Subject: (urth) Re: the Ziggurat

From: Robert Borski <rborski at coredcs.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 16:33:04 +0000

My two centavos worth on "The Ziggurat" controversy, most of which plays
off of Nutria's rather interesting interpretation.
 
>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.

I think that for all intents and purposes that Tamar _is_ her name--at
least it's the only one Wolfe provides via Emery, his viewpoint character.
To therefore ignore the connotations of both incest and sexual assault
associated with that name may be shortsighted.  

>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. 

Two alternate points here. The lion emblem identifies where Emery picked up
the pen he's using--the Red Lion Inn--and in alchemy, the red lion refers
to the philosopher's stone--the technical version of which Emery brings
back from the ziggurat. At least Emery hopes the magic dish will help him
wrest gold from his tragedy. 

As for "God save the Queen," I thought this was possibly meant to function
as a nod to the most famous vanished historical community of North
America--the colony at Roanoke Island, and whose first firstborn child,
Virginia Dare (named after Elizabeth Regina), disappeared along with
everybody else, just like the frontier settlement Brook mentions on p. 309.
(See the movie: "Croatoan: the Brownie's Revenge.")

>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. 

Again, I believe you're being too literal here. No, indeed, Emery does not
literally kill the coyote, but he sure does so figuratively, by
encouraging/bribing it to disregard its natural fear of man. Wolfe uses
this idea of "safe distance" a number of times in the story. "Come here,"
Emery shouts, when he first sees one of the alien women. Later, when she
and her partner breach that distance, it leads to their demise. Also note
how Emery repeats several times, "Boys here, girls over there." Given the
charges of incest leveled against him, this seems the safest and most
practical thing to observe, yet look at how in the very last sentence,
"Very gently, [Tamar's] fingers closed over his." Once again, distance has
been closed and it will lead to dire consequences.

> 	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?

The women and the twins appear very similar physically. To wit: "What had
they thought of Jan, a woman almost a foot taller than they? Jan with her
creamy complexion and yellow hair? Of Aileen and Alayna, _girls of their
own size, nearly as dark as they_, and like as two peas?" (p. 318) Also, in
talking about the chimney descent, Emery comments: "He could not have done
it, and neither could Brook, if Brook were still alive, but the twins could
have done it, and these women were scarcely larger." (339) The twins, being
eleven, could well be near their full height. And why, if not to match up
skin colors of twins and aliens, would Wolfe have their father be
dark-complected, when, any other color if he were not attempting a
parallel, would be perfectly fine, if not expected? 

> 	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. 

One last note in this respect: Alayna is the twin who tells Emery she has
refused to lie about his having molested her. But we never hear what Aileen
has to say in this regard; and it's Aileen that both has the doctor's
appointment Jan mentions (shrink? gynecologist?) and who winds up kidnapped
by the aliens. 'Aileen,' however, and 'alien' are formed from the exact
same letters. Surely, this is not a coincidence, but Wolfe tipping his hat
as to the origin of Tamar, the once and future daughter of pedophile Emery
Bainbridge.

Robert Borski  

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

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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 21:03:57 +0000

One other thing:
	There are a number of Wolfe stories wherein the last paragraph or line
stuns the reader into realizing he's misunderstood what has been going on,
and forces a re-read. But that does not happen here. If the last lines
read, "She looked so much like one of the twins. Emory could not wait to
have his way with her!" Then we'd be entitled to think, "Hey! Whoa! What's
going on here?" But nothing like that happens. The ending is gentle and
kind on the face of it, and I don't see any indication there, or elsewhere,
that "nothing is what it seems."

Nutria

---

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 20:52:20 +0000

Wow, Borski. You make an interesting case. I guess it just does not make
sense to me, without something a lot more explicit. From what I can tell,
your interpretation assumes the "maximum delusion" view that Mantis set out
for me/us. Maybe not, but if not, I see even more problems. I'll try to
explain:
	First a bit of response to Mantis. I do think Emory is partially modeled
on Wolfe. That does not mean he is a "good Wolfe." The family of clones in
*Fifth Head* aren't "good Wolfes" either. So, even on the "max del"
reading, Emory would still be a Wolfe, just a bad one. On a conventional SF
reading, which I still think is right, he's just a flawed Wolfe, like Wolfe
himself. 
	
	Now, to interact with interaction:

>associated with that name may be shortsighted.  

	Maybe, and that's a point possibly in your favor. I still can't buy it,
but more on that below. I guess on your take "Solomon" is Emory, so that
the relationship is hinted at as incestuous. But that's really a stretch,
without better indications of the overall presuppositions of your reading.

>(See the movie: "Croatoan: the Brownie's Revenge.")

	Well, I'm happy to grant this, and you may be right that these two are all
there is. It is surely Wolfean to have multiple allusions, so I'll keep my
suggestion in the mix for the nonce.

>been closed and it will lead to dire consequences.

	My reading also takes the distances into account, but as being closed
through healing, not in horror.
	Now, I'm assuming that your reading (or the Max Del reading) goes like
this: When Jan threatens to take Emory to court, he (subconsciously?)
decides to kill her and the twin who does not ask forgiveness. 
	But what does this entail? Well, if the future women are really just the
three women in his family, I can see that the shouting woman on the
videoscreen (?) would be Jan, and then he kills one of them in a fight. But
then, what is the stuff about driving them to town? On the max delusion
reading, how do we sort out what happens, even maniacally, and what does not? 
	At this point, it makes more sense to me that the three future women are
real brownies, and that their threeness is a literary link to the three
women already in Emory's life. One is larger. They threaten him. One shouts
at him. Etc. But for me this does not indicate that they are the same
identical persons, one set in real life and one set in a maniacal delusion.
They are just parallel.

>parallel, would be perfectly fine, if not expected? 

	But the third alien is also brown, right? And Jan is not. This seems to me
to establish only a parallel, not an identity. (And I have found that their
father had "swarthy good looks," so that is indeed established for me now.)
Sure, the twins are "matched up" with the future women, but why does that
indicate that they are the same, or clones? It is just another parallel, I
submit.

>as to the origin of Tamar, the once and future daughter of pedophile Emery

	On my reading, Emory is guilty only of "rocking and kissing" them. That
might be a double-entendre, but is not evidence of anything other than
affection. Now, Jan may herself believe, or have convinced herself, that
Emory molested them. But why agree with her? She may be a somewhat decent
woman, and there is indication of this. But she appears to be making a
stereotyped charge (as Alga noted), which she may or may not have convinced
herself of. 
	As for the Aileen/Alien parallel: well, I can see it, but what does it
mean? It seems to me no more than another allusion to the distance that has
come between Emory and women in general. Women are alien.
	I'm trying to get into the Max Del reading. Okay, why does Emory kill
Brook? Because he thinks his son might have a TV in the car, and he hates TV? 
	What is the visit to the Ziggurat? A visit to the hotel to murder Jan and
the girls? Pure imagination? Can a visit to a hotel/motel be "seen" by a
maniac in the way Emory perceives his visit to the Ziggurat? I cannot see
how. 
	I have to say that as I reskim parts of the novella, I can see why one
might read it this way, but only if one comes to the narrative with a lot
of suspicion. I still see lots of problems. The future women appear before
Jan and the kids arrive, and a burn appears on the back of a chair on the
porch. Is this also imagination on Emory's part? How do we account for
that? And, to repeat Alga's question, who stole the axe and rifle, or was
this only a maniacal delusion also? 
	Emory thinks one of the differences between men and women is that woman
have a fairy-tale view of love. So on the Max Del reading, it is actually
Emory who has moved into a fairy (brownie) tale. Would that be the view? My
take is that men and women are not so different as Emory supposes, and that
this is actually part of Wolfe's point.
	Now, maybe you're not taking the Max Del view, but then what? We've got
real future women. So who murders Brook? What evidence is there that Emory
killed him? His mooted lack of emotion could be because he's stunned. He
actually prays to God that it not be so. He does not look all that
unemotional to me; just stunned. That part of the story seems quite right
and realistic to me. It could be Maximum Delusion, I guess, but it seems
far better to read it as real. If the future women killed Brook, then they,
not Emory, are the authors of the violence in the story.
	And on a "real SF" reading, then we're back to Emory's driving Jan and the
girls to safety. Not an indication of a bad person. And EVEN IF Tamar is
somehow supposed to be a clone, she is only the clone of a stepdaughter,
and so marrying her is not incest. 
	I remain very unconvinced of this reading. I think it's too clever by
half. But with Wolfe, you never know (unless he tells you), so write back
and take me to pieces if you can!

Nutria

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From: Nicholas Gevers <vermoulian at yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 21:39:36 +0000

Entering the very intriguing debate on "The Ziggurat":
after having read the novella inconclusively back in
1996, I reread it in the context of STRANGE TRAVELERS,
partly because I was preparing to review the
collection and was interested in seeing it as an
anthology unified by theme. The conclusion I came to
was similar to the one I reached some time ago about
LONG SUN (see my article "Five Steps Towards Briah" in
NOVA EXPRESS): that is, that ST as a whole is about
the horrors of the present world and about generally
vain attempts to escape or palliate them. The stories
in ST were written in a defined period; they have a
common tone; in this context, then, "The Ziggurat" is
one experiment of several in delineating how a
character can be led astray by hubris and the
idiosyncrasies of his own psyche, avoiding moral and
religious truth in favour of solipsism and fantasy.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com

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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 12:30:59 +0000

At 09:39 PM 1/30/00 -0800, NG wrote:

 in this context, then, "The Ziggurat" is
>religious truth in favour of solipsism and fantasy.

	Interesting take. I'm intrigued. Please elaborate on
how you take the overall narrative. I'm interested in your
interaction with the specifics, especially a critique of my
very positive take on the story. It does not appear to me
that Emory "avoids" religious truth at all. (And I hope you won't
tell us to wait for your printed review! How long would
we have to wait?)
	BTW, loved your review of the Silk quartet. 

Nutria