Friday, 5 June 2020

Dwarves And Drink

Operation Luna, 28.

"...uncounted Scotches...didn't seem to affect him much... Nor do dwarves get hangovers, as far as I know. Lucky little bastards." (p. 255)

Objectively, there are no facts about dwarves because they do not exist. Conceptually, there are two kinds of "facts" about dwarves:

(i) those that are authentic to the existing body of myths, legends, literature, opera, art etc;

(ii) those that are invented by particular authors of fiction.

Authors of fiction need to be guided by (i) which, however, is vast and probably includes inconsistencies so that, to some extent, any given author is free to pick whichever aspects of "the existing body" suit his particular purposes. He is also free to invent whatever he wants but has to persuade his readers that it makes sense.

After all that, my question is this: Is "Nor do dwarves get hangovers..." an example of (i) or of (ii)?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would say the idea of dwarves not getting hang overs belongs to your alternative "(ii)."

Ad astra! Sean