Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 01:26:09 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: Elspeth Kovar <ekovar at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: St. Johns...John Wright
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 12:21 PM 4/11/04, Ernest Lilley wrote:

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Elspeth Kovar [mailto:ekovar at worldnet.att.net]
> >
> >Anyone who doesn't get it should rush out and get degrees in physics,
> >logic and linguistics. Fortunately, thanks to Google, we can all be
> >savants.
>
>No, all you need is a St. John's education.  Although I'll grant that I
>learned about Chomsky from the St. J's alumni list, not while in
>college.

>Ah, so you went to St. Johns. Explains everything. Have you read The
>Golden Age and rest of its trilogy by fellow alum John Wright? Excellent
>New Space Opera, and a credit to the great books theory of learning.
>
>John Wright Interview and Review(s):
>http://www.sfrevu.com/ISSUES/2003/0311/John%20C%20Wright/Review.htm

Um, explains everything about what?

John was ahead of me but it's a small enough school that I knew him.  And
knew his wife Jagi somewhat better.  I started running into them at
conventions and we usually hang out together for a bit but John in person
is rather like his writing.  To quote from your review:

SFR: Did you have fun writing the story? I've certainly enjoyed reading it.

JCW: Fun does not enter into the equation. I write because I cannot imagine
not imagining things.

I am goaded to my task by muses of Helicon like an ox lumbering to the
threshing. The ox that is not muzzled while he treads the corn, is allowed
a small mouthful or two of the grain he tramples, so that the work is not
pure toil; but I am not sure one calls it fun.

Anyway, yes, I've read The Golden Age and have picked up the second book
but not gotten around to reading it.  Marc Gordon's another Johnnie who was
a senior my first year and we had a friend in common.  At some point when
we were in school together Marc came along with me to a Medieval recreation
event, which lead him to fandom, and he's now been on the concoms of most
of the recent Worldcons -- Events Div Head this year -- and we see each
other quite often.  Shortly after Golden Age came out I ran into him at a
BSFS meeting and he asked if I'd read it.  When I said I had his response
was, "What a Johnnie novel!" and we both laughed in recognition.

Because to us the entire thing reads so very, very much like the way that
freshmen sound after their first couple of weeks at St. John's.  Better
written and more complex, of course, but ponderous, self-important, and
obvious.  Which is just fine for freshmen; fairly soon they become
comfortable with the riches and the rigor.  It's rather like formal
wear.  For some people a tuxedo, for example, will always be a
costume.  Think of kids going to a prom, dressed to the nines at an elegant
restaurant.  For others who've become comfortable with it it's clothing,
well cut and tailored, and a pleasure to wear and to interact with others
while doing so.

And, having written those last few words, I've come across something that
has been bothering me about The Golden Age: books should interact with the
reader.  The Golden Age instead reminds me of a poem I had to look up:

But thou art all replete with very thou,
And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says "This is enow
Unto itself—'Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.

So while I would like to discover how things work out in The Golden Age for
me the tone is such spot-on parody and so self-conscious that I may never
get back to the darn thing.  I'm sorry: I know that to others John's work
is erudite, profound, and profoundly literary.  And in it's own way it is,
as a long exercise in allegory.  I'd rather read The Romance of the Rose by
Guillaume De Lorris, continued by Jean De Meun, a medieval allegory which
has been on my wish list for years.  Even from the little of it that I've
heard here and there it's wonderful -- and far more graceful.  Not to
mention the fact that, despite the first part being written by one person
and the second by another, they didn't write a doorstop.

For a fun Johnnie read, try Mark Fabi's Wyrm.  Fairly light, probably now
somewhat dated, but with interesting ideas and quite entertaining.  So's
Mark, come to think of it.

Elspeth