a pun?) doesn't mean he can't be a clearly spiritual (and, dare I say it, 'evangelistic') writer in his own way. I, at least, have found a richly rendered 'incarnational' and 'improvisational' sort of 'apologia' and 'euangelion' (yes, radically distinct in many important ways from the likes of Chesterton or Lewis) <b><i>IN THE TEXTS</i></b> of the Solar Cycle, an invitational and 'subversive' Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy (be they ever so slyly idiosyncratic) that basically 'triumphs' over all the other systems (e.g. from polytheism to gnosticism) in a theo-comedic 'underdog' sort of way (for those who wish to see it - Wolfe is no bully). [Akin to St Paul's 'cosmic judo' sort of atonement theology in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians%202:13-19&version=NIV">Colossians 2:15</a>.]<div>
<br></div><div>I believe that this being the case in no way shuts down or closes the 'infinite play of meaning' that his narratives clearly intend to induce. But it does give that play certain contours and trajectories if we want to acknowledge them.</div>
<div><div><br></div><div>I hope to write about it in more detail some day...<div><br></div><div>-DOJP</div></div></div></blockquote><div></div></body></html>