{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2543", "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": 2543, "subject": "CASTLEVIEW Halloo!", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2001-01-15T09:07:29+00:00", "last": "2001-01-15T09:07:29+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-01-15T09:07:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) RE: CASTLEVIEW Halloo!", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "SpecBear wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "(I wrote:\nThe only major puzzles I think left by the book's ending are\nwhether certain characters are mortal or fay." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": ")" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Indeed, I didn't realize how many of the questions you were\ngoing to be able to relate to this." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think this is what our deconstructionist friends would \ncall the hinge. Tug on this in just the right way and the \nwhole novel falls apart/falls into place. Actually, a\nhinge is maybe not a bad term for dealing with _this_\nnovel, but we're talking about the hinge at the center of\na spiral labyrinth instead of the hinge of a portal (but\nthe spiral labyrinth _is_ a portal). Is the whole novel\nstructured as a spiral (maybe a spiral dance?), come to \nthink of it? Another day, another reading, and I'm in \nthe middle of so much else right now...\n\n----------\n* which is two ways of saying \"the same\" thing, except of \ncourse you can never say the same thing twice or maybe even\nonce ... and now you know why I have limited tolerance for \nthe deconstructionist PoV even while finding a few of their \ntools/terms useful...)\n----------" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "(Morgan's brother is, traditionally, Arthur; nobody ever \nseems to notice that if Morgan is fay, Arthur ought to be also.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I see what you mean - but is she his full sister, or just half?\nMight she be half faerie and half human?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hoomp. Well. She's his half-sister, by their mother -- Ygraine,\nif I recall the name correctly, who'd had somewhere between one\nand three sisters by her first husband (the other one of real\nsignificance to the story being Morgawse, wife of Lot, mother \nof Gawain, Gareth, a couple of others, and, by her half-brother, \nMordred. \n\nAll this is pretty interesting, and a good overview of Arthurian \nstuff is important well beyond CASTLEVIEW -- someone else \npointed out that the \"Sun\" books seem to be full of young men of \nmysterious parentage who rise through a series of adventures (and \na mystical sword given as a gift) to a rulership which turns out\nto be theirs by (divine?) right and plan." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I suspect that [Fee] doesn't actually want to buy the house --\nI think that's a sort of reverse-Maguffin, something which\nhas no real importance at all, but which a character (Liam\nFee) uses to prod others into behaving the way he wants." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now there's a notion. I'm trying to think of particular\ninstances, but I suspect I would have to read the book\nagain.\n\nHmm - arguing against that is the fact that he kills Tom\nbecause he decides not to sell. The Roberts family seem to\nhave close connections with the Castle, and the house itself\nhas a tower like a castle. I wonder how long it has been there ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now, as someone remarked, _there's_ a notion, and one which \nI'll bring back to haunt you in a little while.\n\nI guess my main reason for suspecting it of Maguffinosity \nis that there is simply nothing in the novel that gives any \nkind of plausible reason for him to want it, except his own \nstory as given to the real estate lady, and that is palpably \nlame.\n\n[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I would say that, yes, there is a definite and deliberate \nresonance there. (Which raises the most interesting question \nof who reflects the Fisher-king role in this particular\nresonance-pattern ...)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nobody taking this bait? Darn, I'd really like to get some \nspeculations on this. (I haven't a clue myself.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Another faerie, I'm pretty sure. I'm not clear at this \npoint which side she's on at any given moment. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I agree that faeries are notoriously unreliable, " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Actually, I think the word is \"feckless\"..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "..but I don't think we need to assume they change sides in \nthe story unless there's some textual evidence for it. Of\ncourse, I haven't been looking for it. Anyway, she's pretty\nclearly one of Fee's lot. He appears genuinely upset at her\ndeath. I don't think he's making that up, because no-one\nknows there is any connection between them." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good take, I think." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "nothing certain, but suggestive enough to entertain \nthe idea that he's a Faerie-cat that Judy has (unknowingly[? but \nwho knows what, in her so-imaginative heart, Judy really knows?]) \ntaken in." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Personally, I think all cats are like that. To suggest that GGL\nis somehow Special is to imply that other cats are Ordinary, and\nthat hardly seems likely." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But if \"The Roberts family seem to have close connections with\nthe Castle,\" then a Faerie-cat seems quite plausible.\n\n(Btw -- is \"GGL\" a typo or an [expletive deleted] Freudian slip? 8*)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Is [Bob Roberts] fay? (And on which side?) I'm not sure. But \nclearly at least some of the characters who want us (or who\nwant the residents of the town, or whom Wolfe wants us) to\nthink they're mortal aren't, and he's not a bad candidate." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But then Sally and Seth would be fay too." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And why are attempts made on Seth's life, eh?\n\nI suspect the Robertseses of being part-fay _without knowing \nit_. (\"There's a bit of green in your family tree, Mrs. \nRoberts.\")" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Vivian was trying to get Wrangler (as a descendant of \nArthur), so if she had succeeded he would have showed \nup in her castle as Shields did. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have a feeling that this depends on how and possibly \n_where_ he (either Shields or Wrangler) is killed or\n\"killed.\" Being killed in mortal combat on the borderlands\nof Faerie is one thing; being killed from ambush in a \nspot on this side of (though quite close to) the gate is\nanother." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Houston, Houston, do you read? I'd mortgage half my soul\n If I could hear it once again, Apollo, ground control\n The devil take the men who killed the dream that died too soon\n For all my dreams are haunted by a fire on the Moon.\n - Visual Purple." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You have no idea what a weird experience it was to come \nacross this, fifteen years after writing it. Thank you." } ] } ] }