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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/08/2014 14:34, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:entonio@gmail.com">entonio@gmail.com</a>
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:AB4B1CAE-8A10-4AB5-9473-263866418B84@gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">No dia 10/08/2014, às 11:14, Gerry Quinn <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:gerry@bindweed.com"><gerry@bindweed.com></a> escreveu:
On 10/08/2014 01:04, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:entonio@gmail.com">entonio@gmail.com</a> wrote:
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<pre wrap="">Inasmuch as Gerry has said a lot of sensible stuff, the way he's applied it recently makes him more like the anti-Lee than anything else. Now, if I find Lee's stuff over the top, at least it's stuff (and my issue with Lee is more his tone than his content). Whereas recently Gerry has gone out of his way to say 'nothing to see here, move along'.
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<pre wrap="">I would argue that in cases where I have been criticising proposed interpretations rather than proposing my own, I am merely arguing for some kind of consistency of approach and of interpretation, and for interpretations that are not infinitely malleable when critiqued.
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But that's not all you've been doing; you've gone far into saying some readings are all there is to a given story, implying that one shouldn't attempt to come up with an alternative. Even if none of the current ones is satisfactory, it doesn't mean one doesn't exist, and there is in principle nothing wrong in refining hypotheses. For instance, I find Marc's interpretation of Suzanne Delage falling short, but nonetheless a necessary first step.
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Things can look different from the other side: Marc's post said:<br>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-left:0.5in"><font face="Times New
Roman, serif"><font size="3">> I
accept several principals at face value from the narrator as
general
guidelines:<br>
</font></font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><font
face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">> </font></font>1)</font><font
size="3">
</font><font size="3">That an extraordinary event actually could
be
forgotten, so that he can’t be<br>
</font></font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><font
face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">> </font></font>trusted
to reliably remember it. If
he could remember it, then the premise of<br>
</font></font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font
size="3"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">>
</font></font>the story is invalid. If
we do not accept this premise, the analysis can stop right<br>
</font></font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><font
face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">> </font></font>here
–
the extraordinary event in his life is that he never met
Suzanne
Delage.<br>
</font></font></p>
Doesn't that, from my perspective, look like "nothing to see here"?<br>
<br>
As for Lee's "scenario 1" he stated that it was in the text on an
equal level with "scenario 2", and I asked him where. In fact the
scenario of two independent abo races, whether it's right or wrong
or may be inferred, is not present in any kind of equivalent form.
The Old Wise One forgets which race he is, but there is not a second
independent series of events described.<br>
<br>
My main issue, as ever, is with the frenetic chasing of
'inconsistencies' (which need not actually be inconsistent) to the
extent that the 'consistencies' are ignored.<br>
<br>
Is there actually ANY story by Wolfe which can generally be agreed
to take the form of a cryptic puzzle to be unlocked by way of
extrapolating from symbolism we may associate (but which is never
stated clearly) with cccasional words used by a preternaturally
unreliable narrator, to the extend that his descriptions of actual
events in the text are to be ignored? _Soldier_ and _Peace_ may
come the closest, but I don't think they fit the picture either.
Alden Weir does not like to think clearly about certain events - but
we do not have to infer them wholesale from random words he uses.<br>
<br>
Rather, the narrator tells us what happened and we then interpret
them in certain ways. He leaves things out, but does not invent an
unrelated build-up. Wolfe does in fact tell us stuff, and it's
hardly ever outright lies. That No. 5 is a clone may be inferred by
the cleverest in advance, but it is confirmed to us in so many words
by the end of the tale. 'A Story' tells us the tale of how the
humanoid abos came to be, and why the planets were not found for so
long despite much nearby space travel. 'VRT' tells us the story of
an abo who - unlike his mother - does in fact take a rare
opportunity to steal the identity of a human. There's a whole lot
to see here. I don't get why people are chasing 'symbolic clues'
that erase the text and lead at best to a storyline that would not
be intrinsically more interesting even if it had been the one
written down.<br>
<br>
- Gerry Quinn<br>
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