A Scholar of Ill Repute

My dear labyrinthians,

You may have noted a bit of a lull here at the Cincinnati Labyrinth Project. Fear not, however, for the reasons behind our relative inactivity are decidedly positive. John K. is focused on a rather difficult navigation of the Ribbon Reef Labyrinth in Mauritania, and I, along with fellow CLP columnists Walt and Mark, have just attended the famous annual Bern Labyrinthological Circle conference in Switzerland. The conference was excellent, with particularly superb, progressive talks from Bernhard Smallencroft and Anders Heitkamp. Perhaps the most fascinating and exciting bit of labyrinthia that we gleaned concerns the construction of the Amazon Basin Labyrinth, a labyrinth which, as some of our readers may know, was begun by Mezin Kobrin but left incomplete at the time of his death. The project, which drew many skeptics based on its sheer scope (the blueprints posit an area of over 35 miles), has been picked up by CORRIDOR motion DESIGN, a forward thinking labyrinthectural firm out of Portland, OR. More on this exciting news later.

Now, onto the subject of this post, a considerably less pleasant matter. As you, my dear reader, have no doubt noticed, we have, here at CLP, always done our best to avoid participating in the factious and polemical modes of criticism which pervade the landscape of contemporary labyrinthology. It is our contention that what is called for in our present epoch is a labyrinthology which, as my good friend and colleague Philip Cunha says, mends the broken corridor. This being said, recent events have come to pass which I, for one, simply cannot abide nor turn a blind eye. During my sojourn in Bern this past weekend, I had the pleasure of spending a good bit of time with CLP Polish correspondent Czeslaw Gorski, a labyrinthologist well known in European intellectual circles for his writings on "blind ambulation." Gorski has been working on a rather fascinating article for some time now, of which I have read several drafts. The piece takes as its subject a rather problematic, yet widespread, exegesis of Book Seventeen of Gollesten's Framework, an interpretation introduced by Dutch New Interiorist labyrinthologist Rutger Roorback.

In essence, Roorback argues that Gollesten's critique of Aaldi's quantalogical reduction hinges on a fallacious interpretation of Aaldi's notion of cognitive constancy navigation (CCN). Roorback's views, as erroneous as they may seem to us, have become popular in labyrinthological syndicates throughout Europe, proving particularly influential on the Viennese Centralists. My issue with Roorback lies, however, not in my disagreements with his scholarship, but in the way in which he handled the prospect of cogent, well argued dissent entering into the realm of mainstream labyrinthology in the form of my dear friend Gorski's exceptionally well crafted article. The article had been approved months ago for publication in Perímetro, the prestigious Portuguese labyrinthology quarterly. This past weekend in Bern, however, Gorski revealed to me that as a result of Roorback's connections and influence in Portuguese labyrinthological circuits, the article has been pulled from publication.

I can say without hyperbole that this is a travesty. It is deceit of the lowest kind and, forgive me if I seem overly crestfallen, it is precisely the sort of underhandedness that threatens the very sanctity of contemporary labyrinthology. Gorski has agreed to let us publish his article in installments, the first of which I will be posting this weekend. In the meantime, dear reader, please consider jotting a note to Perímetro, as I have, to express your disdain for both their publication and sense of intellectual ethics alike.