operation ares wrap up

Definitely - I just think a particularly focused interpretation at the start kind of forces what comes after to respond to it. For the next two volumes I have fixed that: the writeups on Latro, Short Sun, and even Sorcerer’s House are ridiculously long. I also learned how to write those long essays with better organization - they have to be focused around the plot for people to follow. Also, I knew that Peace, Fifth Head, and New Sun would always be talked about, so I had less incentive to attempt something “definitive”. My publisher insisted I write something on New Sun. In hindsight, how did I think a book on Wolfe would ever do well without a section on New Sun? Crazy.

Marc,

I didn't mean to imply — Heaven forfend! — that your readings should swamp Glenn and Brandon's, I think Glenn & Brandon's readings are quite fabulous, as I hope they know by this point, and would not want to hinder them in any way. On the contrary, — and with all due respect for your work which (as I hope you know full well) I also have enormous respect for and have learned greatly from — I thought that having you go first might be a way to move beyond your view. Having you come in at the end — particularly given the "strength" of your readings (in a sort of Harold Bloom-ian sense) — can feel like you coming in to give The Answer. Your readings are powerful enough that they can feel like the last word, whether presented as that or not. But if instead you came on first, Glenn & Brandon — and possibly even their humble forum commentators — could absorb your reading and move on from it, seeing what else we can see in the work. Now, maybe it's a bad idea, and (I hope it goes without saying) totally Glenn & Brandon's call — I mean it merely as a suggestion, to be set aside if it doesn't suit their image of the show. But I did want to clarify that I didn't mean to suggest it so your reading could dominate at the expense of theirs; in fact, quite the opposite.

That said, I do love your readings, and do really look forward to hearing your take on the symbolism in "Fifth Head". My one complaint with your book was that the few central works you began with — Fifth Head, Peace & BotNS — got far less attention (both measured against their length, and measured against their quality and centrality to Wolfe's oeuvre) than the shorter pieces in the rest of the book. So it will be great to hear you say more about Fifth Head, especially the symbolism.

As for politics — I don't imagine asking Mr. Wolfe to apologize at all, and I have no doubt he is exemplary in his personal conduct. But I think it's interesting to think about how politics shape a work of art, as long as one does not say that that reductively is all that needs be said about it, or can be gleaned from it. Just as part of the larger conversation. I take it for granted that neither the ongoing, enduring value of Wolfe's work, nor any questions about our evaluations of him as a person, is at stake here. Just our enriched understanding.

I hadn't noticed that about mimicking Wolfe's own biography (and didn't mention it on the show); that's a great little tidbit.

SF

Oh yes, one more thing - I don't remember if anyone mentioned this over the course of the episodes, but some of John Castle's movement tracked Wolfe's: born in New York, growing up in Texas, fighting in Asia - I think we see Castle in New York, Texas, and China rather than Korea, but still ... if I got the details wrong, in this case, oh well ...

Glad you enjoyed the episode, Stephen. One of the things I absolutely don't want to do, however, is keep Brandon and Glenn from exploring the work in their own way. The problem with my basic assumption (that Wolfe's works are puzzles which can be solved logically or symbolically) is that it can be pushy and it focuses my attention on plot, theme, symbol, structure - Glenn and Brandon do a great job of bringing up things that I would never go into because of the rather narrow focus of my goal - answering "what happened?" If we were ever to do something where my reading was presented first, I would want it to be a minor work/ short story and a "one off" kind of episode - not for something as absolutely important as Fifth Head (though I will be discussing other readings in our wrap-up.) Their areas of expertise are very different from mine and I think they are doing a great job incorporating some perspectives I have little knowledge or interest in (like, say, the medieval color associations). As far as apophenia and symbolism ... I am going to talk about why I think symbolism can be precise on the Fifth Head episode and how meaning can be created through repetition and juxtaposition with extremely precise examples. Wolfe creates an association between trees and death in Peace quite deftly, but he also expands this in ways that are clear once we have context (ie - the marid Naranj in Peace who forces ben Yahya to work for him in one of the embedded stories - In the text, we have the son of John (ben Yahya) working for the orange magnate Julius Smart (naranjo means orange) - those are *allegorical*, perspicuous symbols, not open ones. There are several in Fifth Head. I don't think symbolic readings work for every author, or even for most; I do think that Wolfe employs symbols for thematic closure as a regular feature of his writing, and that they often show a one to one correspondence with the things they represent. You'll hear me say this again, no doubt, with a bit more explanation. Thanks again for listening and your comments. As far as politics, you might be right, though I don't think Wolfe has anything to apologize about given the way that he treats people individually. Some of his views, even religious ones, are certainly eccentric, however.

PS: I swear that when I wrote the first line of the above, I had not yet seen that Marc Aramini was scheduled for another recording session already! But I went over to check what the next story was, read down, and saw it. I am delighted to see my trust was not misplaced. Also very happy that "Fifth Head" will get a five full episodes before that: seems well justified.

One idea: your discussion with Marc Aramini brought out a huge number of themes and parallels and things to look for — it made me wish I'd heard it before reading the novel (or made me want to reread it, except that in this one case I don't really feel like rereading this particular Wolfe story). What about some time having him on and hearing his take on themes and then go through the story, to see what you can add? (Maybe you can do this with the latter two novellas of "Fifth Head"?) Just a thought.

PPS: Did you hear Marc Aramini say that "Seven American Nights" is one of Wolfe's best works? Because I agree. Something to bear in mind when you choose what to podcast about!

What a great episode! I trust (no, really, I do trust) that you will have Mr. Aramini on again.

I have a problem approaching Mr. Aramini's criticism that mirrors (imperfectly, I suppose) a problem I have with approaching Wolfe's fiction. In Wolfe's fiction, he is so good, so subtle, that one can read everything as symbolic and intentional, and be cast into reverberating Cartesian doubt about anything one sees as problematic or flawed in his work: perhaps one is just missing it? But, of course, no text & no author is perfect. (Or anyway no human author: there's a wonderful line of scholarship from James Kugel about how what makes scripture scripture is precisely the imposition of the notion of infallibility, of infinite intention: he does a reading of "She'll be Coming Round the Mountain" as one would read it if it were scripture that is not to be believed. There is always the tendency with certain authors — Shakespeare, Joyce, Nabokov, and, yes, Wolfe — to forget they're human, and that some things may just be mistakes or flaws. Yet at the same time they're good enough that one must always be skeptical about such interpretations, too.) Similarly, Mr. Aramini's readings are so good, that I find myself hesitant to disagree, thinking that the fault must not be in his readings, but in myself.

All of which is a long-winded way to say that I don't have that much to add. I loved Aramini's symbolic interpretations — he made the novel seem even richer than the two of you did going along, and that's saying a lot. The chess connection is quite interesting & I wish that Wolfe had (in Aramini's terms) brought it further to fruition. I also enjoyed the many parallels with, and connections to, other Wolfe works. (You all mentioned that Petra Silk, like John Castle, injured his leg in a fall... but then, Severian also injured his leg, although not in a fall, admittedly.) It's all splendid.

The one area I would be tempted to push back on is in your treatment of ideology. Yes, Wolfe says he's ideological eclectic — in a much later interview. I think more headway could be made thinking about how this novel does (and doesn't) fit with a more strict Buckley-ite ideology as Wolfe said that he (at the time) had. I am suspicious of this because, in particular, people denying that they have a standard ideology, and describing themselves as politically unplaceable, is a very common thing in recent American politics; and quite often it's simply self-deceptive; people often have more consistent ideologies than they realize. I'm not saying that this is necessarily true with Wolfe; not at all. But I don't think that we should take his protestations of ideological eclecticness at face value, even if he means them straightforwardly (which he often does not with interview statements, as Aramini mentioned), and even if they were about the time this novel was written (which, again, they weren't).

I don't really feel up to going back through OA and analyzing it; I'd rather focus on future Wolfe works. But I think we should, at least, keep the issue in mind in the context of going forward reading his fiction. For while I agree that Wolfe is not an ideologue , he definitely has stances on issues that leak (sometimes in uncharacteristically clumsy fashion) into his fiction. One example is gun control. He's pretty dogmatically against it in this novel — returning people's guns is one of Castle's demands at the end, the earlier lack of guns is bemoaned, etc. This stands out for me, because Wolfe also harps on this in later books. In Book of the Long Sun — which of course you already connected with Operation ARES in many ways — there is a few-page section (I believe in v4) that reads like pretty straight NRA propaganda to me. (In really threw me out of the book the last time I read it.) We'll deal with that when you get there, I suppose. A second, related issues is the issue of violence; while some of Wolfe's work deals with the complexities of violence, he also (as we've discussed in earlier threads on this forum) at times seems to have a fairly apologetic attitude about some violence. Just something to think about going forward.

One minor nitpick: someone (I forget who) said there are no real evil characters in this book. And I suppose that's true — of the Americans. But the Russians, off-stage, are presented as pretty straightforwardly and uncomplicatedly evil. And the Chinese, while slightly more complex, are still pretty villainous. Just a minor point.

Again, great episode! I look forward to resuming the short stories next week.

I love the idea of the UBI as a New Covenant, perhaps even as an explicit alternative to the Great Society.

Marc, I'd even add Alien Stones to that list. The changes that space and space-faring force on both individuals and the species is a part of the world-building of that story, and perhaps even there in the background of some of the themes.

One thing that Wolfe does develop as a trope is that space exploration changes people in bizarre ways, almost affecting their very nature (Lief in the Wind, The Other Dead Man, The Seraph from its Sepulchre, Silhouette, All the Hues of Hell, The Most Beautiful Woman on the World, Thou Spark of Blood, and The Sea of Memory are all examples of that - going out from Earth seems to introduce something truly alien which may or may not be communicable or passed on to future generations, and at the very least challenges humanity in strange ways.) Japhet's transformation is I think in line with some of the things happening in these other stories, though he could very well represent a "next" step of literally awakened indivudals who will not simply sleep passively through their lives, though this might cost them dearly. Is even the "wakey" disease a symbol of a state of mind?

Anytime, Marc! We look forward to our conversation about Fifth Head a lot. It really is a travesty that we have lost so much of this novel that we can only guess what the payoff of some of the symbols and imagery that are developed early on are. I still like the idea that Japhet may go on to be the progenitor of a race of mutants.