Subject: (urth) Re: Moby Wolfe [Digest urth.v022.n038]

From: John Bishop <jbishop at blkbrd.zko.dec.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Feb 1999 09:07:47 +0000

Cute, but no cigar:

o  "Call me Ishmael" is a reference to the son of Abram and
   his concubine Hagar (search for "Ishmael" in 
   http://www.tagnet.org/freebies/KJBible/01_GEN.HTM).
   His family splits off before the Jews become Jews.

   So "Ishmael" is not the narrator's name, but his method of:

   1) denying the reader his real name, 

   2) claiming that real names are not the point, 

   3) saying he is a "wanderer" and cast out from his people and

   4) telling the reader that what follows is going to be 
      portentious and symbolic (biblical) rather than realistic
      and direct.

   Dan McCall, author and English professor, told me this
   some years ago; as the professor pointed out, any reader
   of the time would have instantly caught the reference.

   Of course, "Severian" is meant to make us think of "severe"
   but it's also his name.

o  Quequeeg is probably not Andean; many of the whalers were
   Native Americans from New England (e.g. the "Gay Head Indians"
   who were in the news a few years ago when they had a run-in
   with Jackie Kennedy over land on Martha's Vineyard), others
   came from all over; but the makers of shrunken heads are the
   Jivaro [http://users1.ee.net/pmason/shrunk2.html], who are
   from Brazilian or Ecuadorian low-land forests.  On the other
   hand, he may just have picked up the technique as a way of
   making money from other people's prejudices.

   Personally, given his tatoos, I suspect he's a Pacific 
   Islander--Hawaiian, Tahitian, Samoan or Maori: the whalers
   were active in the Pacific and recruited anywhere they could
   get cheap, tough workers.

o  And who would be Ahab?

        -John Bishop

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: Peter Stephenson <pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it>
Date: Fri, 05 Feb 1999 14:13:57 +0000

> Cute, but no cigar:

I just wanted to suggest the scenes were parallel.  I'm certainly not
implying the books are parallel, and the subject line was just a
throwaway, there's certainly no overt connection between
Ishmael/Severian.  Queequeg's poncho (`doormat') is referred to in
some detail by Ishmael, which puts him, or his associations, entirely
in the right part of the world for me, anywhere in Ecuador would do as
far as I'm concerned.  I'd have thought that was enough for one little
cigar.  I'm not asking for a Havana, and I'll go and smoke it outside
if you like.

corncrake

---

From: Mark Millman <mark_millman at hmco.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Feb 1999 10:51:48 +0000

On Friday 5 February 1999 at 2:08 pm GMT,
John Bishop wrote:

> Quequeeg is probably not Andean; many
> of the whalers were Native Americans from
> New England (e.g. the "Gay Head Indians"
> who were in the news a few years ago when
> they had a run-in with Jackie Kennedy over
> land on Martha's Vineyard), others came
> from all over; but the makers of shrunken
> heads are the Jivaro
> [http://users1.ee.net/pmason/shrunk2.html],
> who are from Brazilian or Ecuadorian low-
> land forests.  On the other hand, he may just
> have picked up the technique as a way of
> Personally, given his tatoos, I suspect he's a
> Pacific Islander--Hawaiian, Tahitian, Samoan
> or Maori: the whalers were active in the Pacific
> and recruited anywhere they could get cheap,
> tough workers.

As it happens, the Maori also preserved trophy
heads (part of the object was to preserve the
victim's tattoos), although I don't belive that they
shrunk them.  It certainly is the Jivaro who are
best known for the practice and who made the
stereotypical shrunken heads.  I don't know
whether the Samoans, who were notoriously
belligerent, had a similar tradition.

Like Rostrum, I noticed that Severian was
sharing a bed with a stranger whom he at
first finds threatening but later grew to trust
(and also like Rostrum, I didn't get any further
correspondences at the time).  Of course,
unlike Ishmael, Severian eventually finds
himself fighting his former companion.
Though it is, interestingly, a water-borne
assault that results in a fight with dreamlike
elements.  Perhaps Baldanders--who disap-
pears into Lake Diuturna and eventually comes
to inhabit the ocean--actually takes on the
whale's role in Severian's life for a time.

> o  And who would be Ahab?

Maybe Severian is Ahab as well as Ishmael--
but Severian, unlike Ahab, achieves redemption.

Mark Millman