On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 7:57 PM, Jansy
<jansy@aetern.us> wrote:
J. Friedman: I think the
overt meaning of "herl" in PF is "a barb or fibre of a feather" (NSOED s.v.
"harl")... I won't dispute that there could be a secondary reference to
"Erlkönig".
JM: CK's note 109, on the Iridule:
"The term "iridule" is, I believe, Shade’s own invention.
Above it, in the Fair Copy (card 9, July 4) he has written in pencil
"peacock-herl." The peacock-herl is the body of a certain sort of artificial
fly also called 'alder'..." Will you dispute
that the reference to the Erlkönig, even if a bit loose, is more than a
"secondary" one? ( was VN familiar with the "rainbow" symbolism, as it is used
in our days?)
Okay, good point. I'd forgotten that it was an alderfly.
...
Jerry Friedman: ...of course no one is hurt when a
fictional boy is turned over to fictional psychopaths...
JM: ...unless one knows that such psychopaths exist and
that mistakes, as the one that befell David, can be happen outside the
boundaries of fiction. Why do you consider that a hurt, related to fictional
boys and psychopaths, will only affect a reader who is identified with the
characters?
I don't think I said anything like that. I wasn't considering cruelty to readers at all. After all, we're reading it of our own free will. (If Bend Sinister were assigned in schools, some students would complain about being forced to read those scenes, though.)
It hurts because it indicates something real in the world we live
in. In books, even after we've been forewarned about the
tragic destiny of fictional people, we are still held captives by the
narration, we're in suspense because we hold on to a hope of a
redemption we know is unfounded
But people can enjoy rereading or rewatching a tragedy, when there's really no hope.
(Ruth Rendell returns to her warnings
about an impending catastrophe over and over in "A Judgement in Stone", but
these previews are not "spoilers," as the word is used nowadays; there is
Cervantes's Don Quixote and those other very sincere arthurian chevaliers
whose catastrophic fate is described before the story is told). There is
something in the telling of a story, and in the words themselves, that
transforms events into memorable imprints of a shared "humanity..." But you
know that!
It's not just memorability--for some reason, some of us enjoy it. (Others don't. I know a woman who reads the last page of a book first, to make sure the ending is happy and nothing too frightening leads up to it, before she starts at the first page.) Without speculating on the reasons that some people like tragedy or horror stories or Bend Sinister, I don't think we can call the author cruel for giving people what they like.
And yet you state, simply, that "I take people who call this "cruel" to
be saying that it appeals that side of (many of) us that likes to watch real or
televised fights, or real comedians get pies in the face, or likes to read
compendia of famous insults..."
I'm not sure about your "and yet". There I'm talking about readers' cruelty, at least in the opinion of some, not the author's cruelty to the readers.
Jerry Friedman