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At the moment, very little is going on, and we've been given permission by the list's moderator to discuss Crowley (though there doesn't seem to be much interest at the moment). B…
25 Apr 2001, 22:22
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Or the protagonist suddenly discovering he can travel in spirit to other planets? <g> --Adam…
25 Apr 2001, 18:22
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There is a passage which seems to suggest this: Evensong whispered, "You know their secret. You could destroy them." "Yes. I couldn't kill them here and now, if that's what yo…
24 Apr 2001, 19:57
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Because although Horn doesn't think it can be used, the inhumi do. Kind of like Reagan and Star Wars; in a sense it was a weapon, although most scientists believe that it couldn't…
24 Apr 2001, 09:39
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Right. --Adam *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.…
24 Apr 2001, 09:31
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Say what you will about Nicholas Gevers' proposal, he's got people thinking about the Secret again. After some thought, I have a new theory, which seems to me to answer the diffic…
23 Apr 2001, 20:14
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Hello, Michael: You seem to have sent two posts to the urth list, identical in text, but one with the above subject line and the other with the subject line "Re: ENGINE SUMMER: wh…
22 Apr 2001, 22:03
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Since my first response, one potentiality has occurred to me. Assuming that there are not enough humans on Green to maintain the population of intelligent inhumi, the Secret impli…
22 Apr 2001, 21:59
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I've discovered (unless somebody's already mentioned this) an apparent inconsistency in the descriptions of the inhumi breeding process. In RttW Horn tells Juganu "I know that you…
22 Apr 2001, 21:55
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Against this theory: 1) There is no evidence that any humans can travel astrally except in Horn's presence. 2) There is no evidence that the Neighbors will grant humans the power…
21 Apr 2001, 13:01
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I'm taking advantage of Ranjit's offer to discuss Crowley on the urth list. This post grows out of a discussion a few of us have been having about ENGINE SUMMER, which appears to h…
21 Apr 2001, 12:59
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I believe so. I don't recall it, in any case (though iirc a couple of passages can be seen in retrospect to hint at it); nor do I recall any of our discussions of the secret menti…
20 Apr 2001, 09:49
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Since Ranjit has given us permission to discuss Crowley here, could you tell us what you're referring to? --Adam…
19 Apr 2001, 09:56
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I'm not generally a fan of religious-allegorical interpretations of Wolfe, but in the case of SS, there's a strong case for seeing "Horn"'s realization that he is Silk as a symbol …
18 Apr 2001, 19:27
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I think it might be more productive, instead of seeking a blow-by-blow correspondence with the Divine Comedy a la ULYSSES, to look for correspondences between specific episodes, no…
18 Apr 2001, 19:25
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I've complained in the past about the several plot threads in TBOTSS that RttW leaves dangling. I now think, thought, that I may have missed the point. It has been remarked befor…
18 Apr 2001, 16:24
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I helped proofread the Crowley and PEACE chapbooks, and I can recommend both of them (nothing against the CERBERUS chapbook; I just haven't had time to look at it closely). The Si…
17 Apr 2001, 11:10
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Earlier, I posted an argument that the Whorl does not leave very quickly, but decades after Silk and Co. depart (to be pedantic, we don't know when they arrive at the Whorl, or if …
17 Apr 2001, 08:53
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on 2/19/00 5:43 AM, Allan Lloyd at lloyd at nexus.kc3.co.uk wrote: A very good post, Allan. I actually raised some of these points in a post entitled "Horn as antihero?" (in the Who…
16 Apr 2001, 23:05
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Unlike Vizcacha, I wasn't disappointed by the revelation of the narrator's identity; and I was, conversely, disappointed by a number of other things. But I don't think that Wolfe i…
12 Apr 2001, 22:34
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But, as I've pointed out, we do have an actual statement, and it doesn't fit your scenario. Daisy tells us that when she saw Silk for the last time, the wedding was "a few days ag…
12 Apr 2001, 20:21
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Do you mean Horn's Silk in TBOTLS, or Silkhorn's (i. e. the narrator's) Silkhorn? It's the latter I was talking about. And I didn't find either Silkhorn's or Hoof'n'Hide's Silkho…
12 Apr 2001, 11:44
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I like this, though I don't know if Wolfe intended it. But surely Purgatory would be the Whorl _and_ Blue, with the conversation with Remora corresponding to the final purging of …
12 Apr 2001, 11:43
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But the ending voyage doesn't "work on beyond the page." We've never seen Silk qua Silk with any of the other passengers (except Oreb), and the others are all strangers to each ot…
12 Apr 2001, 11:41
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But we did, I think. Jahlee says she doesn't know who the boy [Severian] is, and Merryn says "'He's my brother. We're brothers and sisters, we witches and the torturers.'" (267) …
11 Apr 2001, 17:40
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To be even more plain and firm, I don't see any evidence that Wolfe was thinking about utopias at all when he wrote TBOTSS. None of the communities Silkhorn encounters is remotely…
11 Apr 2001, 12:34
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To be sure: Silk explicitly states that the Secret can't be used (I'm not sure what Wolfe thinks). But he does say that if everyone _could_ love each other, then the inhumi could …
10 Apr 2001, 20:07
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'Fraid not; your theory won't jibe with Horn's statement that the Secret "is a weapon too heavy for our hands," and that the Neighbors knew it, but could not wield it (IGJ, 125). …
09 Apr 2001, 09:53
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My immediate reaction is that I don't believe Wolfe is a utopian, even a "conservative" one; I don't believe Wolfe advocates "Natural Man" or the "Noble Savage"; and while the para…
08 Apr 2001, 20:35
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While I don't have the book with me, so can't comment on this particular passage (which was the subject of discussion earlier), I would say that passages like these are the Silk in…
06 Apr 2001, 10:14
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I'd like to be able to agree with this, since I don't believe Silk-in-Pig has been downloaded into Silk's body either. But I can't. Just because the divine Silk is linked with Pa…
04 Apr 2001, 21:15
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Do you have any references for 2? Yes, Horn clearly knows that he died on Green, that he is in a different body, and that everybody thinks he's Silk. But I don't remember any pass…
04 Apr 2001, 21:01
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Then why not include Horn's conversations on his time on Whorl as conversations, like the Hoof-penned chapters? This would make perfect sense if the editors were writing a novel. …
02 Apr 2001, 20:04
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I've been trying to approach the problem of the third-person sections from a different angle, by asking why they are there at all. When you think about it, their presence is stran…
01 Apr 2001, 22:01
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Horn can't be literally saying that Pas is in him, because if he knew that Pas was in him, he'd know that Silk was in him, and he doesn't. Inclito's gloss is accurate as far as Ho…
01 Apr 2001, 21:38
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An aeon ago (well, Feb. 9) Henry Kaiser asked: (I thought I remembered a reply, but couldn't find it in the archives.) After rereading the ending, I think I know the answer. The…
31 Mar 2001, 09:53
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Presumably it was Scylla-in-Oreb who suggested it, as bait to get Horn to take her to Urth. Not necessarily; she could give Horn some sort of invocation which could call up the Mo…
16 Mar 2001, 17:00
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It may not be a coincidence. We know that Cilinia had pledged herself to the Greater Scylla, who undoubtedly knew of her sister's presence on Blue. Cilinia could have somehow conv…
15 Mar 2001, 10:07
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I'm not quite clear what your point is. It seems you either believe that the Mother only speaks the Neighbors' languague, so Horn would have to know it to communicate with her, or…
13 Mar 2001, 22:06
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Where? Not in Chapter 23 of IGJ, where Horn gives Hide the lesson on the inhumi and the Neighbors. I may be missing something again, but I don't see the problem here. The Mother…
12 Mar 2001, 21:59
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Though Jahlee's words aren't entirely clear, it seems to be a little more than just that: each inhumu/a derives its "mind" from a specific human whose blood its parent drank. I ag…
12 Mar 2001, 21:37
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BMeyer wrote (but omitting the "about"): Yes, that's The Secret, as the following sentence shows. He wants Nettle to know the Secret (so she will understand his relationship with…
11 Mar 2001, 00:27
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This may just be something I missed, but in New Viron "Father" is talking to Hoof about Scylla, "and I asked him if there had ever been a real Scylla. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, that's…
09 Mar 2001, 15:01
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Whoops--that little fact had completely slipped my mind. So your final sentence here is of course correct. I would still suggest, though, that this time period is not necessarily…
07 Mar 2001, 23:41
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No and no. On the night he arrives in New Viron, Silkhorn makes his final "astral journey." Hoof tells us that "After that, Hide and Vadsig came ... for the wedding" (397); we ar…
07 Mar 2001, 15:51
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A very thought-provoking post. I have my doubts that you'll be able to naturalize the children's authorship of the third-person sections, but I've made some comments below. No Pa…
07 Mar 2001, 12:26
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What I meant by this comment was not that the children's authorship should not affect our interpretation of RTTW. Rather, I meant that I don't find it believable that the children…
06 Mar 2001, 00:08
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I've commented before on the unlikelihood of the children preserving the mystery of "Horn"'s identity until the end. Unlike Wolfe's narrative games in other works, I can't see tha…
01 Mar 2001, 17:01
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[snip] It's not clear to me why you regard the computer model as conclusive evidence that Horn lives. It's quite possible to completely purge an invading virus (or operating syst…
25 Feb 2001, 20:59
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Certainly not; I read it that way myself until about a week ago. It was reading Allan Lloyd's letter that gave me the idea of seeing it as fantasy, and I saw that it could provide…
20 Feb 2001, 22:13
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