Subject: (urth) Ziggurat confusion

From: Alice Turner <akt at attglobal.net>
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 17:38:08 +0000

Mantis and Alex, please help out a confused citizen. (Yes, there are spoilers, but I'm not going to leave any space.)

mantis:

> Point one: Where does Gene Wolfe's sympathy lie in the story?  Swanwick
> says to use the standard "find the wolf" trick.  The wolf in this story is
> the coyote.  Who killed the coyote?  Emory did.

How do we know that, and why would he do such a thing?
 
> Point b: Who killed the son?  Emory did.

How do we know that, and ditto?

> Question Marquess: Why does the final scene seem like incest?  Because it
> is incest--the "alien" is one of his daughters.  The allegations of incest
> for the divorce were probably a lie, but as is so often the case in Wolfe
> fiction, the lie has a terrible way of coming true in the end.

But this is dreadful. It means that he also shot his wife and other daughter, and that there were no alien women at all, and that the gun and the ax were never stolen. How do you know this? I would certainly not have guessed this.

> All together, iirc, this paints a feral picture of Emory: destroying his
> better self the coyote, killing the rival his son, and marrying his own
> daughter to "start over, doing it right this time."  Not unlike Baldanders,
> in cutting himself off from the outside world (and/or God) in order to
> persue megalomania; or the pirate scientist of 5HC; but in detail more like
> several heroic Greek horrors all at once.

It seems too melodramatic to me; why do you (or Swanwick) reject the science-fictional story in favor of a homicidal maniac interpretation?

Now Alex:

> Hmmm...  Yeah, I caught the Tamar reference--I hadn't thought of the
> daughter-of-the-future possibility--but this is a clone of a step-daughter if
> so, which IMO makes Emory considerably less responsible for incest than, say,
> Severian.  I simply don't think the story presents things so as to suggest
> that the incest (with the daughters) is real.

Me neither. Besides, Tamar was a daughter-in-law, and it was her own idea. Though I suppose pun could be intended.
> 
> Yes, Emory kills the coyote--but acknowledges his own guilt, if you look
> closely.  Certainly he's a <vastly> more ambiguously bad figure than
> Baldanders (not that Wolfe doesn't give even Baldanders his devil's due).

Does he admit it? Where...and why? He *likes* the coyote.

> It seems to me that Emory IS quite Weer-ish:  they share a kind of curiosity
> that can lead them into error/disaster, yet also seems to serve as a redeeming
> element (consider a Weer who DIDN'T hunt for the treasure with Lois, or an
> Emory who said "hell, I'm not going back to my cabin with those crazies, let's
> find a motel, son").  Both have a kind of wisdom that they often seem unable
> to apply to themselves (note Weer's comment re: testifying about the abuse
> to the "good twin"--his reference here to God makes me have trouble seeing
> Emory as a cut-off-from-creation figure like Baldanders).  Emory's certainly
> flawed, and his curiosity gets his son murdered, but he also seems to me to
> have a considerable amount of author sympathy (in this sense I disagree with
> Gardner Dozois' comments in the intro to whichever Year's Best SF he didn't
> print "The Ziggurat" in as well as with Swanwick--Wolfe hardly ever portrays
> a protagonist without massive, potentially deadly, flaws--but Emory has as
> much underlying author sympathy with him as, say, Number 5 or Weer, I think).
> In fact, I think one thing this story does is set up a situation where it
> seems to be a possibility of a "lone man defending his cabin against invaders"
> and then turns it inside-out--neither the man nor the invaders are purely
> evil or wrong--both are trapped by misunderstanding and human nature--but the
> end indicates that even in these cirumstances, after blood and pain, there may
> be a possibility for something else, even if that's ambiguous, too.

Gosh, this is certainly the way I read it too. I mean, look at those details of making the bunk bed for Jan, of planning how the girls can sleep, of the "girls" and "boys" demarcations, they don't seem like the set-up for a bloodbath, and I completely believed in his fatherly feeling for the girls. Falsely accusing a man of inappropriate behavior is one of the deadliest and most unfair weapons a woman can aim; it's what made Sue Miller's THE GOOD MOTHER such a frightening work of realism.  I didn't even think he killed the coyote, and I still don't get that. Can someone help me out?

-alga

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

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From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 17:57:16 +0000

Ah, we're all using a very loose interpretation of "kill" (at least I
am, and assume Swanwick, mantis are doing the same) here.  Emory's LOVE
for the coyote, trying to tame it, slowly luring it closer to his house,
overrides it's fundamental aversion to man-smell.  It comes to trust people.
Thus, it dies.  Emory is an indirect agent, but feels responsible (read
closely the part where he finds the body).  I think a similar accusation can
be made for his son's death--he causes his son to return to a danger that
kills him, but it's not a murder.

As far as I'm aware, John Kessel (in private conversation, I don't think
he's written about this anywhere, although maybe I'm wrong) is the only person
I know who suspects that Emory is delusional and sets up the massacre that
you (and I) find incompatible with the rest of the implications.  As I
understand it, Swanwick & mantis are going with an SF approach, but take a
negative view of Emory's actions that I don't.

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce

---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 18:39:19 +0000

In fact, thinking about this--doesn't Severian?  Horn?  Silk? someone somewhere
say "we all destroy what we love best."  THIS is the sense in which Emory
kills the coyote and his son--a strong analogy, in my mind, to the ways
Severian and Dorcas truly torture each other--with, I think, love as the root
of the pain.  

BLUE seems to deal with this in a central way, as well.  I think I've said
before that Wolfe seems to have a strong similarity with Dante's exploration
in The Divine Comedy (adopted from St. Thomas, of course)--that only where 
there is love can there be real moral pain or evil--at the root of the worst
things lies a perversion or erroneous hierarchy of loves--for Dante, and, I
suspect Wolfe, a hierarchy that mistakes some lesser object for God and inverts
the ladder of love into a parodic downward spiral.  Thus the insistence that
although Abaia/Erebus etc. can thwart the Increate to the extent that they
violate, presumably, the inherent good of their own natures, they cannot fail
to serve also as unwilling and angry agents of Providence--another theme in the
philosophies I'm guessing Wolfe is most comfortable with (anyway, the ones
Chesterton's POV is based upon*).

* for a (very Christian-biased, of course) treatment of the parts of Aquinas/
Augustine/Anselm/Aristotle and other "A"-list philosophers who seem to have an
influence on Wolfe, I suggest Etienne Gilson's _The Spirit of Medieval 
Philosophy_, especially as Wolfe doesn't claim to have read them all in the
original Latin/Greek or anything.

---

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 12:11:34 +0000

wrong to me, along with the notion that Weer is a mass murderer. I submit
that, since Wolfe has explicitly denied the latter notion, those who read
such stories this way are "overreading" and should drop back and read
again. I don't deny that Wolfe invites such overreading, but when (a) other
readers see it differently and (b) those other readers are confirmed by
Wolfe, then re-reading seems to be in order.
	In case anyone does not get Alga's reference to Tamar, you can read it in
Genesis 38. However, David's actual daughter was also named Tamar, so
"incest" of some sort might be a possibility. The description of Ziggurat's
Tamar as being from an eastern country would fit either, but fits the
earlier Tamar better, since Emory is an American. If Wolfe had written that
his Tamar was an American, then the allusion would be to the daughter of
David; she would be of the same race as Emory, so "incest" would be a
possibility. Since she is an outsider, from far away, the allusion is to
the daughter in law of Jacob, whose father was a Canaanite.
	If you want to allegorize this story, and I'm not sure of this at all,
consider the New Testament notion that the kingdom is being taken from the
unworthy bride (the Jews) and being given to others (the Gentiles) -- a
point made often in the Old Testament as well. (Gee, now I've got to reread
the story myself and see if this works at all....) But before closing,
remember that Luke 4 and other passages refer to various gentile women who
were brought into Israel as "worthy gentile brides" and as signs that
Israel was (at these times) judged unworthy because of (spiritual)
harlotry. (Examples: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the widow helped by Elijah).

Nutria

At 05:38 PM 1/24/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Mantis and Alex, please help out a confused citizen. (Yes, there are
spoilers, but I'm not going to leave any space.)
>But this is dreadful. It means that he also shot his wife and other
daughter, and that there were no alien women at all, and that the gun and
the ax were never stolen. How do you know this? I would certainly not have
guessed this.
>It seems too melodramatic to me; why do you (or Swanwick) reject the
science-fictional story in favor of a homicidal maniac interpretation?
>Gosh, this is certainly the way I read it too. I mean, look at those
details of making the bunk bed for Jan, of planning how the girls can
sleep, of the "girls" and "boys" demarcations, they don't seem like the
set-up for a bloodbath, and I completely believed in his fatherly feeling
for the girls. Falsely accusing a man of inappropriate behavior is one of
the deadliest and most unfair weapons a woman can aim; it's what made Sue
Miller's THE GOOD MOTHER such a frightening work of realism.  I didn't even
think he killed the coyote, and I still don't get that. Can someone help me
out?

---

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 10:49:08 +0000

Emory" interpretation.

>the daughter in law of Jacob, whose father was a Canaanite.

	Wrong, Jim. Tamar is not her name, but the name Emory gives her, and he
explicitly calls the name that of Solomon's sister. Now, Wolfe-like, that
can also allude to Tamar's rape by her brother, and also to the earlier
Tamar, but first we have to deal with what is explicit. When she sees the
lion on Emory's pen, she hums "God Save the Queen." The lion is the Lion of
Judah, symbol of the tribe of Judah and of the Davidic royal house. In an
all-woman society, the king is a queen of course, but the allusion is to
Solomon. (Also to Jesus.) With this in mind, I want to see any hint of
evidence that Amnon's rape of sister Tamar is in view, or the earlier
Tamar's seduction of her father-in-law Judah. 
	As to who killed the coyote: Emory says that he was responsible for the
beast's death ONLY in the sense that he had tamed it, and thus it was not
prepared when it came against a human interested in killing it. I see no
hint that Emory himself killed it. 
	As to who killed Brook, the son: Where is there any hint that Emory did
this? True, by going back to the cabin, he might be seen as somehow
responsible, in a way analogous to the death of the coyote. But he was
asleep at the time the boy was killed. Where is there any hint of anything
more?
	As for how "bad" it was to return to the cabin; well, remember that this
man is an engineer (Wolfe?) who has lost his business, and now sees the
possibility of getting hold of technology that will enable him to recover
his life. He's starting to live again, after only wanting to die. 
	(Where's the Wolfe? Emory is the Wolfe. He is the kind of person Wolfe is
or wants to be. Emory's comments to his daughter about God and lying are
pure Wolfe. I'll bet Emory's hostility to television is also Wolfe's opinion.)
	Now, if this story were written in the first person, say as a deposition
before a judge trying Emory for murder, we would be invited to consider
that the narrative is a succession of self-serving lies and distortions.
But that's not how the story is written. It is in the limited third person.
The narrator is Wolfe. I find no hint that Emory is evil, or insane, or
self-deceived. 
	True, he's flawed. He shacked up with Jan before marrying her, and that is
not Wolfe's value system. Emory admits to Brook that his motivation for
getting involved with Jan was selfish. But that's a "little" sin, committed
by a man who gives very good advice to his stepdaughter about lying, a man
who knows better, and is suffering for it.
	As for the women on the timeship being clones of Emory's women: Where is
there any hint of this? It involves a LOT of reading "behind the lines" to
come to this conclusion; to wit, that eggs were taken from the girl and
used to make clones that have come back in time. But in fact, the story
continually says that these Brownies are OFTEN coming back in time and
messing with people. Stealing eggs? Maybe. Stealing children? Well, that is
indeed mentioned. So perhaps the hypothesis is not completely amiss. But
where is the evidence that Tamar is herself a clone of the girl? (I cannot
remember which girl it is, so I cannot give the name here; my book is at
home.)
	Moreover, the intermediate color of the skin of the three future women
leads me against this hypothesis. They look like what you think of when you
think of a future wherein all the various races of earth have melded into
one. The daughters are American white girls. A clone of one of them should
look like that, not be brownish. Yet all the future women are brownish;
hence "brownies." How can they be clones of various white, black, and
yellow women of the past?
	I'm happy to be set straight on this, but for now I don't see it. The end
does not "feel like incest" to me. I don't know how you get that from the
text. 
	As I see it, at the psychological level, we have a man twice wounded by
adult women, and now wounded again by female children. He wants to die.
He's definitely estranged from women, as his comments, however judiciously
phrased, indicate. Then we have the three women, who are definitely fearful
and estranged from men. At the end, this man and one of the women come
together, overcoming their fear and estrangement. That, it seems to me, is
what the story is "about."
	It's also about a man gradually recovering from two horrible losses (his
business and his marriage). First he plans to kill himself. Then he begins
to see a possibility of forming another business. He also tames the coyote,
a "preliminary love" that is a stage toward his "taming" of "Tamar." (I
think the name is important in this connection.) Thus, the story is "about"
recovering from loss and finding a new life.

>harlotry. (Examples: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the widow helped by Elijah).

	Naw, Jim; this does not work. I cannot see enough to make this work.
Apologies for tossing this spanner into the works.
	It IS, however, interesting that the timeship is called a Ziggurat, and
there are also the references back to the Tower of Babel. Consider that at
that Tower (Genesis 11) we have a confusion of tongues, after which people
are estranged and can no longer work together. That does seem to be a theme
in the story. The women speak a different language, that may or may not be
future English. There is also the estrangement between men and women that
is the major theme of the story. That estrangement is overcome by love,
surprisingly and unexpectedly. Thus, the Ziggurat is destroyed in the end.
Babel defeated.

Nutria

---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 12:47:36 +0000

<snipping Nutria's nice analysis>

One thing--I think the twins are not necessarily "American white girls"--
isn't their father, the tennis player, Mediterranean?  My copy is at home
so I can't confirm this, but it's definitely the impression I got.  This is
the best point in favor of the "twin clone in the future" idea--which I'm
still not sure is intended.

---

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 12:41:22 +0000

>still not sure is intended.

I didn't pick up any reference to Mediterranean, but perhaps someone else did.

Nutricious

---

From: mark millman <millman at us.ncipher.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 14:14:21 +0000

I can't believe that the women from the future are clones 
of the captured twin; for one thing, the women are the 
same height as a pair of eleven-year-old girls.  For another, 
the twins are described as having dark hair, but no mention 
of their skin tone is ever made, as far as I can recall (I don't 
have a copy of the story with me either).  This suggests that 
they're not particularly swarthy, at least as compared to 
Emory, Jan, and Brook.  The women are noticeably dark, 
but not so much so that in Africa they wouldn't seem no-
ticeably light-skinned.  I think that if Wolfe had wanted to 
suggest that the women are direct descendants of the twin, 
he'd have given another (maybe only one more, but at least 
that one) clue.  The facts that that the twins and the women 
are the same size; that the twins' father is Mediterranean and 
Emory gives Tamar a Hebrew name; that the name Tamar 
is associated with an incestuous episode; and that Emory's
relationship with Tamar must, to some degree, be a paternal
one at least in the sense of providing education, protection,
and the necessities of life (as Tamar is unfamiliar with the 
culture, doesn't speak the language, and is wounded to boot)
all create an atmosphere in which the implication that the rela-
tionship between Emory and Tamar is somehow incestuous 
naturally arises; but this doesn't have to mean that there is any 
literal sort of incest occurring, and in fact, I don't think that
there is.

Mark Millman

At 12:47 PM 28-01-00 -0500, Alex David Groce 
<Alex_Groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu> wrote:

> One thing--I think the twins are not necessarily 
> "American white girls"--isn't their father, the 
> tennis player, Mediterranean?  My copy is at 
> home so I can't confirm this, but it's definitely 
> the impression I got.  This is the best point in 
> favor of the "twin clone in the future" idea--
> which I'm still not sure is intended.
>
>
> Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University
> Computer Science Department

---

From: Alice Turner <akt at attglobal.net>
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 10:45:01 +0000

I find myself totally in agreement with the Rat, the new Reformed Rat, His Nutriciousness, who went back to contradict himself on "The Ziggurat." (Quote not included as it is quite long, but it contradicts the Swanwick theory proposed by mantis and also establishes that it's Tamar #2, not #1 who is referred to--I had actually forgotten that there was a #2, so thanks). Hey, if we can do it, maybe there's hope for the citizens of Blue.

-alga