Subject: (urth) More "Kevin Malone"

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 1999 02:54:38 +0000

Tony Ellis wrote:

>Kevin Malone is posessed by the elder Mr Malone. (Do we know his first
>name? Can't remember, but if not then I suspect it may well have been
>Kevin.) That monomaniacal desire to own the big house, to get back to
>his lost childhood, isn't his, it's Malone-the-servant's. That's why he
>could never be happy as master of the house: in the home he "remembers",
>he slept in the servant's annexe.

    The above does not address when/how KM came to be possessed by the elder
Malone. While he was still an innocent (so far as The Pines is concerned)
orphan, who had had no prior connection to the estate? The "spirit", or
whatever, of the elder Malone, operating at some remove from the estate,
attaches itself to a random, orphaned boy, implants false memories of and
causes to pine for, a home the child had never known? Causes the boy to grow
up and amass a fortune just so he can buy the estate (how long did that
take, 20 years, 30 years?)?
    Or did a rich man, who need not have been an orphan, just happen to buy
the estate and only then become possessed? If so, why then give him false
memories, either of growing up on the estate and then leaving for the
orphanage or not growing up on the estate but still going to an orphanage?
    KM can not have the elder Malone's memories of growing up on the estate
because the estate didn't exist when the elder Malone was a boy! We are told
The Pines was one of the estates designed "During the teens and twenties..."
(p-38). The current KM is middle-aged (what, 50?). The "now" of the story is
probably the mid-to-late 1970s, because NASA is mentioned. KM would have to
have been born circa the mid-to-late 1920s, the murder/suicide circa the
late 1930s, in order for him to go to the orphanage at age 12. Betty Malone
is stated to have been 20 years younger than the elder Malone (p-48). Even
if Betty was relatively young when she was killed - say 20 -, that would
make the elder Malone 40. He would have to have been born at about the turn
of the century. Ergo, it was not possible for him to have been raised at The
Pines.
    The dates and ages I have given are necessarily approximations, but they
can't be far enough off for KM to have the elder Malone's memories of
growing up on the estate. My theory is looking better all the time! <g>

Roy

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

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From: Tony Ellis <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 1999 18:07:42 +0000

Roy wrote:

> Malone.
Absolutely. We don't -know- how or when this happened. The story doesn't
tell us. Like the question "how many children had Lady Macbeth?", it's
not important.

> because the estate didn't exist when the elder Malone was a boy!
>
Once again: since the story doesn't tell us one way or the other whether
the elder Malone grew up on the estate, it can't matter. We're not
supposed to know precisely what memories KM has or believes he has. All
we need to know is that he thinks he's the son of Betty and the elder
Malone, and that there never was a son.

> My theory is looking better all the time! <g>

Well, as SBear points out, your theory requires the writing-in of extra
Malones and events that just aren't in the original story. For me that's
enough to reject it out of hand. And perhaps more importantly, this is a
-ghost- story - originally commissioned by Ramsey Campbell for his
anthology New Terrors.... No offense, but your explanation turns a fine,
insidiously creepy story into something pretty flat.<g>