From: "Alex David Groce" <adgroce@eos.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Alden Weir's Dimensionality
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 21:45:41 

David Duffy wrote:
> I have the impression (coming back to the pillow story) that Weir's life
> represents a wrong choice at every key point in his life, while Smart 
> makes the correct choices.  Weir's final financial security/success is 
> quite accidental.  Furthermore, his behaviour at the forking points -- on 
> the stairs, outside the freezer room, in the creek-bed -- is quite 
> understandable/forgiveable (coming back to the idea of Purgatorio rather 
> than Inferno).
> 
> Also I might raise the two allusions to Cabell (and isn't there one 
> Cabell novel set in Florida?) -- Cabell saw Jurgen as the thinker and 
> Manuel as the doer (Weir/Smart?).  Felix Kennaston in the _Cream of 
> the Jest_ is perhaps even closer, though Wolfe and Cabell's world-views 
> are slightly different. (do I need a smiley?).  

	Slightly, yes.  I always thought that my high school English teacher
disliked fantasy (with a grudging like for Bradbury) until I discovered he'd
done his master's thesis on Cabell.  I tried to get him to read Wolfe (he's
even Catholic...) for years to no avail...
	By the way, looking up something about Nabokov stumbled across this
page on lycos:  http://rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/borges/borges.infl.wolfe.html

Right now it's just a bit from the McCaffrey interview, but it might turn into
something someday...


-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce@eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

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