S.C.Carlson

Yes, I think it is time for Chris to fish or cut bait.

Stephen

Ecrasez L'infame

Ouch. That's a bit sour-tempered, me china, especially since: (a) it's the smart-arse comments that are keeping the thread afloat on the board; (b) Chris's challenge is a game - a laugh - remember those? Relax - no one's proposing an alternative chronology here; (c) what's all these comments I see about kneecapping at the top of page one? surely you weren't... joking? :devil1:

OK - back to the subject. It seems to me that the only questions we can ask about the excerpt and expect meaningful answers are
a) Nature - what type of work is it? (Biography, translation, play, fiction, idle musings...)
b) Provenance - where does it come from?
c) Quality - how good (and how important) is it?
d) Identity - who is speaking, and what is their character?

What more can we ask? sure, we can ask for example what the author (if it has one) thinks of the character - but we can't answer that with the data we have, and - if b) above were answered, we wouldn't need to - we'd have all the extra information we needed. So that's it - these four are all we can find.

Now, suppose if instead of speculating about the author (ranging I see from Camus to Sartre - the long way round) we all give our answers to these questions? Here's a summary of my own random guesses ideas.

1) Prose fiction in translation. Original 1860-1970, translation since 1950 (as I said above, translators don't always worry about anachronisms, while writers do).
2) Original from some kind of Eastern Orthodox community.
3) A good writer. Possibly a Nobel. Only unknown to us because he/ she didn't write in English. (This is the bravest thing anyone has said on this thread - if it turns out to be Jeffrey Archer I am so humiliated.)
4) The speaker is a very human Jesus.

Thanks

Robert

doctorzb

I like this design, but I'd add,
e) Audience - Who is the author writing to?
f) Theme - What is the author trying to get across?

My own summary is:

a) Letter, part of a corrospondance written in English. Probably fictional.

b) Could be from anywhere, but I'd limit the time to between 1925 and 1965 for the setting of the letter.

c) The structure of the writing is interesting and surprising. The content is melodramatic and uninspired. Someone said it perfectly lays out throughts to accept or reject, but it doesn't. It just lays out a series of assertions and some angst-filled musings on love and hope that could have been written by a teenager. I have no basis for accept or reject the assertions.

d) The persona is a young man, but the actual author is probably not the persona presented because the structure and the references to Paul (mangled as they are) are of a different order of complexity.

e) The letter is written to someone who presented faith, hope and love as reasons to live. But the whole series of letters is intended for nonbelievers.

f) The context of the letter is to a friend who presented faith, hope and love as reasons to live. But the broader context is probably a series of fictional letters that describe a conversion to Christianity by the persona who has written the one we have seen.

Chris Weimer

I really would like this to go on longer. You all have been wonderful, but I know there's so much more that can be said, and there's plenty of disagreement still with no one really addressing them. I have no line nor bait - I've only a net.

judge

Is there a copying error here?
Or is it poorly puntucated?

judge

These last two questions don't seem to logically folllow if you ask me, or the rest of the thought is missing. I have itallicised them.

Were they added just make up the Chiasm? If so it sounds a bit clumsy.
Or a bad translation?

Has it to do with the "rhetorical devices" Chris alludes to?

Chris Weimer

Which do you think it is?

judge

Error. One might be able to make sense of it otherwise, but it looks like a doubling up error.

Added in edit:
So..is it an error of yours?

Or did the dialogue occur in an email exchange? :devil1:

Ecrasez L'infame

Right, agreed, with reservations (a future post, perhaps). These six criteria together form an interlocked structure - a consistent and connected set of ideas and theories. They're not set in stone - any better structure is welcome - but if we're going to get any further with the excerpt we will have to subject ourselves to something formal like this. Once we have a structure we can argue about points in a common language - for example, I can say DocZB's theory that the excerpt is from a letter appears to contradict Chis's assertion that it's from a dialogue - then ZB gets back on that, and someone picks that up, and we can actually make some progress, praise the bloody Lord.

HeretiKc

^ My thoughts.