We're all curious, and I love memoirs, letters, diaries, biographies with a huggy passion, and I also love to see what I think may be the roots of genius in their lives, but if they don't want to offer their lives as a part of the finished work, then my feeling is, let it be so. I want the work to stand on its own merit.
Does anyone disagree? What am I not seeing?
There's the work, and then there is the context the writer was writing in. Cyteen in part deals with "what created Ariane Emory, and what is it that has to be done to recreate a true clone of her, that will have her abilities and contribute to the society/fill the need in the society that the original Ariane Emory filled?"
There's what an artist created, and then there are the questions of "what created the artist who created the art, and what does it take to foster genius and people who can create what great artists create? How can society contribute to the flowering of genius instead of the stifling of it?"
There are also questions of "Why did X fail there, but succeed when [changing the scenery, moving to another location, getting married or getting divorced, etc.]?" and "why did Y suddenly stop producing anything of merit after she turned 40?"
Why someone created something can be intimately entwined into what the person created--what were the drives and the intents, unconscious as well as conscious? What about the roles of other people? Without his wife Libby, George Armstrong Custer's name would have been forgotten by the public long long long ago (or more likely, never have been known to the general public. Libby Custer was one of the most incredible promotional machines of her time, regarding promoting her husband during and after his life).
Fake histories for someone, bring lies to "what created the person who created this body of work?" It's fiction that the person may eventually themself come to believe, but it's false and not the matrix that produced the artist. The fake history becomes a fiction created by the artist, to cover over a past they either want to forget, or don't want the public knowing, for any or some of a variety of reasons--shame, blame, trauma, narcissism, distancing, exorcism, or the possibility of punishment for events of the past.
Nonetheless, that past did contribute to the person who created the work and thereby was an influence. Heisenberg's Law of Uncertainty includes the notion that observation is involvement--the act of observing/measuring, affeects the item being observed/measured, complete impartiality and disinterest is impossible. The effect at the macroscopic level may be utterly trivial, but the observer is part of the event. The extreme that contemporary journalists have gone to, that of the perception of them as Media Personalities who are arbiters or even makers of contemporary historical events (current events which they as reporters are magnamimously deigning to bring to public attention with themselves as authoritative guides and drivers) while abusive, is the extreme of the level to which a non-impartial observer can affect and disrupt events and history in progress.
On September 17th, 2005, 05:42 am, sartorias commented: The observer being part of the event segment of the equation is something I haven't seen adequately addressed in many time travel novels.
It's in The Technicolor Time Machine by Harrison,and in a de Camp short story (not a novel, but...) and of course Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies."
Does anyone disagree? What am I not seeing?
There's the work, and then there is the context the writer was writing in. Cyteen in part deals with "what created Ariane Emory, and what is it that has to be done to recreate a true clone of her, that will have her abilities and contribute to the society/fill the need in the society that the original Ariane Emory filled?"
There's what an artist created, and then there are the questions of "what created the artist who created the art, and what does it take to foster genius and people who can create what great artists create? How can society contribute to the flowering of genius instead of the stifling of it?"
There are also questions of "Why did X fail there, but succeed when [changing the scenery, moving to another location, getting married or getting divorced, etc.]?" and "why did Y suddenly stop producing anything of merit after she turned 40?"
Why someone created something can be intimately entwined into what the person created--what were the drives and the intents, unconscious as well as conscious? What about the roles of other people? Without his wife Libby, George Armstrong Custer's name would have been forgotten by the public long long long ago (or more likely, never have been known to the general public. Libby Custer was one of the most incredible promotional machines of her time, regarding promoting her husband during and after his life).
Fake histories for someone, bring lies to "what created the person who created this body of work?" It's fiction that the person may eventually themself come to believe, but it's false and not the matrix that produced the artist. The fake history becomes a fiction created by the artist, to cover over a past they either want to forget, or don't want the public knowing, for any or some of a variety of reasons--shame, blame, trauma, narcissism, distancing, exorcism, or the possibility of punishment for events of the past.
Nonetheless, that past did contribute to the person who created the work and thereby was an influence. Heisenberg's Law of Uncertainty includes the notion that observation is involvement--the act of observing/measuring, affeects the item being observed/measured, complete impartiality and disinterest is impossible. The effect at the macroscopic level may be utterly trivial, but the observer is part of the event. The extreme that contemporary journalists have gone to, that of the perception of them as Media Personalities who are arbiters or even makers of contemporary historical events (current events which they as reporters are magnamimously deigning to bring to public attention with themselves as authoritative guides and drivers) while abusive, is the extreme of the level to which a non-impartial observer can affect and disrupt events and history in progress.
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The observer being part of the event segment of the equation is something I haven't seen adequately addressed in many time travel novels.
It's in The Technicolor Time Machine by Harrison,and in a de Camp short story (not a novel, but...) and of course Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies."
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