{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1810", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1810, "subject": "Count Dorcas (long)", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1999-10-02T00:15:58+00:00", "last": "1999-10-03T00:26:05+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jim Henley", "address": "jlhenley at erols.com" }, "date": "1999-10-02T00:15:58+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Count Dorcas (long)", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "-----Original Message-----\nFrom: urth-errors at lists.best.com [mailto:urth-errors at lists.best.com]On\nBehalf Of Roy C. Lackey\n\n I note that none of the responses to Carlton Greene's \"Dorcas as\noutcast?\" post addressed the larger question he raised: was Dorcas really\nthe \"nice Catholic girl\"--as I believe someone here once\ndescribed her-- she\nseems to be, or was there something more sinister about her?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm torn between admiration for the enormous effort you've put into\ndeveloping your theory and typing it up, and a renewed gratitude for the\npresumption of innocence in our nonliterary lives.\n\nAs Alex Groce suggests, the dream \"evidence\" is the weak link in your case,\nfatally so IMHO.\n\n1) In BOTNS specifically, it's just a bad idea to think that dreams can't\nrepresent foreknowledge.\n\n2) You seem to treat dreams as inevitable reiterations of facts in the\nworld - e.g. if Dorcas dreams of being poled across a lake by an old man,\nit must be that she remembers being poled across a lake by an old man. If\nshe remembers being poled across a lake, she must not have been dead, or\nmust have been \"undead.\" If she sees an old man, it can't be her husband,\nwho wasn't old. The weaknesses of this approach to real dreams strike me as\nmanifold (and recently a plague on our legal system). It's possible that\nwriters could make literary use of dreams in precisely this way - many have\ndone. I don't think it's justified in this case. In the example above,\nDorcas' dream of being poled across a lake can represent an intuitive\nreconstruction of what her situation must have been at the time of her\ndeath. Most of your other dream points go awry similarly, IMHO. e.g., lots\nof people must have blood bats in their dreams without being vampires or\nmurderesses.\n\nLots of nitpicking follows:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " BTW, welcome to Carlton and the slew of new posters;\nwhere are they all coming from?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In my case, from Paul Duggan's fine website." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "My thoughts proceed from the largely negative tone of the\nfew memories and dreams she relates." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Which is an approach that, pushed too far, leads to problems. Memory isn't\npassive and if we go with the canonical assumption, that D was resurrected\nby Sev, Dorcas' mental state throughout the saga is unsettled. She has been\nyanked out of time and in the other instances where we have seen this it\ncauses serious difficulties for the resurrected. Frex the soldier in CotA\nsomehow ends up with a good bit of Jonas layered over his personality." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why should they be so bleak? Was she\nhappily married? Did she want and love her child(ren), or did she have a\nchoice in the matter?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Excellent questions. They don't add up to vampirism or murder in\nthemselves. The most parsimonious assumption would be a kind of\nconventional unhappiness." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If Agia's estimate of her age is correct\n(16 or 17),\nand the age at which Agia began to menstruate (13) is typical\nfor the times,\nthen Dorcas must have gotten married almost as soon as she had her first\nperiod, in order for her to have been married four years at the\ntime of her death." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The first thing to note is that the people of the Commonwealth are\nextremely casual about time. Alex Groce makes the essential points\nregarding the unreliability of Agia's testimony." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Not only that, but if the boatman was in his seventies\nwhen he died,\nthen he had to be about thirty when he married the girl. The\nissue of their\nages alone makes their relationship suspect, an issue that was entirely\navoidable had Wolfe made her to be but a few years older." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This strikes me as presentism. There have been whole swaths of history in\nwhich a marriage between a thirty-year-old man and a teenage girl, even a\nyoung teenage girl, was not automatically suspect. I wouldn't say\neverything in the universe is a social construct but contemporary American\nideas of what constitutes the age of consent certainly are." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Therefore, Wolfe did it deliberately. Why, if not to call\nattention to the fact of it?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Perhaps he is calling attention to Agia's lies about Dorcas' age. Perhaps\nhe is putting up another marker to remind us that, socially, the\nCommonwealth is Not Like Us. Perhaps broken-down Caron has the body of a\nmuch older man (it's a poor society and he ain't at its pinnacle); then\nhe's in his sixties. And now you're looking at the marriage of a\ntwenty-something to a girl in her mid- to late teens. This wouldn't have\nraised an eyebrow throughout most of the history _we_ know." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And even that event was\ntainted by the fact that she was alarmed about Sev bending over her. Sev,\nhis mouth reddened from eating a pomegranate, woke her: \"I\nshould have known\nfrom the stains on your mouth. I thought you'd been sucking\nblood all night." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You wake to find someone in a fright cloak bending over you with juicy\nblood-red lips. You've barely spent a day in his company so he's quite new\nto you, though one thing you do know is that he kills and tortures people.\nLike a lot of us, you're not fully alert when you wake up. And your mind is\nconfused anyway for reasons you don't yet understand. You could momentarily\nthink such a figure was a vampire even if you weren't one yourself or\nhadn't murdered your own child.\n\nOr, and this should be considered, you might simply make the witticism\nafter you've sat up, because hey, what's with the cloak?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The first of these dreams is the one in which she\nbecomes aware that\npeople regard her as \"an unclean spirit who has wrapped itself in the\nwoman's body they see.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "1) Hanging around with Agia for awhile will do that to your self-esteem.\n\n2) A supernatural version of \"survivor guilt.\" Dorcas has come back from\nthe dead. She doesn't realize this consciously yet but her unconscious is\ntrying to get the message across. Alas, if you're in a bad frame of mind\nthe symbols your unconscious lights on are dire. What kinds of things rise\nfrom the dead? Unclean things. Evil spirits." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The size of the clothes--half a\nspan--would be too small for a full-term baby. But if she has had a\nmiscarriage--whether unintended or not--or an abortion, the tiny clothes\nwould be of a proper size. If the tiny clothes had been intended\nfor a doll\nit should not have the emotional impact that it does for her. Indeed, the\ndream evokes much more the sense of guilt than grief, as does\nthe fact that\nthe doll-related dreams are recurrent. Her sub-conscious mind is\npreoccupied\nwith the subject, not just the nightmarish details of her interment." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This strikes me as the second-strongest part of your entire argument. Let\nme say right out that, yeah, could be. The interpretation that Dorcas had\nin life had a miscarriage or abortion that haunted her seems reasonable and\ndoes not do violence, to my taste, to the sense of the character or the\nwork as a whole. Mind you, even Nice Catholic Girls have miscarriages.\n\nHowever. Folks is folks. There could be someone out there for whom dolls\n_do_ have an emotional impact. Like for instance if you feel like a doll (I\nam the plaything of vastly superior forces), dolls in dreams might\nprofoundly move you. The doll represents you, even if it is offstage and\neven if \"you\" are already in the dream. Hasn't someone advanced the notion\nthat in your dreams _everything_ is you? The fact that the clothes are too\nsmall could indicate that Dorcas felt inadequate as a mother to the child\nshe _did_ have (Ouen) since she \"abandoned\" him by dying. It could even be\na symbolic communication that Ouen _is_ her child. (\"Look lady, you've been\ninvolved with these two merchants - A & A - so I'm sticking merchants in\nhere. Your association with them is linked to this restaurant where this\nman works, who is very significant. Now, you probably think of your child\nas tiny since that's how you remember him. Actually, you're not thinking of\nhim at all yet, which is something else I'm trying to get through to you.\nBoy do we have a lot to talk about! Anyway, _little clothes too small_. Are\nyou gettin this down, D? And remember where you've been involved with\nmerchants, 'kay? Oh, and you were changing clothes there too.\") Or that Sev\nis, um, you know.\n\nAnother avenue strikes me as worth exploring. Dorcas is buying tiny tiny\nclothes. This is a world lousy with giants. And Severian dreamed of himself\nas a puppet (doll)..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Life is cheap in the Commonwealth and familial bonds even weaker. She may\nwell have been forced into marriage as a child and resented it.\nShe probably had no choice about becoming pregnant." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "May be. But this is likely a \"normal\" unhappiness for Commonwealth women.\nIt doesn't add up to vampirism or child murder." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Who knows what\nproblems and disagreements they may have had? But her conscience is\nbothering her about something, something to do with a baby." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Again, this is where I think you go too far. You are turning a syumbolic\nlanguage - dream - into an indicative one. Something to do with a child?\nMaybe. And Dorcas is described throughout as \"childlike.\" And people dream\nabout themselves." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " The issue of age is raised once more in the second dream she\nrelates. She dreams of being \"in a boat poled across a spectral lake\" and\n\"An old man poles it, and I lie at his feet.\" What prompted this dream\nimage? Her dream cannot be prescient, because the dream is long after the\nfact of her interment. She can have no idea how much time has elapsed\nbetween her death and resurrection, even after figuring out that that is\nwhat has happened. The old man can't be her husband, because he wasn't an\nold man when she died. We have no reason to believe he even owned a boat\nthen: he was a shopkeeper. Who was this old man in the dream? The Lake's\nequivalent of a mortician who poled the boat she was \"buried\" from? The\nother elements in the dream do not fit that theory: \"Just as we\nare about to\ntouch shore, I fall from the boat, but the old man does not see\nme, and as I\nsink through the water I know that he has never known I was\nthere at all.\"\nYet it *was* near the shore where her body was found--and her husband\ncouldn't find it in forty years of searching, though he was\npresent when she\nwas \"buried\". Something is wrong here: it doesn't add up." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And this vies with the blood bats for the weakest part of your entire\nargument. It was a _dream_. You just can't say \"the old man can't have been\nher husband because he (probably) didn't even own a boat.\" And the fact\nthat she _dreams_ she \"falls from the boat\" without being seen by the\nboatman fails to fit the theory that the boatman was the mortician _how_\nprecisely? I can't see any connection.\n\nHer body was found near shore, sure. We're told that the place is vast, the\ncurrents tricky and the shoreline somewhat indistinct. (The whole\nbuilding's geometry is wacky.) And we are once again vexed by the nature\n(natures?) of time in the saga. Perhaps her husband fails to find her\n_because_ Sev will find her.\n\nYou create a further problem for yourself with the husband. First you\nadduce the (convincing) evidence that he's a lifelong fuckup. Then you\nassume he must surely be competent to find his wife's body in the lake.\nYour first argument is in considerable tension with your second." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "To interpret her statement as\nmeaning simply that all people have a dark side would have her stating a\nplatitude; she has to be implying something more tangible." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Unlike Wolfe, Dorcas is not a great author. Why wouldn't she state a\nplatitude?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "My next point against Dorcas is one of these. (II,\nXXII) \"The whip mark Dorcas had carried from the Piteous Gate\nburned on her\ncheek like a brand.\" This comment comes immediately after she related the\ndream about the old man in the boat. Who else in the novels has branded\ncheeks? Morweena. For what crime was she branded and killed? Killing her\nhusband and child." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Let's assume this isn't a stretch. There is good evidence of Morwenna's\ninnocence (the confession of her rival). Where does that leave the\nprobative value of Dorcas' \"brand?\"\n\nLook at it another way: Who branded (hurt) Morwenna? Who \"hurts\" Dorcas? Is\nthe guilt indicated by Sev's choice of words actually his own?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " She then recalled to Sev Dr. Talos's labeling him as Death, which\nSev said was a metaphor. She said it was a bad metaphor and, as they were\nwalking back to the others, Sev wondered to himself if \"Dr.\nTalos's calling\nDorcas \"Innocence\" had not been a metaphor of the same kind.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What makes it a bad metaphor (Sev as Death) is less its falsity than its\nincompleteness." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Unless we are to grant that Dorcas is\nprescient--the dream coming before the knowledge of the alleged bat\nbite--then the dream indicates to me that she had hostile feelings for\nJolenta." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But of course she knew she had hostile feelings for Jolenta! Jolenta treats\nher like crap from the moment they meet, steals her man (well, takes him\nfor a joyride), and is, let's face it, an enormous burden after they leave\nBaldanders and Dr. T. Surely being completely obtuse about one's own\nemotions is not a prerequisite for nice catholic girlhood.\n\nAs for Jolenta falling down a well, she is already, IIRC, sick. If someone\nis sick and might die you might dream of them falling down a well (esp if\nyou've been interred in water...). You might dream this if you sense their\npsyche disintegrating and their will to live evaporating. If someone has\nbecome essentially an artificial creature, especially a kind of mannequin\nsexpot, you might dream that they are a doll." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The assumption is unwarranted because their geographical\nlocation and the behavior of the supposed blood bat does not agree with\nevidence presented elsewhere in the text." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is interesting, but inconclusive.\n\n1) Stranger things have happened. Her father's habitat description may be\ngenerally true (it may also be the sort of thing you tell your daughter to\nmake her feel better) but allow for blood bat appearances this far north of\nNessus.\n\n2) It may actually be not a blood bat at all but another of Hethor's\ncreatures. The man couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, I tell you.\nIndeed the Undine may even be calling Sev away in part to save him from the\nattack.\n\n3) It may be a New Sun thing. A tropical creature appears at this latitude.\nSeverian appears at this latitude. A portent of the warming to come and\nSev's role in it. (And its cost.)\n\n4) Maybe it's just a regular bat, not a blood bat at all. But Jolenta is\nalready sinking fast...\n\nI tend to go for option 2." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The Cumaen indicated that Jolenta should\nrecover from her\nwounds, just as Sev did when he was later bitten by a true blood bat, but\nshe didn't." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "We are given to understand that Jolenta no longer wishes to live because\nshe has lost the beauty that made life so enjoyable for her. They say you\ndon't mind living on the ground floor until you've had a view. Jolenta has\nhad one and it's gone. Now, if J has died instead because Dorcas has\nmurdered her, the poignancy of J's loss becomes irrelevant. I can't see\nthat making a better story." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And when Sev reached the roof of the tomb following\nthe seance,\nJolenta was dead and Dorcas was alone with her and bending over\nthe lifeless body." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You're not a cop or prosecutor are you? I would not want to give anyone\nfirst aid in your district if so, or even grieve overmuch at the scene ." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "He then recalled to her the earlier incident in\nNessus, but this time used the word vampire to describe how he must have\nlooked to her. When asked by Agia, in the Botanic Gardens, what\nwas the last\nthing she remembered, Dorcas answered: \"Sitting by a window ...\nThere were\npretty things in the window. Trays and boxes, and a rood.\" Was\nthis last to\nkeep the vampires away? And which side of the window was she on?\nWhy wasn't\nher weighted body where it was supposed to be? Why couldn't\nCaron (the name\nI am using for the boatman), who searched over and over almost daily for\nforty years, who had pulled some of the bodies up so often that\nhe knew them\nby sight, find his wife's body?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Piling up rhetorical questions does not make a mound of evidence. Severian\ndescribes _himself_ as looking like a vampire. And you seem to feel the\nvision of a vampire was _frightening_ to Dorcas when she woke up in the\nfield. How come her instinct wasn't to be grateful for the company? If a\nvampire is outside but \"by\" a window, what is she \"sitting\" on? If the rood\nis a bar to her, why does she lump it with the pretty things in her\ndescription? If she's already undead at this window scene, how come her\nmemory ends after this? If she's lying about her last memory (since if\nshe's had a continuous undeath, her memory shouldn't end that abruptly),\nwhy not pick another one? If Caron is so worried that his wife walks the\nnight and is after him, why doesn't he get the hell out of Dodge?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "He was present when she was\ninterred. He had\na \"map\". The most obvious answer is--she wasn't there.\n\n Caron, for all the sympathetic portrayal of his searching for his\ntoo-soon dead wife for forty years, has always struck me as a\nne'er-do-well." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But if this ne'er-do-well fails to find one body in a lake of bodies, or\nfails to recognize it when he pulls it up, it means the body must not be\nthere?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Did the baby live? What became of the child?\nOuen, presumably because he was old enough to get by without his mother,\nCaron retained until the age of ten, then farmed out as a potboy, never,\napparently, to see him again until Ouen sought him out when he was grown.\nThat act does not say much for Caron's fatherly instincts." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Right through the nineteenth century here in Maryland, you could indenture\nyour children to someone. (The contract stipulated what the child would do\nfor the new wards in the way of service and what they would provide in\nreturn. If your circumstances changed you could, and sometimes did,\n\"ransom\" the child back.) Did the act say more about the parental instincts\nof the people who did this or their poverty? And was the indenture system\ncrueler and more capricious than our contemporary and heartwarming system\nof foster care? Do we have any noncareerist reasons to view Ouen's life as\nturning out especially badly? I mean, potboy is not a glamorous job, but if\na person's work is _not_ his worth and not his happiness, it's hardly a\ntragedy." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes, Caron may\nhave been poor and unable to afford to keep the boy, but that seems to be\nlargely his own fault. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is your strongest argument. I have no problem assenting to your\ninterpretation of Caron's widowerhood. It's at least possible that he was\nso shattered by grief that he _lost_ the ability to live competently,\nhowever. In some ways, I could almost see him as one of the characters in a\nFrost monologue." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "He is haunted by\nthe memory of her eyes popping open when her body hit the water; his\nconscience will not let him rest until he sees her good and dead. Was he\ncomplicitous somehow in her death, whether overtly or by omission? We may\nnever know, but his conscience is bothering him about something" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Too much certainty about too little evidence. People grieve in lots of\ndifferent ways. Merely living when someone else dies can goad the\nconscience variously. You can feel guilty about surviving, you can feel\nguilty about your anger at being \"deserted\" by the deceased. You can be\nobsessively sad in ways that don't actually have anything to do with guilt.\nI can't help but feel that Wolfe comprehends a more complete sense of life\nthan is contained within this particular brief against these characters." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "While it is certainly possible that the old man just\nhappened to\ndie about the same time that Dorcas found him, it strains credulity." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Honey, I'm home!\"\n\n[Thunk.]\n\nBit of a shock when your long-dead wife actually walks through the door.\n\nOR Dorcas found him a long time ago. Her memories returned at an\never-greater clip as she approached that section of town. She went to the\nhouse and found him living there. Sure it's a dump, but he's one of life's\nlosers, remember? She stays with him and cares for him for however long.\nShe tells him who she is or she pretends to be someone else entirely. He\nhasn't seen her in decades, not even a picture, and his eyes aren't so\ngood. One day he dies. Severian happens along at that time because the\nentire universe keeps arranging it so he's on the scene at significant\nmoments. Or C died there relatively recently but, as you point out, Dorcas\nain't strong, so she's not going to drag him downstairs and dig him a hole.\nBut she can bring the flowers _up_. When the smell gets too bad she'll\nstrike a match." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Note that when she talks to Sev of returning to Nessus\nto find out what she can of her old life, she mentions\nher male child--but not her husband." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now _that's_ a Nice Catholic Girl. Even in her awful state she has enough\nconsideration for her boyfriend's feelings to avoid the awkward subject of,\nactually, his grandpa. Ick! But I digress." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Curiously, she also never brings up the subject of how\nshe came to\nbe in the lake. From her perspective, if she had been truly dead, no time\nshould have passed between her death and resurrection." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "IMHO, another completely unwarranted, and even contraindicated, assumption\nabout how time works in the cosmos of BOTNS. Among other things, _we don't\nknow what sense of time the dead have_. None of them tell us. Our other\nmost sustained contact with a returnee, the soldier in CotA, indicates that\nbeing wrenched out of time like that is incredibly disorienting and\nanything but straightforward. I do not think he is a vampire either." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "She *has\" to\nknow *something* about her own death--but never mentions the second child\nshe supposedly died giving birth to. Very curious. Yet she\nremembers living\nabove the shop with her husband and first-born child." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Steve Young says he knows something about the concussion he suffered last\nweek only thanks to videotape and the reports of witnesses. Neither are\navailable to help Dorcas with her own more final (not to say absolutely\nfinal) trauma. She simply _doesn't_ have to know something about her own\ndeath. We don't know which memories return at which rate. Nor is it _very_\ncurious that, even if she has remembered a second child in the _few\nfeverish hours_ since she saw the chair, she doesn't mention a child she\ndied giving birth to to Sev. Why would she? It's a painful subject and\nshe's in a clearly distracted frame of mind. It's all she can manage to\navoid upsetting Sev by mentioning her husband ." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " How did she find him, anyway?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Is it easier for a vampire, a child-murderess or a woman who has had an\nabortion to find her husband under those circumstances than it is for a\nNice Catholic Girl? Frankly, her finding him is one of the two things in\nthe series that most strains my credulity, but it's not beyond the realm\nthat, as I suggested above, the closer Dorcas got to the abandoned quarter\nthe more memories returned, and when she came back to or staked out her old\nhouse, Caron was still there." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "She was still a child when she died, as far as I am concerned" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Because that is how we regard these things in the West at the close of the\nsecond millenium AD." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In any event, it may just have been a simplistic, catchall answer\nthat Caron gave Ouen to shut him up when the boy asked about his mother." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Which would be Caron screwing up again:\n\n\"Your mom died in childbirth son.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" little Ouen said.\n\n\"Dad,\" he continued after a moment, \"where's my baby brother then?\"\n\n * *\n\nSeems like it would be safer, and more productive from a parent's\nperspective, to tell him she died from not eating her vegetables." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Caron didn't mention to Sev and Agia how Cas died, or even that\nthey had any\nchildren, only that they were married for nearly four years. For a man so\npreoccupied with his dead wife, he seems to have been strangely reticent\nabout her with the one person in the world who would want to\nknow all about her--her son, Ouen." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sev had a single conversation with Caron and a single meaningful\nconversation with Ouen. Roy, I have to ask, do you really have the sorts of\nconversations where both parties - even strangers - reliably get out all\nthe relevant information, including the emotionally difficult parts? And\ncan you teach me? " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Most people who die in Nessus are not interred in the\nLake of Birds." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And some people are." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why did Caron--if the decision was his--elect to inter her there, rather\nthan in her native soil?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Beats me. _Was_ it his choice? Where was her \"native soil,\" precisely? How\nmuch significance is attached to \"native soil\" in a world where you can't\nscratch the dirt without unearthing a human artifact? Did Caron see that\nhis neighborhood was going downhill and fear that any grave nearby was\nbegging to be violated? Did he decide that sticking her in the Lake of\nBirds would keep those damned necrophages from gettin her? Were they\nalready suffering some kind of financial difficulty that decreed a pauper's\nburial for his wife? Was it the wish of her parents? Does an author have to\ntell us every little thing? Would the book be better if these details were\nin it?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Vampires traditionally do not like water, and\nDorcas was deathly afraid of water." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Cats don't like water either. Is she a cat? Or is this just what happens to\nyou when you've been forced to stew in the stuff for a couple of decades?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why *did* her eyes pop open when she hit the water?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Did they really? Memory is not passive. (He said again.)\n\nWas it just a bad cement job? Or was it a mystical portent of her\nresurrection upon the return of the Conciliator?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I do suggest that Caron couldn't find the body in all those years\nbecause it wasn't there. Her body was put there, but whether by an agent\nof\nYesod or an undine, is unclear." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now this has possibilities: To ensure that Caron doesn't find it, the\nheirodules remove the body until Sev is coming. We can toss out all the\nvampire stuff and all the baby-killer stuff and be left with this striking\npossibility. It has some genuine virtues: It fits the shape of the story.\nContrariwise, Count Dorcas is simply not easy to integrate esthetically\ninto the design of the saga we know. It's far from clear how Count Dorcas\nwould contribute to the overall theme. The Yesodian/Undinean body-snatching\nfits easily.\n\nOf course, it could be that the reason Caron is unclear about so much is\nthat what's really happening is that the heirodules (e.g. the Cumean) have\nbeen messing with _his_ time stream. Maybe he only _thinks_ he's been\nsearching for decades. How did he get so old, then? Remember, time isn't a\nline or even a stream, it's an ocean. (We are told.)\n\nPerhaps what I must consider your mistaken case for Count Dorcas has been\nworth your efforts precisely to arrive at your last, most plausible and\nshapely, account of the \"body problem.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And there is still the mystery of what\nhappened between\nchapters, from the moment that a hand was pulling Sev *down* in the water\nuntil Dorcas' hand was pulling him *up* from the water." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dorcas wakes, convulses, panics, grabs, pulls. Momentum is conserved. She\nrises, Severian drops. Once she has a fraction of her wits about her, she\nrealizes someone's alive down there and fishes him up.\n\nShe intends to drink his blood you see, but then Agia comes back and ...\n\n\n\nBTW, the above probably seems like a vehement reaction to something you\ngave a lot of thought to and spent a lot of time on. Let me just say that I\nappreciate very much the opportunity to be vehement. And your last bit,\nabout the undines and heirodules, genuinely intrigues.\n\nBest,\n\n\nJim\n *****************************************\nWhat if we only get what we deserve?\n Somehow, I couldn't quite summon the nerve\"\n -- Costello/Bacharach" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "1999-10-03T00:26:05+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Count Dorcas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My Dorcas post was more a case of speculating in public than anything else.\nI don't see any good reason, in the context of TBOTNS, for Dorcas to be a\nvampire, either, and I am certainly open to any better explanations for all\nthe bat business. My main point was that the circumstances of her life,\ndeath, and rebirth are mysteries still to be explained and that, taken\ntogether, there is enough evidence in the text to suggest that Dorcas may\nnot be the Little Miss Innocence she seems. And that doesn't count sleeping\nwith her grandson, of which she was ignorant, or with Jolenta, of which she\nwasn't, if she did.\n\nAs I said, I knew this wasn't going to go over well. I will note, however,\nthat I did say:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "\"There is not enough direct evidence in the text for me to assert that\nDorcas was a vampire or that she and/or her husband were somehow involved in\nthe death of a baby, but the subject of bats comes up too often to be\ndismissed out of hand and the death of Jolenta is suspect, as is the timing\nof Caron's.\"<<" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Aside from differences of opinion and cultural relativism, Jim Henley wrote:\nPerhaps he is calling attention to Agia's lies about Dorcas' age.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "She wasn't lying. Sev himself thought she was 18 or 19." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "As for Jolenta falling down a well, she is already, IIRC, sick.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, she wasn't sick until after the \"bat bite\"; before that she was just\nsore from being beaten by Talos's cane and was in no danger of dying. It\nwasn't the wound that sickened her, it was acute anemia. (Is that the proper\neuphemism for losing a lot of blood in a short time?) " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "It's all she can manage to avoid upsetting Sev by mentioning her husband\n.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "She did mention her husband, as I said, just not in the context of finding\nout what she can of her old life. And she wasn't concerned about sparing\nSev's feelings. It was their last conversation, the oral version of the Dear\nJohn letter; she was leaving him, for good." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Frankly, her finding him is one of the two things in" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "the series that most strains my credulity, but it's not beyond the realm\nthat, as I suggested above, the closer Dorcas got to the abandoned quarter\nthe more memories returned, and when she came back to or staked out her old\nhouse, Caron was still there.<<\n\nYou are mistaken. Caron didn't live there. Their old home/shop was two-days\ntravel downriver from the inhabited parts of Nessus. The boatman lived\n\"...in a loft now. A man I knew years before, though that was years after\nCas was gone, he lets me sleep there.\" (I, XXII) The quarters were,\napparently, near the Citadel, which is where Sev first met him, the first\nday of the novel (last page, chapter II). The Citadel is within sight of the\nBotanical Gardens. So that should relieve you of one of the two gnats." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "She was still a child when she died, as far as I am concerned" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Because that is how we regard these things in the West at the close of the\nsecond millenium AD.<<\n\nNo, actually it has more to do with the fact that I have a child at least\nten years older than Dorcas. It's a function of age, I guess." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "BTW, the above probably seems like a vehement reaction to something you\ngave a lot of thought to and spent a lot of time on. Let me just say that I\nappreciate very much the opportunity to be vehement.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You're welcome.\n\nRoy" } ] } ] }