{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2141", "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": 2141, "subject": "\"Haunted Boardinghouse\" & LITTLE, BIG", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2000-03-08T10:11:36+00:00", "last": "2000-03-08T13:38:36+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at sirius.com" }, "date": "2000-03-08T10:11:36+00:00", "subject": "(urth) \"Haunted Boardinghouse\" & LITTLE, BIG", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Patera Nutria wrote:\n\"The Haunted Boardinghouse.\" Well, this is related to John Crowley's\nLITTLE, BIG: if you didn't know that the house-with-no-back [eek! what are\nyou saying?!] is like the five-faced house in LB, then there is also\nCrowley's name as one of the 20th century literary giants given in the\ntext. This story ends exactly like a John Crowley story almost always\ndoes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Great link, but don't forget *The Name of the Rose* as a major player here.\n(labyrinth, library, latin)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I honestly can't see much of a link between \"THB\" and THE NAME OF THE ROSE.\n\nTHE NAME OF THE ROSE and LITTLE, BIG spoilers to follow:\n\n\n\n\n\nIn LITTLE, BIG the house that is central (axial?) to the novel (and its\nuniverse) has five faces. Each face is in a different architectural style;\nthere is a strong suggestion throughout the text that each face is linked\nto a different season (granted that seasons normally number four to us\nmodern mortals); we only see three of the faces in the text, through a few\nclever tricks that are meant to show us the \"seam\" of artifice; a fourth\nstyle is mentioned, and the fifth one can be deduced (pregnant with\nparadox).\n\nIn LB there is a big battle being waged on another plane, or a few planes\nat once: this battle draws together odd people from across time and space;\nsome famous, some unknown. Part of the draw, for some, is a fervent belief\nin =fairyland=, in particular the matter written by Anglo-American fantasy\nauthors (special emphasis on Victorian writers); fans are =recruited= for\nthis vast enterprise. The other plane has many aspects that look like\ndeath, and it is ambiguous; however, there is no ambiguity in the fact that\nthe hero dies a real death at the threshold so that others may go on.\n\nIn LB the hero is led into this situation by a lovely woman who, in the\nend, is willing to lie to him in order to get the whole project\ncompleted--it might seem a stretch to compare Daily Alice with Mrs. Seely,\nbut just think of those sexy old airline commercials, put through a slight\nwarp: \"I'm Death--come fly me!\"\n\nThe mystery of the hero being confused as to the love-object's identity\n(Mrs. Seely and Ms. Death) is important to the betrayal of the hero in LB,\nbut plays a much larger role in John Crowley's AEGYPT series (which\nsame-named woman did he dally with in the dark that night: the bright one\nor the dark one?).\n\nI trust that all these points have clear relevance to \"THB\": each face\nleads to a different time; the big battle; the recruitment; the love\ntriangle; the betrayal; the special person who is used to activate and\ncomplete the action, through his own death; etc.\n\nContrast with THE NAME OF THE ROSE. \"THB\" is, to me at least, in no sense\na detective work ala Sherlock Holmes, let alone a negation of detective\nfiction; NOTR is both of these. \"THB\" is not a send up of academic life,\nnor is it much about campus infighting, nor the brutality lurking beneath\nthe veneer of intellectual pursuits. The library in \"THB\" is not a central\nkey that reveals all, or even very much, or even that it was all just a\njoke; the organization of the library is a non-event, rather than an\nexciting revelation. The Latin in \"THB\" is strictly classical/pagan,\nrather NOTR's medieval/theological; the timeframes are wildly different.\nThe use of Latin in the text is all a part of the recruitment, the\n\"fiction,\" if you will, that is the hook that draws the hero from his\nmundane world of consentual reality (neo-Victorian) into the world of\nconsentual dream (ancient Rome as studied by post-Medieval students) where\nthe hero feels he would rather be, and where the hero's talents will be put\nto concrete, immediate use. In NOTR, \"fiction\" leads to self-delusion for\nthe investigators, such that one cannot see the real; one's special talents\nare misdirected, wasted. A \"Don Quixote-downbeat,\" if you like.\n\nBut maybe I'm misremembering, or misunderstanding the reference points that\nare supposed to tie \"THB\" to NOTR.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jim Jordan", "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net" }, "date": "2000-03-08T13:38:36+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) \"Haunted Boardinghouse\" & LITTLE, BIG", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Mantis,\n\n\tVery happy to grant that THB has much more to do with Crowley than Eco.\nBut it is typical of Wolfe to mix tales, as Mowgli and Romulus in the tales\nin TBNS. But maybe everything can be accounted for by Crowley, and the Eco\nallusions are only apparent. Still, the Latin....\n\nPatera Nutria" } ] } ] }