Re: Marge Piercy

From: Steven French (PHL6SF@LUCS-MAC.NOVELL.LEEDS.AC.UK)
Date: Fri Mar 28 1997 - 03:47:13 PST


Although WOTEOT might seem dated I found it interesting that a colleague
of mine (who knows more about these things than I) agreed that it might
be classed as 'post-modern' because it leaves us in a state of suspension
as to whether the central protagonist really does travel to and from the
future or is just mad (there's a kind of 'existential modality' involved, to
throw in some jargon). I remember a long argument with an American
friend over this - she thought the woman was clearly just mad, but then
she had a bit of an antipathy to sf.

The first Marge Piercy I ever read was one whose title now escapes me but
it was about a woman who did judo. It contains a passage about the
arrogance of rejecting someone's love for you which made a deep
impression on me.

Cheers,
Steven
s.r.d.french@leeds.ac.uk
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/french/french.htm
'... the possibility that one of the identical twins Mike and Ike is in
the quantum state E1 and the other in the quantum state E2 does not
include two differentiable cases which are permuted on permuting Mike
and Ike; it is impossible for either of these individuals to retain his
identity so that one of them will always be able to say "I'm Mike" and
the other "I'm Ike." Even in principle one cannot demand an alibi of an
electron!' (H. Weyl, The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics, 1931,
p. 241)



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:05:56 PDT