From: "Kevin J. Maroney" <kmaroney@crossover.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v021.n005
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 10:49:55 

At 08:45 AM 11/3/98 -0500, alga wrote:
>Oh, I agree, and could easily find other examples, even from Gilgamesh. (Why
>are you reading Butler, btw, did you download it? There are some splendid
>more modern translations. Did you know that Butler, and Graves after him,
>was convinced that The Odyssey was written by a woman?)  

The Butler was available online. I actually can't remember what translation
I was reading when I first encountered this scene; I read it in WH Auden's
_The Greek Classics_ (Viking Portable Library). 

>But there is a
>certain very general argument that could be sustained or at least argued
>over in the Jaynes premise. 

I certainly understand; but Jaynes was making an absolute categorical
statement, and like any absolute categorical statement, a single
counterexample damages it. (Harold Bloom seems to make a similarly broad
and indefensible statement in his newest book on Shakespeare.)

>I'll say again that I believe that Wolfe is at
>his best when dealing with rather flat "archaic" figures, that in my own
>opinion he is less successful at the nuanced 3-dimensional "modern" figure.

Interesting observation, and one that I simultaneously find quite correct
and want to argue with. Alden Weir is a brilliant 3-dimensional figure, but
other than that, the characters in his best stories do tend to be viewed at
a remove. 

Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney@crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/