Subject: Re: (urth) 5HC a good introduction to wolfe? (was Washington Post article) 
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 14:26:39 -0400
From: Alex David Groce 

mantis said:

> Well hey, if people are still perculating on 5HC, get on over to
> Ultan's Library and read the two essays there.  First by Peter
> Wright, who, as I've written before, does a great job on the
> post-colonialist interpretation of 5HC; and then the response by our
> favorite Robert Borski, which I especially like since he says pretty
> much what I would have said, and he does it better than I probably
> would have.

Agreed.  Three cheers (or little creepy stars) for Borski.

Going back to alga's comment on the cruelty of 5HC, I think part of
what amazes me about the book is that it's a beautiful _trap_ for the
characters, of the only "fair" kind--Number 5 and V.R.T. are
physically imprisoned (one released) but the real traps are their
selves.  "All he can do forever, it seems, is become more like
himself," as Borski puts it.  mantis mentions Camus, but I think of a
reversal of Sartre (of course, one hardly original to Wolfe): "Hell is
not other people, but built out of a certain kind of constructed
self."

Wright's essay is good, but I must also raise issue with the notion of
"the isolated intellectual Wolfe favours throughout much of his
fiction."  Isolated intellectuals like Severian and Silk and Horn?
Where are the isolated intellectuals of Wolfe?


--
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+@cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce

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