Marc --<br><br>Thank you. You have put eloquently what I stumbled to say.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 12:03 PM, Marc Aramini <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:marcaramini@yahoo.com">marcaramini@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td style="font:inherit" valign="top"><div>Well, with for me the difference between Wolfe and Crowley is probably one of the underlying ethos and actual belief in the supernatural.</div>
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<div>From Crowley:</div>
<div>"I myself don’t believe in fairies, or ancient magic, or secret histories — any more than I believe in the Pickwick Club, or Gormenghast, or Winesburg, Ohio."<br></div>
<div>Nothing in Crowley has led me to the astonishing moments when I realized, wait just a dang minute, these trees are eating people and spitting out copies, or wait just a minute, Peter Palmer was born in 1931 - never have I felt that there were infinite possibilities lurking under Crowley's prose of any spiritual profoundity, though Engine Summer and Little Big come close. The conclusion of the Aegypt cycle really led me to that conclusion - underneath it all was banal decisions of everyday life, no transcendence, no permanence, metafiction without transformation, without a profound organizational principle that honestly and truly believed in itself, instantiated itself, without independent existence.</div>
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<div>Crowley never really talks about the things that really interest me outside of Engine Summer. Wolfe does, all the time. </div>
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<div>I guess I liken it to the difference between cleverness and the stereotypical academic's attitude I read in Crowley and the true spiritual longing I feel when I read Wolfe. Crowley is decent - he just doesn't speak to me that way, especially in Aegypt, which had some great parts but could have done without that ending.</div>
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<div>--- On <b>Wed, 4/18/12, DAVID STOCKHOFF <i><<a href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net" target="_blank">dstockhoff@verizon.net</a>></i></b> wrote:<br></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT:rgb(16,16,255) 2px solid;PADDING-LEFT:5px;MARGIN-LEFT:5px"><br>From: DAVID STOCKHOFF <<a href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net" target="_blank">dstockhoff@verizon.net</a>><div class="im">
<br>Subject: Re: (urth) If I already like ...<br></div>To: "Craig Brewer" <<a href="mailto:cnbrewer@yahoo.com" target="_blank">cnbrewer@yahoo.com</a>>, "The Urth Mailing List" <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net" target="_blank">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>
Date: Wednesday, April 18, 2012, 10:48 AM<div class="im"><br><br>
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<div><span>Again, well put. The few times I encounter negative personal (i.e., nonprofessional) reviews of LB, the same causes are cited: repetition, inaction, lack of resolution. These are at least observable and therefore </span><span>superficially </span><span>real---but they are the kind of challenges that made me reread it again and again. What DID happen? How DID it end---or did it? </span><span>To me, a thousand pages with only a few gorgeous glimpses of <span style="FONT-STYLE:italic">something</span> exalted and unreal just behind the veil are well worth it. <br>
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<div><span>Some people may not get it that the story eventually turns back around to themselves. What are they left with when the Tale moves on, to wherever it goes, and they return to their own lives? Truth and meaning will not be delivered to the reader as on a plate---maybe can't even be achieved, merely sought and approached. Readers of Wolfe should not find this situation unfamiliar.</span></div>
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