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Wait, it gets better. Crowley actually refers to Smoky's "evanescence" in the passage I quoted explaining the origin of the nickname, and I still didn't get it. So Smoky's "evane…
27 Jun 2000, 09:58
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I thought of this interpretation, but rejected it on the grounds that the narrator's vocabulary is (or seems) straightforward, without paraphrases of this type. My feeling is that…
27 Jun 2000, 09:53
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I haven't reread the whole book in a long time, but the only evidence bearing on these questions I can find offhand is in the section dealing with Smoky's childhood: Smoky "lived a…
24 Jun 2000, 22:40
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Here's something on "The Haunted Boardinghouse," which I had intended to post earlier but never got around to. In your excellent post on the similarities between THB and LITTLE, B…
24 Jun 2000, 16:56
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We know it as both (or at least I do), having heard you Brits sing "God Save the Queen" in films and such. --Adam…
22 Jun 2000, 09:53
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Have any of Horn's dreams in OBW turned out to be prophetic yet? I remember thinking that Horn spent rather a lot of time telling us his dreams, and none of them had any obvious r…
22 Jun 2000, 09:46
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Right--this, and what follows, is where I got the 68 years from. Or am I missing your point? This I don't see. I'd have to look up the text again (I don't have it with me) but …
19 Jun 2000, 09:51
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But the 100 years is not the time the Whorl has been in the system, but the Rajan's guess at the interval between Whorl-Green conjunctions (and even this guess is based on the hypo…
17 Jun 2000, 17:40
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A big, belated thank you to alga for posting this. Another thank you for asking nearly all the questions I suggested, in what sounds like nearly my wording, which I hadn't expecte…
11 Jun 2000, 12:34
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I'm confused. I don't see how my argument presupposed that Sev was the Pelagian. In fact, although I didn't say so explicitly, I was arguing against Carlton Greene's suggestion t…
23 May 2000, 09:41
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As I understand it, the orthodox, anti-Pelagian position does not deny the existence of free will, as Nutria points out; nor does it deny that the unsaved can perform virtuous acts…
21 May 2000, 09:17
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Making Eigenblick's henchmen the positive deck? But Eigenblick regards himself as an ally of the fairies, though they cheat him in the end. And Eigenblick and the fairies collabo…
12 May 2000, 09:16
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I guess I didn't mean anything very precise; I was conflating "the Renaissance magic worldview" with belief in the existence and importance of the fairies. Ariel may or may not be…
12 May 2000, 09:06
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The Tarot discussion got me wondering whether Wolfe ever alludes to the Tarot. I couldn't recall his doing so at all. Then it occurred to me that not only does Wolfe ignore compl…
09 May 2000, 08:54
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I'm not certain at all, although I may sometimes have lapsed into expressing my views without qualifiers. My belief--or, to be even more precise, my impression--is based upon two …
08 May 2000, 21:29
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I can only cite page numbers for the original 1981 Bantam trade paperback. But I'll do that, along with chapters. 52 cards: "The Least Trumps," II, 3, p. 156; confirmed in "Fifty-…
08 May 2000, 09:32
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Heh. For those who don't get it (I didn't until I read up a bit on the Tarot), "Crowley" here is not John but Aleister, the well-known British occultist, who designed his own Taro…
07 May 2000, 09:49
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Not that similar (at least according to alga's essay); TD removes the numbers and suits from the "people" cards, and cuts down the number of trumps much further. Aside from the fe…
07 May 2000, 09:43
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JC amy indeed have Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls (although I don't see much resemblance with LB except for the party at the end, and JC surely didn't need to read Chaucer to get th…
06 May 2000, 17:04
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The only reasons I didn't request it are that I don't have my copy of THE DEEP with me and remember almost nothing about it, and I don't know if my dinky laptop can even handle att…
05 May 2000, 08:51
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I second the "kind and helpful" part. Many thanks, Nutria, for quuoting from so much of the foreword. I don't know anything about the Chaucer text, so I don't know if it's an ada…
04 May 2000, 23:34
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When was this posted? I'd like to read it. After my earlier post, I went looking for the passage where Sophie first guesses that the fairies now number only fifty-two. I found it…
04 May 2000, 23:03
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You're welcome. That's one good habit, at any rate, I derived from my years in grad school. An ingenious scheme to save your theory, and one which neatly solves the problem of th…
04 May 2000, 09:20
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Jim Jordan wrote: Because, among other things, the book is a family saga. And because it adds a temporal depth and richness to the book to know how the Drinkwaters got where they…
03 May 2000, 10:32
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Those are also good functions, although the American/British dichotomy is raised more pointedly in the very next section. I'm still not convinced the section deserves the size and…
03 May 2000, 00:12
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I agree with the first of these sentences, but not with the second. I don't recall any indication that the presence of the fairies brought any benefits to the world at large, eithe…
01 May 2000, 22:45
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1. What is the function of the opening section, about Caspar Last? I can actually think of several possible functions: it provides a glimpse of our world; it's a prelude to the "o…
01 May 2000, 22:27
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Without having reread the entire section, I would say that since Alice does love Smoky, the idea that she may be losing his love upsets her. (See "Seized by the Tale," Book Two, C…
01 May 2000, 19:33
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Me, actually. (The second Alex is really Alex.) I remembered the part about August being everyone's progenitor. And, from a later post, you regard the single eyebrow as the sign …
01 May 2000, 10:50
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But Hawksquill's orrery is of a Ptolemaic universe, and therefore doesn't run by itself. Smoky's if of a Newtonian universe, and so does. (At least so Hawksquill says.) I agree …
01 May 2000, 09:02
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That was one of George's false "recollections" when lost in the forest; and even within this delusion, George is the only one who is high (and it's Franz, not Sophie, who is the fo…
29 Apr 2000, 23:09
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Here's my take on the meaning of Dr. Death's closing words. Just as Ransom will temporarily destroy Dr. Death and escape the island, but will relive his ordeal every time Tackman …
21 Apr 2000, 23:22
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There is very little humor in OBW (a trait it shares with most of Wolfe's books), but a while ago Kieran Cleary posted one humorous bit. Here are two more. 1) On p. 126 Horn refe…
13 Apr 2000, 09:20
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Some comments and a question on this story (in the anthology MOON SHOTS, ed. Peter Crowther). First, Roy T. Laffer is of course R. A. Lafferty, whom Wolfe has praised in print. L…
10 Apr 2000, 09:37
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Apologies in advance to those bored by "techie stuff"; you can just skip this message. Kieran Mullen wrote: [I wrote:] After reading your reply, I realized I didn't really know…
09 Apr 2000, 17:47
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The possibility of Silk being in a two-headed Pas-body hadn't occurred to me. My thoughts had simply been that if Horn is in Silk's body, and Horn thinks Silk is still out there a…
07 Apr 2000, 09:00
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I agree that of the sins I listed, Horn's betrayal of his family in the pit is the easiest to forgive; and I may have been led by my rhetoric to speak more harshly of it than it de…
05 Apr 2000, 23:36
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Read what I wrote again. My reference to Green's period being six times as long applied to the case in which Green orbited Blue (or Green and Blue orbited each other) while Blue o…
05 Apr 2000, 10:08
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From reading the archive, this seems to be the consensus. It is clear that Horn is in a new, or at least transformed, body. I have a problem with this body being Silk's, though: …
02 Apr 2000, 14:52
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I just finished rereading OBW. It's quite impressive, but also puzzling. In particular, Horn's character remains an enigma to me, although the narrative is saturated with his per…
04 Jan 1980, 10:44
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I think that when the editors say "Old Viron," they are including its territory as well (we are told in the list of "Proper Names in the Text" that Endroad is subject to Viron). I…
28 Aug 1956, 00:02
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It's exactly like "The Cold Equations": the author stacks the deck to force a "tragic" choice upon his characters, which when examined more closely is not really forced at all. Th…
27 Aug 1956, 20:42
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