Subject: (urth) PEACE: is Weer's biography knowable? (long)

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2000 12:35:42 +0000

This is something I've been meaning to post for a couple of weeks; i.e.,
it was conceived before the recent valuable posts by mantis and Roy
taking a broader view, so it doesn't respond directly to them.  Also,
please
forgive any rough edges; due to my own procrastination, this has taken a
lot longer to finish than I'd expected, so I want to get it out before
everyone forgets the discussion.

I'll be taking a skeptical view of PEACE interpretation (I originally
planned to
call this "more nihilism to bring everybody down" <g>), so I want to
start by again thanking everyone who has participated in the PEACE
thread  so far.  I've learned an enormous amount about the book, both
from others' posts and from the close reading of the book that the
discussion inspired me to undertake.  And I hope that others have
learned something from my posts as well.

That said, PEACE has not become more comprehensible to me as a result of
this discussion.  On the contrary, it has made me realize that
understanding the book is far more difficult than I had thought.  In
particular, I've become quite pessimistic about the possiblity of
producing a "biography" of Weer grounded in the text.  There
are are two basic roadblocks in the way of all such
efforts.  First, the explicit information we are given about Weer's
life, or the information that can be deduced with certainty, leaves
unanswered
many crucial questions about Weer's life.  Again and again Wolfe teases
us by making clear that some aspect of Weer's past, such as his
relationship
with his father or his breakup with Margaret, is important to him, but
giving no
further information about this aspect.  Compounding this problem,
despite Weer's articulateness, it is very difficult to get from his
narration a sense of his personality, as someone pointed out here once
(apologies to whoever it is).

The second obstacle is that, unlike in 5HC, we have no independent
source of information  aside from Weer's narrative, so once we accept
the probability that Weer is
unreliable about past events as well as his present situation we have no
way of comparing Weer's account with any more reliable data.
Conventionally,
when reading fiction we assume that the narrator is truthful and
accurate,
far more so than any real-life narrator could be about long-ago events.
Wolfe
plays with this convention in several works.
In PEACE, he throws it out entirely; but he doesn't replace it with
any other source of guidance.  To make matters worse, it is not even
clear
what status Weer is claiming for the "past" sections of the text.  To
what extent is
he recollecting the past and to what extent is he reliving it?  In one
post, mantis remarked that a proposed interpretation violated "the rules
of the game," or words to that effect.  But there are no rules governing
the relationship of Weer's account to the truth, at least none that we
can know of.

Due to these obstacles, all interpretations of the book (including mine)
which see Weer as unreliable reject certain of his statements while
placing great emphasis on others, based on completely subjective
criteria.  To take an example, which will hopefully not offend anyone
since it's a thesis that I've endorsed, consider the proposition that
Weer was responsible for the death of the worker in the coldhouse
prank.  There are three possible arguments for this view that I'm aware
of:
1.  Why does Weer include the story if it only happened to a coworker of
Weer's?
2.  The vividness of Weer's account of the culprit's emotions suggests
firsthand experience.
3.  Having Weer be the culprit fits in with various broader hypotheses
about Weer's life.

These arguments are not conclusive, either singly or together.  As to
the first argument, there are other stories whose inclusion is, on the
surface, equally inexplicable, and we don't explain these by saying that
they really happened to Weer.  It would be easy to give a thematic or
metaphoric interpretation of the coldhouse prank story, similar to the
interpretations we give for these other stories.  As to the second
argument, we know Weer is both imaginative and a gifted storyteller; and
his description of the terror of being alone in the factory at night
could be based on his own experience without his being the culprit of
the story.  And as to the third point, the broader hypotheses into which
Weer's being the culprit fit are, with no disrespect meant, even more
speculative.

Furthermore, there are cogent arguments against Weer's being the culprit
(which I won't go into now, because that's not my point).  If, despite
all this, I favor the hypothesis that Weer is the culprit, it's because
I feel that PEACE is a more coherent book when read that way.  But this
is a matter of taste; if someone were to say that to them PEACE was more
coherent if Weer's narrative were taken as truthful in this case, I
would not be able to argue them out of it.

Not only are all attempts to go beyond the snippets of biography that
Weer himself gives us subjective; there are certain assumptions which
almost everyone takes for granted in these attempts, but which cannot be
shown to be true from the text.  Take Weer's "astral visit" to Van
Ness.  While one is tempted to take the non-anachronistic parts of this
visit to reflect a real visit, mantis has shown that there are
difficulties in such a reading, which leads him to posit that Weer is
conflating two real visits.  But even this may be assuming too much. 
Weer's narration of the start of the visit has, to me, a dreamlike
quality, and it seems to me that the entire visit, not just the
interview with Van Ness, may be a fabrication of Weer's: he undoubtedly
did see Van Ness when alive, but there may never have been a visit in
which he sat in the waiting room while Margaret read Life and Sherry
whispered to Ted, or where Weer seartched in his pants pockets for his
jackknife before remembering he no longer carried it.  In any case, we
cannot prove from the text that these events ever took place; as stated
above, the relationship between Weer's narrative and his actual past is
undetermined by the text.

Similarly, I once argued that the "day in the life of the president" in
chapter five was not a real day in Weer's past, but a fabrication by
Weer of the same type as his visit to Van Ness, conflating events that
happened on various days or never happened.  There were no responses to
my post, either positive or negative, but again you can't prove from the
text that my hypothesis is false.

Finally, there is the question of Weer's memory, which Roy recently
raised.  Weer tells us more than once that his memory is fallible, as,
of
course, everyone's is.  But we tend to discount these statements and
assume
that when Weer is inaccurate it's because he is consciously or
unconsciously
suppressing something.  Again, this assumption cannot be justified by
the text (only by the reading convention I mentioned above, which Wolfe
implicitly rejects).  To take a concrete example, Blaine's account of
the "Chinese
egg" affair is quite different from Weer's and we assume that this
demonstrates the inaccuracy of Blaine's memory.  But as Roy has pointed
out, there are no grounds for this assumption.  Blaine may be right and
Weer wrong, or both may be
equally wrong.

These assumptions can be justified on the basis that without them, it is
impossible to reconstruct Weer's biography.  But did Wolfe intend us to
be able to reconstruct Weer's biography?  Much of the interpretation of
PEACE (including mine) seems to proceed on the assumption that Wolfe hid
clues within the text which, if dug up and interpreted properly, will
yield Weer's true biography.  But a great deal of intepretive effort and
ingenuity has been expended on PEACE and, while several plausible
"biographies" have been produced, I don't find any of them to be
sufficiently grounded in the text, or to yield a convincing enough
reading of the book as a whole, for me to accept as Weer's true
biography, or as what Wolfe intended.  Of course, it's still early days;
it may be that somebody will find convincing evidence in the text that
has been overlooked or misinterpreted up to now.  But it seems just as
possible to me that Wolfe intended the book as a trap for the reader who
would be lured into trying to construct Weer's biography, hunting for
answers that aren't there and seeking definitiveness where there is only
ambiguity.  The quote I cited earlier, about Weer trying to arrange the
_Life_s in chronological order and failing, seems to suggest this.  It
may also be the case that Wolfe did have a "true" biography in mind, but
failed to provide unambiguous indications of this, for whatever reason.

I could say more, but I think I'd better stop and post this already.  As
usual, comments are appreciated.

--Adam

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

---

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2000 09:28:39 +0000

Good post, Adam!  I especially like the idea that A.D. Weer was not
involved in the coldhouse prank--in effect, that this is just another
"ghost story" within yet another genre framework (journalistic
what-have-you), and as such, if it =does= relate to Weer it is in the same
way that any of the fairy tales do.  So (for Weer; for the deeper story) it
is about Bobby Black again, rather than a mysterious other.

>3.  Having Weer be the culprit fits in with various broader hypotheses

To which I'd add one that to me seems like it should be number one in
ranking: Weer seems very agitated by the story, to the point where he might
be on the verge of a medical crisis (in fact, on the verge of his final
medical crisis). Freed of literally casting him as a multiple murderer, we
can easily chalk this up to unresolved guilt over Bobby Black.

In fact, you could even put a Freudian ("childhood makes the person") spin
on the whole deal and say that Weer's real biography ends with his
childhood, and all the rest, the dreams of a life lived, books read, and so
on, is all just a belated attempt to resolve these traumas.  So instead of
trying to hammer out his life from 15 to 60, and then trace things from the
fictitious to the biographical, instead use only his life from 1 to 15 (or
whatever: Freud's deal was 1 to 7, iirc), from which everything else
phantasmagorically emerges (with no distinction between fiction and
biography).  Wave upon wave of reiteration.  Such an approach seems quite
easy at first glance, since there doesn't seem to be much argument about
that stretch of Den's life.

>text that my hypothesis is false.

Well Roy Lackey and I were using something like this as a working model,
but then since there seems to be a considerable gap between the day of
Three Visitors ("early presidency") and the Day of the Reporter ("late
presidency"), it seemed to resolve into two different days: the day of
omen, and the day of death.

They could still be fabrications.

And nine-year-old Den might still be passed out beside his chemistry set!

=mantis=

---

From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2000 23:03:32 +0000

At 12:35 PM -0800 12/3/00, Adam Stephanides wrote:
>But it seems just as

I agree that Wolfe probably didn't intend the reader to be able to 
reconstruct a biography of Weer from _Peace_. I love the idea that 
Weer's failure to be able to sort out "Life"s in chronological order 
is a clue that this is the case. It does seem like something Wolfe 
would do.

Right now, I feel that the word "trap" is a trifle strong, but I have 
accused Wolfe of worse things, after various bout of frustration 
brought on by trying to figure out various of his works.

-- 
William Ansley

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2000 09:29:18 +0000

> that stretch of Den's life.
[...]
> And nine-year-old Den might still be passed out beside his chemistry set!

No, he's fallen asleep on a ceramic pillow!  And and his Aunt is waking
him up to go play at the picnic with Bobby Blake...

-Rostrum

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2000 10:15:52 +0000

A Monday morning meditation inspired by Adam's post and the various
replies thereunto. I may ramble.

I'm inclined to agree with & even to insist upon the following basic points:

1. That Gene Wolfe did in fact have a "real" and (more or less) coherent 
   biography of ADW in mind when he wrote PEACE;
2. That PEACE does not give us the clues to accurately, reliably, and
   consistently reconstruct that biography.

On the cover of my (oldish, trade pb) copy of 5HC, there's a quote from 
Ursula K. Le Guin describing the contents as (quoted from memory and
probably 
wrong except in gist) an example in writing of the uncertainty principle. I
would say that PEACE far more deserves this.

The question is, assuming that all this uncertainty is not arbitrary (which
would by implication predicate of its author a kind of meanness vis-a-vis 
his readers that I simply do not see as likely in the case of GW), what kind

of readerly (rather than writerly) model can we build that accounts for it?
In other words: How does or would Wolfe's ideal reader imagine (image-in) 
PEACE? 

Adam wrote, "PEACE has not become more comprehensible to me as a result 
of this discussion.  On the contrary, it has made me realize that 
understanding the book is far more difficult than I had thought." While I
agree with him at a certain level, I suggest that the level is one which
uses an impoverished -- or, rather, insufficiently enriched -- meaning for
the word "comprehensible." 

First, I suggest that the uncertainty must make sense at a higher level, 
that it must in fact follow deterministic (at least statistically 
deterministic) rules, which are if not discoverable at least deductible.

Second, I suggest that the book contains everything necessary for a useful 
reading. This is important; it is, I think, the difference between calling
Wolfe a sadistic and manipulative writer and calling him a tricksy but
skilled and fair writer. This is, incidentally, a analogous to fundamental 
principle for Catholic readings of the Bible -- the Catholic take is that 
the canonical Scriptures "contain faithfully everything which God wants us
to know for our salvation." That is, it contains all that is necessary, and
these necessary things are discoverable and comprehensible, but does not 
mean that all of Scripture is literally factual. If we find, in our reading 
of Scripture, that it contradicts itself or the physical-factual world, 
then we may reasonably conclude that our reading is itself flawed -- most 
probably because it attempts to answer the wrong questions. Thus, for 
example, most Catholic "Bible scholars" will say that the book of Job does 
not consist of biographical facts about a real man named Job, but that the 
book is nonetheless true -- in fact it is a theodicy, an extended meditation

on the problem of evil, among other things. 

Wolfe, a very convinced Catholic convert, may reasonably be expected to take

a similar view toward his writings. (Remember; "Scripture" literally means 
"that which is written." All written works are at root Scriptural; all 
writings read properly reveal or even betray truth about him or her who 
writes them.) Again, where we find uncertainty and/or contradiction, we are 
probably reading in a way that asks the text the wrong questions.

Returning to Adam's original post, I find this nugget: "it is not even clear

what status Weer is claiming for the 'past' sections of the text.  To what 
extent is he recollecting the past and to what extent is he reliving it?"

Three points.

First, I think we may immediately conclude that we are not expected to 
discover a (single/consistent/reliable) status for "the 'past' sections."
"What is the status of the 'past' sections" is not among the most useful
questions to ask.

Second, I think the word "past" clearly does belong in quotes, as Adam puts
them, because it assumes a linearity of time. More on this later.

Second, Adam left out at least two other possibilities.
     1. Recollecting the past.
     2. Reliving the past.
     3. Recreating the past.
     4. Lying about the past.
Further, the boundaries between these are rather hazy, forming a continuum
rather than four distinct possibilities. I take these as working
definitions:
"Recollecting" the past means attempting in memory to recall the facts,
actions, and details of a single "real" past as accurately as possible.
"Reliving"
means travelling in some sense to the past and passing through those moments
again. "Recreating" the past means moving into past moments and changing
their
events. And lying about the past is the direct contrary of "recollecting."

The idea that Den actively lies to us is probably the dullest choice. 

The idea of straightforward recollection is only slightly more interesting;
if 
this were the general case, we would have very little in the way of mystery.

Indeed, if I could ignore all the ellipses, elisions, and contradictions in 
Den's story, I would have to conclude that PEACE consisted of the somewhat-
incoherent ramblings of a not particularly interesting person.

The idea that he is reliving the past gets more interesting. How? And to
what
end? (Is it his own idea or is it being "done to" him -- i.e., is he agent
or
patient?)

"Recreating" is by far the most interesting; it probably covers more mental 
"territory" than any of the other three, from Den mentally asking himself
what 
would have happened if he had done something differently, to "Purgatory" as
a 
sort of mental "holodeck" where he can actually experiment with such things,

to actually travelling back in time and doing it over. In addition, it may
be 
that the explicit facts, events, and details do not change, but Den's 
understanding of them changes -- he does the same things but for different 
reasons, or simply is allowed to observe himself doing them and understand
if 
he can the meaning of what he did and what happened afterward and why. 

I particularly like looking at "recreating" the past because it fits in 
thematically with that damn Chinese pillow story that seems like a minor
episode but keeps confronting you everywhere you turn in PEACE.

In summary, then: I think we cannot build a usefully coherent and consistent
chronology of Weer's life. I think the book actively forbids it. On the
other
hand, I think we can build a usefully coherent and consistent model of the
book which accounts for the incoherency and inconsistency of Weer's account.

Again and again: PEACE is not the story of Weer's life; it is the story of
Weer telling his story.

--Dan'l

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2000 14:09:01 +0000

> would not be able to argue them out of it.

You see this as if it were a negative thing, but I think this is the most
interesting way to talk about a book.  If PEACE is a more coherent book
and more asethetically satisfying if you conclude that Weer is the
culprit, then evidence to the contrary amounts to an artistic mistake on
Wolfe's part.  

You say that this amounts to a matter of taste and we can't argue about
that.  But we do.  One of the more interesting disussions on this list was
when someone expressed dislike for the Long Sun books and others lept in
to defend them and to describe what they liked, what they thought the
books did well.  Whether or not they were able to argue that person out of
their opinion, they gave me an opportunity to notice and appreciate
aspects of the books I'd missed the first time.

The first time I read Urth of the New Sun, I hated the idea that Severian
himself was the Concilator and disliked the book.  But after reading other
people's comments on the series, I see things I had missed that makes it
all fit together much better and my opinion of the book has changed.

I'm somewhat interested in finding out what Wolfe meant, but only as one
of various means to the end of helping me get the most enjoyment out of
his books.  (This ain't law or scripture - I'm not reading Wolfe to try to
figure out what exactly two contracted parties had agreed to or to figure
out how God wants me to live - this is just for fun!)  So, for me, the
best reading of PEACE is the one that I find most aesthetically
satisfying.  Coherence is an important part of that, but I'm not above
setting aside this or that bit of evidence if it means I can better enjoy
the whole.

-Rostrum

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 13:30:19 +0000

Thanks for the thoughtful response; I'll do my best to reply in kind.

>    biography of ADW in mind when he wrote PEACE;

I agree that Wolfe had something definite in mind; whether it was a
coherent biography of Weer, or a collection of deliberately fragmentary
or inconsistent biographical "facts" I don't know.

> his readers that I simply do not see as likely in the case of GW)

When I talked about the "trap" of biography, I didn't mean to imply that
Wolfe was being  pointlessly sadistic (though I'm not as convinced as
you of his essential helpfulness; after all, he's written one novel and
a number of shorter works which nobody, AFAIK, has yet made any sense
of).  Wolfe's intent, under this hypothesis, would not be to make the
reader endlessly and fruitlessly hunt for clues, but to make a point
about the mutability of memory, or the indeterminacy of reading or
knowledge.

> the word "comprehensible."

I partially agree with what I think you're saying.  I agree that there
are aspects of the book which can be "comprehended" apart from Weer's
biography, and that we should look at the why and how, not just the
what, of Weer's narration much more closely than we've done so far. (I
would have said something about this in my earlier post if I hadn't
wanted to finally get it out, as I had said.)

But, to jump ahead in your post, I'm skeptical that reading the book as
"the story of Weer telling his story" will make it more determinate or
comprehensible.  On the contrary, it seems only to lead to "confusion
worse confounded," at least on the evidence of the discussion here.  At
least we can put together a basic outline of Weer's life, even if it's
missing information on crucial points.  But when it comes to Weer's
present situation, we can't even agree on the simplest facts: is he
alive or dead?  If alive, is he young or old?  If dead, is he on his way
to heaven, resurrection, or neither?  To add to the confusion, Weer's
description of his present contains far more, and more glaring,
anomalies than his account of his past.  It's true that (judging by what
I've read) less work, in the sense of close reading, has gone into
investigating these questions than into investigating Weer's biography,
so it's possible that with more work things might clear up.

> skilled and fair writer.

There's a third possibility: that Wolfe misjudged what a reader could
reasonably be expected to infer.  (Some of his statements in interviews
suggest that this is sometimes the case.  He apparently thought--or at
least recalled having thought--that nobody would actually build a house
as strange as Weer's "museum house."  I don't agree (the Winchester
house is a lot stranger), so I didn't make the deductions from Weer's
description of his house that Wolfe expected.)

[Comparison with Catholic Biblical interpretation snipped]

> probably reading in a way that asks the text the wrong questions.

Of course, Wolfe is aware that he isn't God (he even wrote a story on
the topic), so he would presumably concede that he might have
occasionally contradicted himself, or failed to say what he meant to.

> "What is the status of the 'past' sections" is not among the most useful

If you're saying that the "past" sections don't all have the same
status, I agree.  If you're saying that it's not useful to ask what the
status of any particular "past" section (or portion thereof) is, I
disagree (but I don't think you are).

>      1. Recollecting the past.

Well, I had been illustrating a point, not offering an exhaustive list. 
But I like your typology.
  
> this were the general case, we would have very little in the way of mystery.

Actually, (setting aside the other two possibilities on your list for a
moment), Weer is almost certainly neither 100% lying nor 100%
"straightforwardly recollecting."  Instead, his narrative is a
combination of recollection, suppression, and (perhaps) lying that is
nearly impossible to disentangle.  So I don't agree that we have "very
little in the way of mystery."

> Den's story

I certainly wouldn't ignore these, but we don't need Weer's "reliving"
or "recreating" to account for them, although there are other reasons
why Weer has to be "recreating at least to some extent.

> I would have to conclude that PEACE consisted of the somewhat-

Heh.  Except for the "not particularly interesting" bit, that's a pretty
good description.

> he can the meaning of what he did and what happened afterward and why.

[snip]

> book which accounts for the incoherency and inconsistency of Weer's account.

I'll have to think more about this idea of "recreating," and I want to
get this out while it's fresh.  It's clear that it's going on, at least
to some extent; there are the occasional intrusions of the present into
the "past," and the anomalies that have been pointed out in the doctor's
visit and in chapter five.  But I'm skeptical that "recreating" can be
the master key to building "a coherent and consistent model," as you
seem to be suggesting, at least one which is grounded in the text.

--Adam

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2000 11:17:48 +0000

> setting aside this or that bit of evidence if it means I can better enjoy

Without reopening the question of intent (which I may get around to
posting on one of these days) I'll say that PEACE, to me, presents
itself as having been carefully planned out by Wolfe so that its details
and apparent anomalies are part of a conscious design; that is, Wolfe
did nt write it in a slapdash fashion or by letting his inspiration
carry him where it listed.  If this is correct, then (unless Wolfe was
guilty of a monumental lapse of judgment) it is very unlikely that any
"accidentally present" reading I could discern would be more satisfying
than the reading Wolfe intended.  If PEACE were to turn out not to have
been carefully planned in this sense, then I believe I would think less
of it: many details which appear significant would in fact be random or
careless, and the book would be parading under false pretenses.  (Not
that I think carefully planned out books are always better; my remarks
are specific to PEACE.)

--Adam

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2000 11:43:51 +0000

On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Adam Stephanides wrote:

> than the reading Wolfe intended.  

My point was to disagree with your claim that we couldn't evaluate
possible readings of PEACE by arguing which reading is aesthetically
better. You say the reading Wolfe intended is much more likely to be
better than one he didn't intend.  Seems to me that implies that if we
find a reading that we like the best, that's likely to be the one Wolfe
intended, which should make everybody happy.

So, for instance, I think the book is more interesting if it turns out
Weer was the one responsible for the warehouse death, but either lies
about it in a pretty daring sort of way (reminds me of Hitchcock's movie
"Rope") or can't admit to himself what really happened.  I don't think
it's enough for you to respond saying that reading isn't sufficiently
supported by the text.  You need to demonstrate how PEACE is a better book
if you don't read it that way.

Perhaps you could argue it's more interesting to suspect Weer *might* have
been responsible for the warehouse death than to know for sure either way.
Which might have a stronger claim to be what Wolfe has actually given
us...

-Rostrum