I feel like a broken record reiterating how good these episodes are, and how much insight you are both bringing to a (frankly) third-rate novel I'd have long since put down. But perhaps for praise, as for libel, the truth may serve as a defense. At least I hope so.
A couple of quick thoughts:
• I forget in which episode, but you already raised the possible parallel between the structure of Operation ARES and Book of the New Sun: you were too modest to note it, but that was followed through here as JC becomes the leader of Ares, as suddenly & unexpectedly as Severian becomes Autarch — also also, I think, far less convincingly in several different ways. But the plot is clearly in Wolfe's head: he just got better at it.
• Another BotNS parallel: you mentioned the various ways in which people give up their humanity, become partly human, more primitive, etc: this is more fully developed in the zoanthrops (the people who return to beast-like status) in Sword of the Lictor.
• Another possible interpretation of the Russian brainwashing is as a crude metaphor for communism: SF works at the time often paralleled communism using fantastical means of total control (Heinlein's Puppet Masters, Invasion of the Body Snatchers): given that they're literally Russians, it's hard not to see that as one element of what's going on here.
• I thought a couple of theology-savy people like you might have something to say about "power dwells in the heart"; it certainly struck me. But I have no insights into it.
• I thought it was worth mentioning the moment of fairly stark racism (of the "yellow peril" variety on p. 131:
…"I could have a hundred divisions of semi-illiterate Orientals armed with burp guns and hand grenades if I wanted them and could find some way to get them here. You are no Earthman, and you're from this part of the country. Would you like to see a force like that turned loose here?"
John shook his head. "I'd almost rather go over to Fitzpatric Boyle."
"So would I...."
Maybe I'm over reading. But I thought the "rather go over" remark, especially since both of them made it, given their various political commitments, rather striking. Not to mention the whole "semi-illiterate Orientals" phrase (granted that at the time, it was less true that "Orientals" was not the preferred nomenclature (Asian-American, please)). But I found it jarring.
Finally, although you mentioned it, I believe, for the first time since your opening episode on the book in this episode, it still struck me that you might make more of the fact that Wolfe's original novel was cut by 40%. (Has anyone ever tried to get him to publish, or at least release online, the uncut version? Does it still exist? I understand that GW has disowned the published version, but presumably he'd at least think the uncut version was better, even if still bad.) Several moments in these chapters felt, to me, like scenes were cut: the transition of John talking to Lothrop to trying to make mental contact with Anna was jarring — there didn't seem to be even a line break (although it was on a new page, so maybe it was just a formatting issue). But I wondered if pages might not have been cut there.
But it then occurred to me: one of the difficulties with this novel is that many of Wolfe's signature techniques are doing things that might otherwise look like bad craft deliberately. Not knowing Wolfe, simply omitting a major scene from a novel (the crisis at the gate in BotNS, say) might be thought to be bad craft: knowing Wolfe, it's a subtle style of storytelling. In other Wolfe texts, apparent contradictions are signs that we're missing something. And so forth. One needs to really trust the author to understand that these are deliberate, and not simple sloppiness.
But how, then, are we to read here? After all, here — in his disowned apprentice novel, which additionally was drastically cut by an editor — an omission could be craft, could be sloppiness, or could be bad editing. It makes it very hard to read Wolfe in particular knowing that the sort of clues one looks for here have such obvious other alternatives. Not to say that Wolfe is infallible: Even Homer Nods and all that (remind me to tell you about the actual mistake, and not clue, in Lolita sometime); indeed, one of the reasons that I (for all I, obviously, love it) and still skeptical about what I'll call the Wolfe/Nabokov mode of writing is that people are fallible, and that it sort of assumes a level of control that is, in practice, not attainable. Nevertheless, Wolfe usually can be trusted, at least as a first, second and third hypothesis; the possibility of simple sloppiness comes up only after one has sincerely made a lot of attempts to find intentional meaning, and even then is always provisional. Here, it's hard not to make it the first thought. It makes reading the book hard, at least for me.
Hence my all the greater admiration at how well you two have done with it. On to 9 & 10!
That's very generous, Marc -- and we hope we're clear enough on the air how important your work is to what we do. For some reason, "How the Whip Came Back" really spoke to us, and it's become something of a reference point, at least for this early period; but "Trip, Trap" and "The Changeling" are going to bear fruit for longer, I think.
I am only one episode behind now. I think Brandon hit on something very important in this episode regarding the structure of the novel, and I don't remember if we actually talked much about it in our closing conversation. Creating meaning through position, juxtaposition, and context, whether it be the application of an embedded scenario or symbol to the greater whole or some even more complicated metonymy, is one of the ways that Wolfe insures that his theme is expressed even if the surface text of the novel remains inconclusive. Wolfe doesn't stop that after this novel, though on occasion he is much more subtle with it, and many of my personal readings are in large part determined by these small microcosmic patterns that extend outwards. I really enjoy the context of spirituality and even the metaphysics and ethics you guys are bringing to the discussion - much of my writing on Wolfe is actually concerned with plot and theme. Overall I think you guys did a great job with what is definitely the low point in Wolfe's novelistic career. I don't know if I told you, but I think your treatment of "How the Whip Came Back" was far superior to my own exploration, and it is nice to see that brought up again. I build most of my later analyses of Wolfe off of principles I see in "The Changeling" and "Trip, Trap," which seem to have far less of the complex social examination that pervades Wolfe's 1970s short stories. so I reserve the right to mention those stories again in illustrating a point or two ...
Scouring of the Shire: of course, you're right. — Doubtless it's connected to the different context you discuss, but it's interesting that most SF representational versions of communism make them a huge, almost-undefeatable enemy: whereas the Shire's problems are blown over by four hobbits coming home & getting everyone back to their senses.
"it feels like Heinlein was actually preparing to have to overthrow JFK.": Ha! Well put.
Oh yes, I was thinking of the Scouring of the Shire, which is very much taken up with communism (or socialism or perhaps Fabianism) as a viable set of political principles in the UK of the 1920s and 1930s. For Tolkien, this is wrapped up in his story of "going home again" after the war, which is why this is also connected to Frodo's inability to feel at home again. This also is the world in which Chesterton is writing about the Catholic Church being the last best hope for humanity against Communism, Capitalism, and Fascism. So, certainly not a Cold War context, but a Catholic fantasist's anxieties about Communism nonetheless. And I think all of this shows up in Wolfe during this period (as I'll say on the air in July).
And, yes, there is a lot going on in Heinlein's very strange mythologizing of America, his interest in exploring how technology can offer alternative forms of government, all the while ignoring most historical alternatives. Also, there are like a hundred pages of Heinlein's position on the correct number of people a terrorist cell should include, such that it feels like Heinlein was actually preparing to have to overthrow JFK.
I like the combining of Ephesians and Mao: I don't know if Wolfe meant that or not, but it makes the phrase interesting in a twining, doubling way.
I have to admit I never read A Wrinkle in Time: I didn't realize that that was part of that.
What interests me in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is how its model of revolution separates itself from every revolution post-1776: imagine a Latin American revolutionary using only the US as a reference point!
I will say I don't think that The Lord of the Rings is related to communism. People tend to analogize it to WW2, but I think Tolkien is convincing in his claim that the story was set years before that. There are other ingredients there. The hoards of orcs come partly from a need for faceless soldiers one can slaughter without pausing the plot to worry about it, and also, sadly, partly from racism. (Much as I love & admire LotR — one of my favorite books — there are unquestionably some very problematic aspects of it.) Mostly, though, I think LotR comes from the mythological sources Tolkien was an academic expert in; from his own particular understanding of Christianity (notions of divine providence, mercy, etc); and from his own experiences in WW1 (Mordor is, clearly, the no-man lands from Great War battlefields).
Yes, you've quite eloquently hit the nail on the head here: it's difficult to tell what is Wolfe's pen and what is the editor's knife in Operation ARES. We've asked Marc about the possibility of seeing the uncut manuscript, but he believes that it is long gone (along with an early novel that Wolfe never sold). I'd love to see it, or even just to know where the cuts were made so that we can really assess the craft.
We just didn't know what to do with the Yellow Peril business. Perhaps this attitude derives from his Korean War experiences, but the racial make-up of President Chuck Huggins's bodyguard suggests that this isn't about racial identity but about national identity. It seems like we are meant to contrast the possibility of semi-illiterate Chinese soldiers taking over America with the possibility of robotic Russian soldiers taking over America -- they are both grotesque to our band of patriotic revolutionaries. Wolfe does a better job with the Russian threat because he shows it to us; with the Chinese, he mostly resorts to dialogue to explain the stakes, and I think does it poorly.
One of the books we gave out as wedding favors was A Wrinkle in Time, also a deeply Christian SF book from this same phase of the Cold War, and Communism as roboticization or lobotomization is at the core of that story, too. Indeed, we can probably say that some of this is even in The Lord of the Rings. I also recently reread Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (which doesn't really have this), and I think I'd really like to do a project on SF and the Cold War at some point.
And, yes, we did perhaps drop the ball on "power dwells in the heart." This makes me think of Ephesians 3:17, where Paul talks about Christ dwelling in hearts -- but it does also make me think of Mao saying that power comes from the barrel of a gun. Perhaps Wolfe had this contrast in mind as well, holding up the Church as the real defense against Communism (which is an idea all over Chesterton).
As always, thank you for your comments and your encouragement. I'm excited to hear your thoughts about the end of the book, but REALLY excited to get to the excellent stories after this third-rate novel.