Subject: Re: (urth) Why I don't like TBOTSS
Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 13:11:32 -0400
From: Alex David Groce 


Allow me to weigh in on the "likes SS" side, but with the caveat that
while my visceral reaction is favorable, and many passages I love
deeply, most of the criticisms people have aimed at it I don't have an
argument against.  I quit discussing Short Sun on the list because I
liked it, and discussion made me like it less because it brought up
the irritating aspect over and over, and I don't have much to _say_
fruitfully about the parts that I loved.  "Whereof we cannot speak"
and all that.

Dan'l's post on souls is a case in point: certainly Short Sun is all
about this, and that's part of why it is in so many ways so
unresolved, but so are New Sun and Long Sun--which don't have the same
feeling of a failure to get to grips with things.

I've put off a reread because I'm fairly sure I will enjoy it, but I
don't feel likely to resolve anything I didn't last time, and that
frustrates me.

Here's hoping _The Wizard Knight_ is such that it inspires a more
coherent admiration in all of us, and a little less blind men
describing an elephant when it comes to our delving into its
mysteries.  And that any never-before-seen words Clute uses in
reviewing it are ones I'll find useful.


--
"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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