{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2418", "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": 2418, "subject": "PEACE: What went wrong?", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "2000-10-25T21:36:05+00:00", "last": "2000-10-26T00:34:54+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2000-10-25T23:38:05+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: What went wrong?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Stimulated by the mantis-inspired discussion of PEACE, I just finished\nrereading it again, taking notes this time. What a great book. I can't\nbelieve it's so unknown out of sf circles (my copy was in storage, so I\nhad to check out my university library's copy. In a university of\n30,000 students, I'm the first to check it out in five years. Sigh...)\n\nI feel like with this reading I've begun to understand the book, though\nmuch of it is still enigmatic to me. In particular, I think I may have\nan explanation of perhaps the chief mystery: why Weer selects these\nparticular episodes for his narration. We think of the book as being\nWeer's life story, and to be sure it is that; but most of what one would\nexpect to be narrated in a memoir or autobiography is mentioned only in\npassing or not at all, while most of parts two and three--making up\nnearly half the book--are devoted to incidents that appear to involve\nWeer tangentially at best. Why? What makes these episodes significant\nfor Weer? Of course, all the theories that have been propounded on the\nbook have their own answer to this question. Right now, though, rather\nthan discuss these other theories, I'll just plunge ahead with my own.\n\nThe key, I think, is Weer's statement \"What went wrong? That is the\nquestion\" (215; all references are to the Harper first edition. Its\npages run from 1 to 264, which may help those with other editions.) In\ncontext, Weer is referring to his failure to marry Margaret Lorn. We\nmay add to things that \"went wrong\" with Weer's life his failure to\nmarry, or (as far as we know) have a long-term relationship with anyone,\nand his feeling useless in his job as president of Julius's company. \n(This latter is the significance of the passage Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\nquotes: \"when my life was over and I had come to my desk\" (17); not that\nhis life literally ended at that point, but that his useful life was\nover. See also his remarks to Dan French on p. 250.) But what do these\nhave to do with the episodes which occupy most of the book? I'll begin\nmy answer with a discussion of a story mantis hasn't gotten to yet, that\nof Jack and the banshee, which Kate told Hannah and Hannah tells young\nDen. The story is intriguing in itself, so I'll digress a bit, but I'll\nget back to my main theme soon.\n\nThis story stands out in a number of ways. It is the first embedded\nstory. It is one of the few to be finished (though not the only one). \nIt is one of a \"Doherty cycle\" of stories, the other two of which are\nthe story of St. Brandon and the story of the sidhe, which are\ndisctinctive in several ways. And it is, as far as I can remember, the\nonly story in the book whose teller explicitly appends a moral: \"'You\nsee, it's not always well to make someone say what they don't want to.'\"\n(36) While Hannah banally applies this moral to rebuke Den for a small\njoke he played on her, it is rich with meaning for the book as a whole. \nFor in a sense, Weer is \"making someone say something\" throughout the\nbook. This is apparent in the scenes in Van Ness's office, but it's\ntrue of the \"memories\" as well; for it slowly becomes clear that Weer is\nnot merely recollecting these scenes, but reliving them, altering them\nas he does so. So there is the suggestion that Weer's whole enterprise\nis a bit sinister. This ties in with Gold's warning against necromancy\n(232). We think of Weer as being like the lich who was raised, but from\nWeer's point of view he is the one practicing necromancy--he tells us\nover and over that all the people he knew are dead.\n\nBut the dangers of making, or trying to make, someone say what they\ndon't want to are illustrated much more dramatically much closer to\nwhere the story appears: in the fight with Bobby Black. Bobby \"know[s]\nthat if we can make me speak his battle is won\" (8); and presumably,\nthough Weer doesn't say so, the five-year-old Den sought to make Bobby\ncry uncle. So, just as in the story, we have two antagonists, each\ntrying to make the other speak. Like the banshee, Bobby dies. And Weer\nand Jack's fates are remarkably similar, too. Weer inherits wealth, and\nnever marries. Jack inherits Molly's father's farm, and marries Molly\nbut apparently never sleeps with her; we are left to infer that his life\nwas as unhappy as Weer's. (We might note, incidentally, that Jack,\nperhaps like Weer, is responsible for two deaths.)\n\nJack never sleeps with Molly because he was cursed: the banshee told him\nhe would be the father of the Antichrist. Is Weer cursed as a result of\nthe battle? I think he is, though not in a supernatural sense. I don't\nbelieve that Weer \"murdered\" Bobby; the injury was most likely an\naccident, and besides Den was only five. But when Bobby died, young Den\nmust have felt himself to be a murderer. And the response of his\nparents, in essence to abandon him, could only have confirmed this\nbelief. Unconsciously regarding himself as a murderer, I would argue,\nhe felt himself both undeserving of love and too much of a potential\ndanger to marry, and so unconsciously sabotaged any chances of marrying.\n\nWhat of parts two, three, and four? In part two Den meets Margaret, of\ncourse; but more to the point, as I argued earlier, we see Olivia\nexploiting her suitors for her own advantage. This would give Weer\nanother reason for avoiding marriage. Part three, dominated by Julius's\nstory, is the prelude to Julius's marrying Olivia, which leads to Weer's\ninheriting the company and the end of his useful life. And if mantis is\ncorrect that Den's retelling Julius's story to Margaret led to the\nbreakup, then we have another \"wrong turning.\" In part four we see\nDen's relationship with Lois, which could have led to marriage, collapse\nin the worst way, one which could only have confirmed the bad impression\nof women he got from Olivia.\n\nAnd part five? If you believe that Weer was the one who didn't let the\nboy out of the coldroom (and I have to admit it seems probable), then\nWeer's unconscious has further ammunition for its view of Weer as\nmurderer. But beyond this, as mantis says, in part five we see Weer\nsumming up what his life has become, the end result of parts one through\nfour.\n\nIt's late, so I'll stop for now. I'll admit my theory is still pretty\nsketchy, and is far from making the book crystal-clear; but I still like\nit better than anything else I've seen. Obviously, any comments are\ngreatly appreciated.\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at sirius.com" }, "date": "2000-10-25T21:36:05+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: What went wrong?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam wrote:\nWe think of Weer as being like the lich who was raised, but from\nWeer's point of view he is the one practicing necromancy--he tells us\nover and over that all the people he knew are dead." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree with this very much--one mode of Den I've been toying with is \"King\nof the necropolis\"; that he is, in some way, at some level, re-animating\nthe dead around him, to ask them questions, to try and force answers from\nthem. (This moves away from solipsism.)\n\nLike those pagan judges in Hades; in the same way, Den became \"lord\" of the\ncity, and as such he is lord of the local dead (even though he thinks of\nhimself as the Last Man/necromancer).\n\n(All very much shades of small scale Severian.)\n\nBut to put another twist on it: there's a metafictional thread which some\ndo not see. For example, that part where the woman, is it Hannah or the\nOld Kate? Anyway, she's telling the story to little boy Den and she\nremarks about the \"other\" person standing there in the room. Now I have\nalways loved that part, because I thought it was the woman seeing =the\nreader=; and I've seen comments by others who seem to have thought the same\nthing, so I felt that was another given (like \"Den is dead\"). But then I\nfound a person or two who believe the \"other\" in this case is just adult\nDen, re-seeing the scene . . . for me, this seems to violate some sort of\nrule about one spirit (that is, if Den is there at all he is either the boy\nor the adult, not both--it would have come in handy in the interview with\nDoctor Black, for instance).\n\nAnyway, part of Gold's talk on books suggests that there is something to be\nfeared about mass-market editions of THE NECRONOMICON--that enough people\ndoing this sort of thing could make the world scary. This is implied\nlightly, almost as a joke, iirc, and it offers yet another case of \"what\nwent wrong\" in the country beyond Den's memory mansion (Great Cthulhu woke\nup, or whatever).\n\nAnd yet, PEACE contains that bit of necromantic spell; PEACE was\nmass-marketed. And in the end, when Olivia says her famous phrase, it is\n=we= who stop reading.\n\nThat is to say: we are the archaeologists digging up Den's skull, we are\nthe necromancers drawing his spirit forth to speak. The book itself is the\nfitting tomb of such a bookish fellow as Den.\n\n(Ah, to compare and contrast PEACE with ENGINE SUMMER, that could be a fine\nthing.)\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "2000-10-26T00:34:54+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: What went wrong?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "mantis' latest insight snipped.\n\nThis fits in nicely with the possible setting of Den's narration in\nthe far future. Not only can the figure listening to Hannah's story\nbe the reader, but the lich that dead Den and dead Gold are summoning\nis the long-dead reader. ENGINE SUMMER is an excellent\ncomparison--however, again, I think that Den is NOT one of Wolfe's\ndamned and trapped narrators (Number Five, etc.), while ENGINE SUMMER\nhas a profound atmosphere of imprisonment, in my mind." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32\n--\nAlex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce" } ] } ] }