From: James Jordan <jbjordan4@home.com>
Subject: Re: (whorl) For Adam and James: Literary Devices, Authorship,
Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 13:11:25 

My Dear Blattid,
	You've certainly advanced the discussion with fine Points To Ponder.
	Thanks.
	As to your essay question, well if I grasped what you're asking the answer 
to the first half is kind of obvious: Wolfe seeks to show us the 
clumsiness/skill of his narrators at every point. Your observations on the 
seeming Wolfean clumsiness of the collective-children's 3rd person sections 
are helpful -- I guess we can hypothesize that the Narrator lived among 
them for a year or so before leaving for the Whorl, and that much of 
"their" style is drawn from transcripts of "his" narrations.
	And perhaps we can also note the various storytelling episodes in the SS 
series as well as in Citadel of the Autarch, and see the last parts of RTW 
as analogous: various voices telling stories.
	It is rather interesting how on the one hand Wolfe praises traditional 
story-telling and literature (i.e., that much great traditional literature 
is "fantasy"), and on the other hand Wolfe uses a kind of hyper-modern 
meta-narrative technique in much of his own writing, which has the effect 
of putting the reader at several removes from the story, and subtly 
undermines it.
	Oh, well, that's our Gene. You have to take the "sweet" along with the 
"bitter," the wonderful story along with being impelled into literary 
criticism at the same time!

Patera Nutria


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