Finished Short Sun. First thoughts...
Abandonment, deserting people, being deserted, is a big theme in "Short Sun" (not loyal to me? well, I'll just leave you here in this cellar on Green and watch you subsequently humiliate yourselves by clinging to me oh so desperately thereafter, praying I'll oblige your declared intention to forever after be my slave if only I don't leave you again!). Horn deserted his mother, and it's given complete validation in the text, for if he hadn't he would have remained -- his mother's preference for him -- a child forever. Repercussions for Horn? Not much. Because he ended up, with his and Nettle's paper business, doing so well for themselves, and having money to fund his siblings and his mother on Blue, we are told that she was simply proud of him (reminded me here of Winnoc's sending money home, actually). Lesson: you are right to ascribe dark motives to your parents? You are right to act violently -- abandonment being a form of violence, for it devastates another person -- towards them? Yes, for Horn, and yes also for his wife -- who we are told was simply hated by her mother as soon as she was born, and thus her given name. No, however, for others.
Marble/Rose's daughter, Olivine, was abandoned by her mother, leaving her living the life of a lonely "ghost"... so a fate akin to Mucor's, and Horn/Silk argues FOR the parent, FOR Marble/Rose, saying she was simply fulfilling her duty to Pas, and therefore, it is implied, doing something worthy. He does this, ascribes good motives for a parent's obeying a deity at the cost it would do to your child's mental equilbrium/sanity (does he compound it by luring her into giving her eye?, into, not validating the harm that had been inflicted on her but on what she could yet give to the person who abandoned her?) even as just earlier he had claimed our admiration in being so ready to disown himself of any automatic loyalty to the godlings, in fact wondering why anyone would have to assume they have any claim on "our" loyalty at all, simply for being more powerful than "we" are. Scylla has no loyalty to her father... having tried to in fact murder him, but her claim that he was simply a slave-driver is rebutted in the text, with Hoof likening it to what Sinew always used to say about Horn, whom, he declares, was actually someone who always provided, always supplied, with Sinew being the one with the real problems... ingratitude, irresponsibility, open defiance, and all the rest.
Horn admits to no actual high motive, no requisite duty, in deciding to leave his wife and his sons behind, two of whom, just like Sylla, are at that age where they are not yet adults but leaving childhood... where being around as a father to offer an alternative to the maternal realm is essential for boys to become men, what his own father, however scary he was, nevertheless offered him; he really just wanted to see Silk again, and was ready to anoint himself the only logical choice even if several other better ones had sprung to mind. Adding to this abandonment, he... again like his own father, takes a new wife, but one -- unlike Nettle, who isn't pretty, and certainly isn't young any more -- who rivals Hyacinth in her beauty, and is thus as beautiful as a woman can become, and also half his age, and, conveniently, also, owing to her deep suspicion of everyone else, someone who will only ever have eyes for him; is feral towards everyone else. Repercussions? Nettle as furious... you had a f*cking harem (yes dear, it was forced on me, I swear!)!!!??? Horn becoming a moral lesson on how not to behave? Someone who's end fate, so horrible, it got developed into a fable, one told at table dinners to scare people into right conduct?
No, his thoughts upon returning are more on how much New Viron owes him; how he himself had been used at departure, not how he might of been making use of anyone else (New Viron gets posited as the site of "badness" as he nears his return, not, then, so much himself). And why not? For he meets up with her again in the bodily form of a completely different human being, one belonging to someone she venerates as much as he does. And if she yet cusses... well, then, she's cussing a corpse, which, as we're told earlier in the text, with the fable of the man who spears his rival's buried corpse, is the absolute worst thing you could ever do. Lesson? Leave your family behind to date a hot young babe, driving around in the body of someone who's, compared to you, a ferrari -- silver fox Silk himself! -- only to lose her to adopt an actual harem of beautiful women, and return to your middle-aged wife only to sprinkle her with with more needling "nettles," via Jahlee's soon-applied vampiric puncture-wounds... and what do you get?
Naturally, to leave everyone behind again, on your new adventure... those that survived, at least, for innocently you had previously brought upon everyone the full rain of a inhumi invasion. You get rewarded for not, as he argues at one point in full praise of himself, being someone who clings. Virtue applied fairly to everyone else? Do Hoof and Hide not cling? Well they too leave Nettle, but they are directed to... and get scolded -- don't tell me you abandoned your mother!!! -- by Horn for doing so. They also have to agree to call Horn/Silk father, even though they never quite think he is, rather just the guy they have to call Father. Have to oblige elders, or bad! Horn/Silk of course saves for himself the right to determine how he himself will be addressed -- you're not however to call me Silk! Like not ever! The right to keep fidelity with how he understands himself and how he understands others, is for him alone.
Horn abandons Sinew on Green, but it's pretty clear it's pretty much pro-active... Sinew would soon have little interest in him as well (or do you disagree?). Repercussions? For Sinew, yes. He gets ascribed in the text that will be circulated about him as a fundamentally ungrateful son to a difficult but still provisioning dad, as THE petulant son who wouldn't oblige his parent's wishes, rather than Horn himself, who ultimately was the same with his own mother, and be thought of, not as a leader on Green, our first presentation of him there, but rather the one that develops where he's someone who would be managed and owned by the Triv. in town, possibly ultimately including his own wife, who's Trig, and so doesn't do "wife's" work, and getting fatter and fatter to boot.. a coming sign of a dominating personality. It's quite possible that he'll to some extent be the child there that Horn himself escaped being with his own departure from home. Sinew is the moral lesson. He's the one who, for the crime of defying his parents, of performing patricide/matricide (it is noted that he enjoyed playing tricks on his mom), gets sucked into isolated, lonely, sad coldness of a villainously warm hell, whereas the rest of his siblings enjoy genuine bounty, good health, prosperity, and a mother and father who unambiguously love them -- a warm hearth of a family photo from which "you" get exempted.
(New Viron so evil as a town because it bears on the "Sinew"... would never oblige a "good person" ruling them? Is Dorp so good because it bears on the "Hide/Hoof"... ready to behave so manageably, so long as under "good" leadership, like Horn/Silk would provide? How is the "bad child/ good child" dynamic projected onto the landscape? Good children should serve as parent's acreage -- what Hide/Hoof/Daisy/Vasig amount to for Horn -- unless you yourself are the child?)
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Gerald P Leb At the conclusion of Long Sun we have Horn's view of the main characters we have come to feel we know. His view of them is totally different. Unreliable narrators at every hand!
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Marc Aramini It is important to distinguish horn abandoning people and silk leaving them when he realizes he is silk and that his presence makes typhon’s return a threat. Horn leaves the silkhorn conglomerate when he sits under the tree, the vanished god, at the end of OBW, fleeing into babbie to become the beast with three horns. Suddenly all the narrator can think about is hyacinth dead, but when Horn first came into the body hyacinth dead in front of him didn’t bother him at all. After this point, silk can’t accept that his son figure/student has sacrificed himself so he could live. Sacrifice of child is a huge theme in the books and echoes sacrifice of Christ the son to redeem - see multiple eucharist scenes. Silk frees auk offscreen, who repairs the lander, to die on blue at the hands of shitty people and for chenille to be preyed upon in dorp.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Silk does say that Pas's return is inevitable, though, whether now or a century hence. He says he wants to leave because he doesn't really want to face Horn's sons, making him actually akin to Horn in that Horn never really has to face Nettle with what he did to her, in changing her up for someone much younger and more beautiful in Seawrack and Evensong. Nettle does the great thing, in encouraging Hide and Hoof to seek him out, rather than scolding them to remain with her. It denies her companions, means loneliness for her, but gives them their due proper masculine development (something her husband was for awhile willfully forgetting about)... and ultimately enfranchises them with adulthood, with homes, wives and what-not. In return Horn would come home having seen the sights he longed to see -- Silk -- and as well a retinue of beautiful women with him. It might have given him a sense that if he could be forgiven that he could be forgiven anything, but, still, not being up to the encounter, he dodges. -
Where is the part about Auk and Chenille finding their way onto Blue? Can you link me to a relevant page? -
Psychology of why characters do such and such, has to be reasoned with consideration as to what purpose they serve Wolfe himself, how he is involving himself in the text, whom he is living through. For instance if it wasn't Mora who gets gang-raped after, more or less, following through on Horn/Silk's advice, but someone the author Wolfe might be more inclined to be living through... someone like Horn, for instance, would it have been allowed to textually occur? Wolfe is in these people, to some extent, and it affects how the story might otherwise go if he was different or found some way to ensure more remove.
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Marc Aramini This is subtext Patrick. The woman Jahlee preys on in dorp, auk’s ghost, and the ring all show up at the same time. Page 155 is where Jahlee has just preyed upon chenille and left her in the alley, very end of chapter 7. Readers are supposed to think chenille is still in the basement but she is on blue preyed upon by Jahlee as she mourns her children and probably auk.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Marc Aramini Right, they do show up. What is your reasoning as to why this is off-screen? The effect in the text is more wizardly, more astonishing, more wondrous, but everyone would want to know how these two vital characters got freed up.
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Marc Aramini Post 2000 Wolfe REALLY likes to leave out connecting details. He makes you work for every resolution and the thing is that we are supposed to be left wondering if it is the same ring just as we are supposed to be left wondering if this blue and green planet system is Urth and lune. It almost lines up but not quite - so to draw conclusions, we have to make assumptions about silk’s character. Would he really leave them there? If you think so, this is a different girl, a different ring. If you don’t, we know what the ring is - it is horn’s Even though it looks different at first
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Marc Aramini I view silk as a hero so of course it’s the same ring ;)
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Marc Aramini I agree there is no way either Horn or Silk would leave them to their dark fates, but our encounter with Silk is with him as mostly passive as he enters "Sinew's" village. There's an unusually genuine modesty about him, as if he were there merely to introduce himself and wish people well -- not my village, but Sinews'! -- that disarms us from thinking he connived some means to free Chenille (we've seen this in Silk before, as well, when he's on stage with the Triv. leaders in "Epiphany."). There's a live and left live aspect about him here, an unwillingness to best anyone, that gets echoed when he remorsefully delineates what he expects Sinew's own eventual fate to be. Not much he'll be able to do about it. -
I think that it is only the fact that work was made to disarm us that we "accept" that Chenille and Auk could possibly remain doomed on Green, that they wouldn't actually be rescued, for otherwise it couldn't possibly have come across as a surprise, which it does. There's this sense that Sinew's fate, his world, is being left to him, as Horn/Silk focusses now on the children who'll remain with him. Sounds like what happened with Wolfe in regards to his own children. One he didn't dare intrude on, the others, remain still with him. I base this only the little I've been told here at this facebook group.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston The stuff you're talking about with different rings and subtext escapes, is there in the text... but it's your realm. At some point in reading the books the reader wonders if he/she can make do without deciphering it all... especially if some part of one's mind tells you the relevance may not be THAT significant, that the emotional import of events remains present and appreciated, and'll get overlooked, overpowered, worked against, by efforts to further delve (if Silk saved Chenille, we come to learn this for certain, are we as much able to keep in mind how truly deferent he is amongst those in Sinew's village?). I think this is where Wolfe scholarship currently is... more work needs to be done studying/examining the relationships at work, the motivations, to catch up with what is already fairly developed in terms of why this? why that? Once there's a better distribution of involvement, then I think I'll be more glad for the work you've done on puzzling things we noticed about the text that you've thought fully on, fascinating material, like the matter of the two rings.
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Marc Aramini You can’t figure out certain relationships without solving the puzzles. Why does babbie embrace horn’s Son and throw down the sailor who attacks him violently? I can explain why. Why does silk (initially) love hyacinth beyond all reason? There are mechanistic plot details that illuminate relationships and motivations. And until those are unearthed, those relationships are misread
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Marc Aramini The problem is that in a text which plays so much with identity (we even get a scylla- Typhon reconciliation via silk and oreb!) you have to really hone in on which identities are doing what.
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Marc Aramini And the theme is of course catholic proxy: not quite the scapegoat, but the redeeming sacrifice. This is GOOD sacrifice because without sin there is no reconciliation, without death no eternal life etc. modern readers have a really really tough time with this (or so it seems to me) because the goal is to minimize suffering rather than transform it into closeness to God.
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Vasily Ingogly "At some point in reading the books the reader wonders if he/she can make do without deciphering it all" - I think that's what's most remarkable about Wolfe's accomplisment: that the story works and is a great story without all the deciphering, and (quoting John Crowley's "Little, Big"), the further in you go, the bigger it gets.
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Vasily Ingogly Marc Aramini - I don't think many modern readers get the Christian themes of Lord of the Rings, either: lembas as a sort of eucharist, the sacrifice and redemption involved in the destruction of the Ring, Galadriel as a type of the Mother of God, some of the dates that translate to major Christian feasts in our calendar, and so on.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Marc Aramini (concerning your first post) That's a fair reply, Marc. Credit to you if I would be aided in furthering involving myself in thinking on these particular relationships, getting to the point where I've thought on it enough to know whether to credit you on such and such a view, or not (I'm going to take another look at what you said about Silk obsessing about Hyacinth and then not... or was it the reverse? for instance; I can't recall that, and maybe it does reveal something I'd like to know. -
Still, I think I am showing that there is plenty that is available to all, to be discussed, which involves stopping on points, encounters we are witnessing, that others that have explored his work thoroughly thought basically not worth exploring, and that this effort can be impeded if they are made to feel that "all will be revealed" if only they defer commentary and think more on how -- and, sincerely, not to mock you -- Blue is Earth or Mars or some such. As I mentioned at one point, Druissi thought the father-son relationship between Sinew and Horn basically unremarkable, when many of us are shocked at it, for it being transparently a very twisted thing, even if once the norm. The Wisconsin kid... the guy Wolfe brings up all the time, mentioned amongst all his wondrous adventures in Wolfe's texts how frequently the subject of pedophilia comes up. He eventually explored it, but in a short piece. Credit to him, but to a different audience this would have been an obvious place to involve oneself in exploring from the start... children as sacrificed to obvious predators, and the text having a not-so-clear stance on it; the effort at defence, can seem a bit lacking in vitality, as if for "you" to live someone vulnerable has to know the like of the gang-rapes that Mora is lured into inviting upon herself (this said, again, I mostly like how Silk engaged with her). There's someone in the urth archives who talked about how they had an experience of chalk on blackboard when they encountered Hyacinth's letter to Silk, and this too, of someone of experience, of education, seeming strangely to prefer characters less adept as they are, is something that could always have been discussed with Wolfe -- it's apparent in the latter part of Short Sun as well, with Horn/Silk seeming to spend so much time with young people (Mora, Hide, Vasig) who aren't as equipped to challenge him as much as Sinew and Krait were -- but really hasn't been. Silk argues that no one, not Hyacinth, not anyone, is more important to him that his mother, yet... how much exploration of the effect of mal or pro-mothering has there been until now? Anyway, this is a bit of a ramble, but you get my point.
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Marc Aramini The issue with mother is that ... kypris is mother, so she dominates everything including his feelings for hyacinth. This once again the puzzle solving nature causing a resonance that is more than his vironese mother. She influences him in everything and is even the voice of doves behind his enlightenment.
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Marc Aramini And that realization is really what prompts part of his suicidal despair: that everything, even enlightenment, is a lie ... of mother and father.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Vasily Ingogly And, thought I say this in respect to Marc, it is possible that some of those who miss many details that I would wish they've thought more about, may be cany to some very important elements as to how Wolfe's mind works, that we might feel empowered to ignore if the only thing we do here is salute the massive-decipherers. Some people can have a very good take on Wolfe and point it out quickly on goodreads, which we should be in mind to receive with respect, FOR knowing that a lot of what is important about Wolfe, about what he is trying to communicate, is most accessible to those who know people well, and they might be ones who don't explore some of the things we might prefer they explore, because somewhere in their astute minds they deciphered there wasn't actually much profit in it, that more profit was involved in exploring the like of what effect such and such had on a character, why they behaved the way they do... which involves introspection into one's own life, not only further delving into the text.
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Marc Aramini Even love for hyacinth is an artificially enforced mother love because of kypris
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Marc Aramini Can extrapolations about mother in a text with two mothers be accurately made if we do not identify one mother and her manipulative actions accurately? I think that is the challenge of Wolfe. I usually don’t understand character motivations until the puzzle aspects click, then that network opens insight into the denials and affirmations of character. I’m not just in it to solve the puzzles; I want to understand the themes and characters as well, and that is what I try to do.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Vasily Ingogly And does this mislead, or help? Is it really so important to know, or does it provide the illusion of illumination, enable reads that are actually great misreads, but immune to dissent for requiring others' full knowledge of Christian texts in order to reach them, and the people who'd do that, more or less ensured to be of the same persuasion as yourself, especially these days.
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Vasily Ingogly Patrick McEvoy-Halston - Are the object relations and other modern psychological interpretations you extract from your readings of Wolfe's texts more essential to understanding his works than the Christian belief system that underpins his work? In what way exactly is a Christian reading of Wolfe or Tolkien providing an "illusion of illumination" and leading the reader astray? -
As far as I can see, you can read his work either way - that's why there are so many people running around with advanced degrees in English Lit. And it's why you have neopagans and New Agers reading and enjoying Tolkien, and probably Wolfe as well. If you choose to read Wolfe through the lens of modern psychology, fine - but that doesn't mean it's the "right" way to read Wolfe. Assuming that's what you're getting at.
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Marc Aramini One of my arguments is that Wolfe is poking fun at a multiplicity of viewpoints by writing what might be construed as postmodern “destabilized”narratives which are syncretized and unified by symbols of creed and the collective unconscious, completely closed texts. Urth of the New Sun IS Augustinian theodicy. People are free to read it incorrectly, but we are also free to mock them. Bwahahahahahahahaahahahahahahaha. Wolfe is a quintessentially Christian writer - he even made the Latro books truly about Jesus and the Pax Roman, transforming the historical details of oebazus’ sacrifice to ares into a redemptive arc which oebazus survives.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Vasily Ingogly To a certain extent, "object relations" is code for arguing that we pay attention to people, how they relate to one another, and insight isn't only provided by those who've made a science of it but from people who are simply very perceptive and capable of un-skewed introspection of themselves. Not a school of literature studies, but looking at Wolfe from those who've been schooled in literature informed by profound knowledge of how people think/behave... so literature as it is normally understood, in general, is what I'd advocate for... are you alive to why people do what they do? It is true that to anyone in literature studies, there is basically no such things as legitimate Catholic explorations of a work, for to most people in literature studies Catholicism amounts to conspiracy which hides and legitimizes abuse and buttresses the moral standing of abusers. So, to them, Catholic readings of Wolfe would necessarily undermine him, amount to dextrous skewing of the text, to a legitimized wilful avoidance of much that is there in the text, for they saw much that was worthy of him despite their distaste of the Catholic faith and Christianity in general and know well that that's not the Catholicism in him speaking (think of Michael Bishop and LeGuin's taking of Wolfe, for example). There is no denying that most people doing literature studies are atheist/agnostic, and firmly left. Object relations would be a legit. school to them (Winnicott is the one now becoming fashionable), because it represents what they believe true -- the importance of good nurturing; the the firm suspicion of the ostensible necessity of hard lessons -- and not Catholicism, for they'd see it as a framework built out of those who've not had the kind of parenting they ought to have experienced. To them, if in your own life you knew too many Pas's or Echidna's... if your own parents actually resembled them, you're going to inevitably create a religion focussed on a powerful deity who only might accept you, so long as you turned attention away from their faults and focused on yourself as the one ostensibly built of sin. Do that, and the Pas or Echidna whose love you need to claim in life, might just decide to attend to you. Sorry if this offends, but I think everything I'm saying here is a fair rep. of the discipline, and of my own concerns that are aroused when we are directed as to how Wolfe can be illuminated through greater awareness of the Catholic faith.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Marc Aramini If fundamentally a Christian writer, why was he so well received by Disch, Bishop, Kim Stanley Robinson and Le Guin, people who don't exactly bleed reverence to Catholicism/Christianity. They weren't drawn to the Christianity without knowing it, were they?
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Marc Aramini Patrick McEvoy-Halston so would you deny that Wolfe is a Christian writer? Or merely that he is fundamentally a Christian writer? Do those guys like Dante or Milton? Because art transcends creed, but understanding art doesn’t, in my opinion.
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Marc Aramini Is it controversial to call Dante a fundamentally Christian writer?
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Marc Aramini These are fair retorts, for sure. All major writers in the past were Christian, for once, everyone was. But... so many of them were avant-garde... the progressive thinkers, the "left," of their time. With some authors, when we call them Christian this doesn't elide our still mostly thinking of them as potentially progressive... you can call Dickens Christian all you want (no doubt he was), and no one would think by labelling him that that you've id'd him as against the tide of the new rethinking on the ostensible worthiness of suffering, of poverty. And so you don't have to object that something is being skewed by identifying him as Christian. Christianity with him and many others, doesn't work against our sense of the rightfulness of creative originality... of bringing something new and brilliant that draws attention to itself, in a world viewed by some as built of sin. This is not true with Wolfe, however. Identifying him as fundamentally Christian and not someone who is, or can be, fundamentally of great interest to major progressive writers, means, today, in my judgment, working against our fully appreciating his art, for you apply this successfully to him during this time when most Christians are skewing more and more "conservative," you're making for an "appreciation" of him that likely reveals a deep suspicion of original thinking, of hutzpah... of art, of in any way standing out at all ("spoiled snowflake"). If the Catholics get Wolfe now, in this age of penance that is now beginning... we've forgotten our country, don't you know? in my judgement Wolfe-studies will regress in relevance. As odd as his assessments might sometimes be, we'd find ourselves at a time when we could only pray for a student of Wolfe as original as a Borski, which would be oh so very sad, for as huge an appreciator of him as I am, much better yet awaits.
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Vasily Ingogly By the way, Winnicot is not "just now becoming fashionable". When I did my graduate work in clinical psych twenty years ago (my second career was as a therapist), he was a standard part of the curriculum. So yes, indeed, some of us know what object relations theory is all about -- we just find psychological analyses of works of art tiresome. Chacun a son gout.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Vasily Ingogly Fashionable in literary studies, which I find very encouraging. For the longest time it seemed like it was only Lacan, but now the psychology I find most profitable is finding its way into the most prestigious journals. I find your own history extremely interesting, but I'm broadly aware of the history of psychoanalysis. It's too bad you belong to the small group who've been so overexposed you've come to find it tiresome, because outside of niche it's very rarely seen, and never, previously, with Wolfe. Lots and lots of Catholic exegesis, though. And I don't like it, because it seems to have been allowed to represent some definitive end to all possible plumbing.
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Marc Aramini I don’t think anything has been allowed, Patrick. More people read Wolfe like Peter Wright as a critique of organized religion than read him like me. The alzabo soup guys present the garden hut scene as a critique of missionary work (lol). I’ve fought for credibility for my readings for decades. If you chose not to read catholic themes in Wolfe’s work there are plenty of options. Wolfe is a Catholic writer however, and Christianity, for all that you think it codes for “abuse” has a golden rule or two about love. Nick gevers in his thesis argues Wolfe undercuts universals and creeds. I’m the stubborn one who insists his work is quintessentially orthodox in its theology and that it works to subvert relativity with underlying universals. Write the criticism you want on Wolfe then, but know that some people understand the books.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Marc Aramini For me, considering Wolfe begins New Sun with a torturer that is profoundly determined as a person by being abandoned by his mother as an infant (this, again, though something I myself did sense in the text, is also something Wolfe explicitly stated about Severian... even as apparently it met with deaf ears), and Long Sun, with a main protagonist who articulated his mother as someone who was mostly caught in her own sorrows, with a father who was so infrequently seen so as to be almost unknown, and an antagonist bent on revenge against his own abandoning mother, and then Short Sun with a father abandoning his children just as they are about to really need his masculine influence to help them grow properly, as they broached adulthood, I'm obviously not going to agree that he is, if by it we mean belief in something other than one's own parents as primary, of the love they did or did not give you, primarily a "Catholic" writer. If we mean by "Catholic" that he believes in the necessity of a strong father as counter-influence to the Mother, whether projected out onto the skies or not, then there's something to be said for it, for it gets articulated I think by Silk at some point (and how could he not do so, when every time he has sex he thinks of Echinda striking him dead); or if we mean by "Catholic" a sense of profound loneliness, owing to being abandoned, which is remedied by imagining there is someone out there who'll provide you the attention you need so long as you behave in such and such a way, then, sure, he is; but this isn't likely what you mean. You say that study of Wolfe is broader than I make it sound, but it strikes me that Catholics, or something Catholic in essence (wilful intention to overlook abuse even as it happening before your eyes, in order to show yourself of the parent's, of the predator's, point of view, and also so to deny that you've ever known what it to be possessed of the forlorn child's, even if done in a fashion which would seem immune to this sort of charge for seeming "progressive" in form -- for instance, with study of Wolfe's postmodern techniques), is right now carrying the day... and it means that a lot of "Teasels" and 'Mucors" out there in his text, are barely being reached at. I hope you get that what I think is full-out right in front of our faces, and has been the whole while, has barely been touched, and never head-on... so in a sense I believe that fundamentally there has of yet been no real understanding of his works. He put it out there, and everyone decided to look away. -
I say this from my own survey, which isn't complete, but not cursory either. I would like to see applied to his works the power of the Bishops and LeGuins... people who speak for victims and are powerfully good, who would grant that there's a lot to what I'm pointing out about Wolfe, but which trespasses onto considerations of what we ourselves experienced in our childhoods... or that many of us have experienced, that we've for decades skilled ourselves at overlooking, not really attending to, for it being too unsettling. The rising influence of trauma studies, of #metoo,... of support and interest in the victim, and the refusal of the longstanding insistence that the number of victims aren't actually legion, might eventually lead to a turn towards study of Wolfe that takes what is best and bravest in him, and bring it to full light... doesn't let it slip. Some part of him was trying to encourage us not to lie to ourselves, not to cover for others by minimizing the effects their treatment had on us, not to displace, not to sublimate, not to make a fetish of your pain... even if this left us at risk of oblivion... all our nerve-firings, completely ago. This was not something he could sustain, however... and his work itself is full of disguised projecting out of course -- read the Mothers!, the Echidnas (bad, dangerous mothers, projected out), the Bloods (bad son who refuses "your" parental desire that he not recognize your crimes) -- for it's too overwhelming, however exhilarating, to try and do so, and is probably relieved that no one has remained around to remind him that he had ever once even tried. This is probably the reason reason he's content to remain on the racks... to not be counted as a literary writer, as Ellison and LeGuin and Bishop so wanted for him, because there it is more likely people will see, and he'd be forced to reckon with the fact that deep within himself is not the "horn" Catholic but the "Silk" who spoke for the better good, even as it's usually your ruin to do so, and would prove his doom, now.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Marc, let me leave this conversation now because it might end up eliding the fact that I would ever be in the mood to read your study of Short Sun, which simply is not true; I am in the mood, and I will. I know that you made something different of Horn's "I captured the ball" than I did when I read it, and I think -- though I'd have to revisit it -- I might be in mood to also quarrel with your understanding of Babbie as revealed as in fact Horn, in the red sun whorl, but it is true that after I feel I've succeeded in clearly a space for people to feel less intimidated at exploring the whole realm of the effects of child abuse in Wolfe, reflected in how Wolfe unconsciously helps deny it AND in his overt efforts to provide it fair articulation, I'll be simply more glad of the time you've put in your efforts to hopefully clear away some of obfuscations in Wolfe so that the entirety of "his message" is open to thinking about, to consideration.
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Marc Aramini Certainly Patrick McEvoy-Halston. I actually DON’T want to shut down discussions and say “this is the ONLY thing the text means”, because that kind of tyranny has little place in approaching a text that WILL mean different things to different people. The burden I place on my writeups is to get to as close to wolfe’s Intent as is humanly possible, because I believe it is discoverable, but if that isn’t what a reader needs from the text it shouldn’t be forced upon them.
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Marc Aramini Horn and krait developed a real relationship - sinew “betrayed” his father by seeking his own life, but in reality it was jealous horn who betrayed sinew, instigating the inhumi and using them against his son. The dream travel is also through time.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston I like Horn and Krait's friendship a lot, just as I like Horn's and Jahlee's as well. In the end, though, they both get done for and troublesome Sinew, fated too to something perhaps quite dark. There's a sense that everyone we'd care to know, or that I'd care to know, has disappeared, and the world left in a better place than before, less doomed, but absent the genius, the contestations, the cleverness, that made it interesting.
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Marc Aramini Which is how silk and Oreb show up in inclito’s mother’s story
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Marc Aramini And how there is time to free auk
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Marc Aramini Fava and mora even tell him to save a cake for the dog in his dream at the start of rttw- the dog is triskele, not Cerberus.
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David A Stockhoff whoa
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Marc Aramini And green is post-new sun Urth, blue the biggest “red” herring in all of wolfe’s fiction, Mars, where the human- tree hybrids first arose in the tale of the boy called frog in new sun with the birth of spring wind/mars. So some of these themes involve denial of lost humanity and the necessity of death and rebirth as well as an inability to control and shape human destiny while still remaining free as an individual. Short sun is about mankind’s transformation into the hieros, which involves much pain and suffering for those left behind.
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Eli Aragon So bitter. Silk showed how he was in the first chapter of the long sun. Scammer to blood, worse to the butchers wife(cats meat) the augurs were foul creatures. Not honored, anymore than severian who insisted in the integrity of his guild.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Interesting to hear your reaction.
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Eli Aragon I reread "the Belgariad" by Eddings for the first time in 20 years and I enjoyed it. I was surprised by the lack of detail sometimes but that made for an easy read. Those things that were unjust were mostly made right though. I was particularly struck by the serfdom and the Vo Mimbre knights
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston If Silk can't handle that Horn sacrificed his life for him (did he really sacrifice himself? It would seem all he did was allow himself to be transported into another body, to be part of a small conglomerate of two, with the knowledge that his soul was very much intact even as his former body was in tatters... that is, depending on the body, and the soul he accompanied, his situation might well have improved, might have seemed to him an acquisition, not a sacrifice, a loss), then why exactly did he lure Horn out onto the airship, where it almost cost him his life... he was VERY VERY eager to do that. And if he can't handle the young sacrificing for the old, then why is he overjoyed to see Olivine, who's an abandoned child and who already doesn't work right, who shows in how her body moves, in how it doesn't ever move quite right, the scars of being abandoned before she was ready for the world, sacrifice her eye to her abandoner.... who, being a composite of Marble and Rose, was already someone who made damn sure (Marble) she was never jipped out something essential in life (for her, marriage and a child), and already someone who'd had a history of abandoning children to their dark fates (Rose)? -
I think the "explanation" for the refusal of his being Silk is rather that Wolfe himself, as he does with Able, who is always misunderstood to be a formidable adult rather than an awkward adolescent, and probably throughout his fiction, likes to contrive characters he can live through where people feel compelled to try and break through to him... he becomes, thereby, akin to Silk's own mother, who had her only son always trying to break through her self-absorption to please her. (Rose says at one point that this is the way to master people: orchestrate them into positions where they’re in mind to placate you, find themselves agreeable to things they normally wouldn’t be agreeable to, and for this you not only have them but are free to mock them over it, for they are fools who, having bit your lure, have shown they want to be dominated. Once Hide, who argues for ways of seeing things that are agreeable to a parent’s point of view -- he, without knowing he’s speaking to his father, argues that his father had extremely good, thoroughly defensible reasons whenever he behaved strictly/badly with his children -- agrees to call Horn/Silk Father, this to some extent is what he receives for it: Horn/Silk doesn’t quite call him tedious, but is surprised when ever he says something insightful; not only casually assumes there’s evil in him, but makes snide remarks about him as well [“He is not talkative, and is seldom entertaining when he does talk."] He also quite readily overpowers him when he feels the need.) -
Horn/Silk finds himself in many situations where he makes everyone feel hugely dependent on him for any chance at success (he whips them up on occasion, as seems to be what's involved in his deciding to capture Dorp's Nat... a gesture on a whim, on a moment of irritation at another's bothering him, which could have been handled differently, surely, which ended up with a whole human town, full of good people who work hard and behave but aren't smart enough to avoid bad leaders without counsel to guide them (arguable, considering his interest in clever Krait and Jahlee, but probably Horn/Silk's default favourite types, apparently), a pack of inhumi, as well as several Neighbours, appearing to show how much they so love Horn/Silk!, and then he retreats ("there was no reply"), forcing them to try and break through to him again. He admits he likes the feeling, for it's proof that he's wanted, loved... which is much, much better than being the person others end up finding fatiguing (quote for this somewhere in "return"). (Note: this isn’t quite right; he stages his self-retreat shortly before the court scene.) He mimics the parental gods, who require periodic loud demonstrations that they are loved (the great Outsider is also someone who'll pretty much kill you if you ever try and turn around and actually try and look at him).
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Marc Aramini Horn leaves the silkhorn body at the end of in blue’s water under the tree when he says goodbye to nettle.
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Marc Aramini Nor can silk accept that humanity is dead and that green is Urth so he denies it, too, and who he is. But things are what they are. Silk is silk, green is Urth, the city of the inhumi Nessus, the tower horn died in severian’s Tower. All thematically related
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston The only one seemingly out of the loop? Again, Horn himself, who abandoned his mother, and seemed to pretend throughout that his mother remained devoutly in love with him for sometime having thereafter sent a bounty of money to her and for, unlike his other siblings, proving a success in his endeavors. He, and he only, it seems, is allowed to not have to suffer his mother's anger for disobeying her wishes, even as this is one of the exact things he counsels others on in order to show they're adults... be a man/woman, turn away from your mother if you will, but be willing to bear her anger over your doing so (quote somewhere in "In Blue's"). He also seems to deny himself any lasting anger at her for her trying to shortchange him his due adult life. The whole psychomachia is displaced elsewhere, with Sinew and Scylla bearing the child's vindictiveness and fury towards the parent, and Horn himself, to his son Sinew, his own mother's likely reaction to his own removal of himself from her grasp. (And of course the dangerous mother who might ultimately deliver a cataclysmic Ragnorok-akin punishment for his crime of leaving her, is manifested in the dangerous possibilities in greater Scylla, in Mother!, and likely as well in Echidna.) Another thing not so adult: Horn, despite talking so much of being ready to accept the repercussions of Nettle witnessing him with Seawrack, with Evensong... of admitting that if he could have anything in the world available to him it would to be in a boat with Seawrack, is given the convenient dodge of coming back to her as Silk. And if Marc is right that Horn's spirit has absconded into Babbie by that point, seemingly, if this is right, having left shortly after leaving his palace in Gaon, "he,” with Silk then apparently showing remarkable signs of being able to replicate his personality within himself, can be present… can be felt by all as still present, without having to acknowledge this as factual in anyway. It’s a fierce trick of a kind, actually… remniscent, perhaps, of the sort Sinew liked to play on Nettle. -
Why is Horn so glad Marble got her eye back? Why is this almost better than bringing Silk back, even if able to acknowledge that he had in fact done so... the thing he is most proud of, the action he'd present to any judge of his worth as a human being. Because he'd displaced his own mother onto her, including her fearsome aspects -- note the manifestation in his presence of Rose’s devestating sniff-sniffs -- in hopes THIS would mean feeling free of her being wrathfully angry at his disobedience of her in insisting on being a free adult rather than what she expected of him, to be her perennial subservient child companion, and of his sometimes championing others -- with his cheerleading of Vadsig's intention to break free of her mother, for instance -- to do the same. This shows him as ultimately mother-loyal, not mother-disobedient... as someone in still being of the mind to bring huge gifts to her, ultimately willing to overlook or not see her flaws, her crimes, while conveniently letting the cost of being such payed by someone other than himself. Olivine gives of herself… something as huge and substantial as sight, to a mother just as obviously anxiously greedy as his own mother was (she left her parenting role/responsibility behind so to be parented, by Mucor, in Blue), and thereby his own escape from his mother gets "paid for," via another person. (Another thing for Wolfe scholars to explore is how often this dynamic, of one repaying through someone else what another gave or did to you, of not repaying directly, and of one to one being such an important measure, manifests throughout Wolfe's works... everyone's got an eye for it, knowing the exact measure in which someone else can be felt to have been repaid, with freedom thereby enabled for "you” after having matched it. How does such a system, given such textual support, match up with the concept of simply being generous for the love of giving? Are they, as they seem, working counter to one another, with one representing a regressed sense that all gifts contain contaminants/curses, and another that doesn't?)
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