{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2448", "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": 2448, "subject": "PEACE: a poor man at forty", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2000-11-08T11:14:40+00:00", "last": "2000-11-09T00:30:47+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2000-11-08T11:14:40+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: a poor man at forty", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Describing the unanticipated course of his life, Weer says: \"I found\nmyself instead a poor man at forty, and a very rich one at fifty; and\nnever found Margaret at all.\" (216, Harper & Row) How Weer got to be\nrich at fifty seems pretty clear, and some of us have speculated on why\nhe never married Margaret. But Weer, iirc, never discusses why he was\n\"a poor man at forty,\" and I don't think it's ever been discussed here. \nIt seems to me worth pondering, especially since it bears upon two other\nmatters which are important to Weer but which he says very little\nabout--his parents and his career as an engineer.\n\nIn the preceding paragraph, Weer describes the life he should have led:\nhe would \"enjoy a career that, if not brilliant, would at least be\nlocally distinguished. \tI would inherit, between the ages of twenty and\nthirty, my father's estate, an inheritance that would not make me really\nwealthy, but that, added to what I earned myself, would give Margaret\nand me a comfortable position in life. None of this happened...\"\n\nWeer did inherit his parents' house, though perhaps not between the ages\nof twnety and thirty; did he only inherit the house and not the rest of\nthe estate for some reason? Or was the estate not enough to lift him\nout of poverty (perhaps because his parents spent most of it travelling\nin Europe)?\n\nAnd apparently Weer's career as an engineer, though evidently important\nto him, was not \"locally distinguished.\" It could not have been\ndistinguished within the company either, if, as a veteran engineer with\nover a decade and a half of experience (according to both Roy Lackey and\nmantis's time schemes) working for a prosperous company, his salary\nstill didn't lift him out of poverty.\n\nIt's clear, at any rate, that besides the disappointments Weer dwells\nupon, he has suffered other disappointments which he says little about,\nperhaps because they are among the things he finds it too painful to\nwrite about.\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2000-11-09T00:30:47+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: PEACE: a poor man at forty", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Adam asked about Weer's family fortunes and, again, I had a piece more or\nless prepared that touches on the subject, and a few more things as well, so\nI may as well post it now. It repeats some of what Adam posted, but I'm too\nlazy to change it.\n\nMantis has speculated that the rift between Den and Margaret occurred when\nthey were in high school, when he told her the Tilly tale. That, of course,\nis speculation, because we don't really know what happened between them,\nbecause Den doesn't tell us. Dan'l has speculated that what Den doesn't tell\nus, but only hints at, is important to him, but too painful for him to think\nabout, and Adam has noted that much of the middle of the book has very\nlittle to do with Den. So we are reduced to reading between the lines and to\nsifting the embedded tales for their possible relevance to Den's life,\nwhich, as both Adam and Dan'l noted, we learn very little about.\n\nSo what, exactly, did go wrong? Den didn't marry Margaret. He didn't inherit\nhis father's estate when he expected to, between the ages of 20 and 30, or,\nif he did inherit then, the estate was so much reduced from its former\nwealth that he couldn't quit his job at the plant. Where the money went is\nno mystery; it was lost to the Depression, when the farms that were the\nbackbone of the Weer fortunes failed and rent money stopped coming in and\nthe farms were sold \"for a song\". We don't know when Della died, but it was\nbefore Den was 40, and his father died before his mother. When he sold his\nfamily's house there was nothing else left of the Weer family fortunes.\nThat's part of the answer to what went wrong, but not all of it. Where else\nto look?\n\nWhy didn't he marry Margaret? Did he scare her off with the Tilly story, as\nmantis has suggested? Possibly, but that answer leaves me dissatisfied;\nthere had to be more to it. The corpus of Wolfe's work has a marked tendency\nto portray women as sluts and moneygrubbers, and PEACE is no exception.\nOlivia, Lois, Sherry--all guilty of one or both. I don't know if Margaret\nwas a slut or not, but the stock market crash would have occurred when Den\nwas a sophomore in high school, and the Weer fortunes would have been much\nreduced by the time he was in college. That sort of thing can't be kept\nsecret in a small town, so Margaret would have known about it. It could be\nthat simple; she was looking for someone with a bigger bank book--and she\nfound her Price.\n\nBut being, like most men, at heart a hopeless romantic, that answer, too,\nleaves me dissatisfied, which brings me to where I didn't really want to go,\nback to the coldhouse. If Den was the irresponsible party who let that 18\nyear old kid die--and, like it or not, I don't see the point of including\nthat segment if he wasn't--then, unlike the case of Bobby Black, he _was_\nmorally culpable. He was too old to excuse his behavior. The company may\nhave tried to cover it up, and was successful enough to quash criminal\ncharges and perhaps a concomitant civil suit (or maybe they paid off the\nkid's family; who knows?), but too many people knew about it to keep it a\nsecret, especially since the plant was probably, even then, the town's\nlargest employer. Again, one way or another, Margaret would have known about\nit. That's not the kind of man a woman wants to marry or to father her\nchildren.\n\nMantis has linked the \"ben Yahya and the Marid\" story with its 30 years of\nselfless service to Den and the coldhouse prank. I can't think of any better\nreason for Den to stay as long as he did in a dead-end job. It was the price\nSmart demanded of him for hushing up the coldhouse prank and keeping his job\nduring the Depression. Den's reward for all those years of selfless service\nwas that after the specified time was over (Smart's lifespan), he would\ninherit the company. When Ron asked Den if he would inherit Smart's wealth,\nDen didn't really answer the question, just stated that Smart hadn't even\nspoken to him for 25 years and asked rhetorically if he looked like a\n\"fair-haired boy\" (158). I submit that he _did_ know he would inherit\nSmart's business. While describing building his fancy house, he wrote \"when\nthe company at last came into my hands\" (35). That phrase \"at last\"\ncertainly sounds to me as if he had reason to anticipate acquiring the\ncompany.\n\nRoy" } ] } ] }