Subject: Re: (urth) Re: RE>Peace: Stories within

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 08:38:45 +0000

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

On 10 Oct 1997, Tony Ellis wrote:

> Looks like it's time for me to eat a BIG slice of humble pie. In
> responding to Rostrum's questions about Peace, I cheerfully rubished his
> suggestion that Weer's company made orange drink out of potatoes. I was
> writing from for work, and I should have known better than to respond
> without doing any checking. When I got home I looked up the
> factory-visit section of the book, and - sure enough - Weer's company
> appears to make its orange drink out of potatoes, something I never
> realised before. 

This seems so bizarre, I'm inclined to think it has a point.  Maybe a
satire on Pringles (or potato chips in general) in that they start with a
potato and end up with something not very much like a potato?  I can't
find it now, but I seem to remember that Weer connects in his mind the big
orange logo of his company with the orange Mr. T uses in Mr. Smart's story
to consider how easy/hard it would be to poison fruit.  So maybe it's just
a "you never know what's really in there" sort of theme.

-Rostrum