Subject: (urth) More on Nadan

From: Alice Turner <al at ny.playboy.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 13:04:33 +0000

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

Ratty,
I found that essay.  It's not exactly short-winded, but I'll try to sum up.
She thinks that the Christian symbols in the story--bleeding, bread, Easter
eggs, the eagle [she explains this later], candles, a tomb, a cross w "dead
leader"--"serve less as indicators of holy presence than as emphatic signs
of emptiness and loss of meaning." Feels that "Can America be revitalized"
hangs as a question overall.

Thinks the moldy loaf is the antithesis of the communion bread. Makes quite
a (long) point on how Nadan misperceives everything, his mood swings. Makes
the same point someone here did--what deformity could Ardis possibly have
conceled from him? Feels that the footsteps outside the door at the end
which jar "the building like and earthquake" may refer to Matthew's account
of an earthquake when the stone is rolled away from JC's tomb [boy, I take
it back about -you- going too far!!] thinks the picnic (fraught with
Christian symbolism) takes place on Good Friday.

As mantis indicated, one useful thing about this essay (which is mostly full
of academic bs in my opinion) is that she read both Visit to a Small Planet
and Mary Rose (neither of which I'm familiar with) and shows that the
described scenes in the firt are "either complete fabrication of have been
fundamentally changed." Reminds us that Faust is next. 

She closes with a curveball about the seveth night being that which is to
come: Easter. Does she think Ardis will be resurrected? Yikes.

Anyway, despite my negative feelings about this essay, I will xerox and send
it to anyone who emails me his address: al at ny.playboy.com It's also about
The Detective of Dreams.

-alga-