{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2633", "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": 2633, "subject": "The redhead", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-05-10T01:45:18+00:00", "last": "2001-05-10T08:49:43+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2001-05-10T01:45:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The redhead", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Matthew and Jeff Wilson wrote, respectively:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Where does it say that a Presidential term is only four years in *that*\nuniverse?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Indeed. Perhaps the NP is himself a replacement from another timeline\nwhere he was a junior politico. References to disasters and unrest that\nwe don't see could be pointing to events there." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There are no justifications within the story to indicate that it takes place\nin a world much, if any, different from our own. And the NP seems to have\nobtained his position in the usual way: \"He murmured comforting words, his\nfriendship with Boone and Marsha, the great contribution Boone had made to\nhis administration. After a time that seemed long, the silent TV showed him\nwith Boone, with Boone and Marsha, with Boone at the convention.\" and: \"I\nhad been working hard. Not only after my inauguration, but for more than a\nyear before it. Working twelve or thirteen hours every day without a break.\"\nPlus, he has concerns for the next election.\n\n\n*******************\nBTW, before it gets repeated any more, unless there's another one I don't\nknow about, Spokane is in the state of Washington, not Idaho. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rostrum wrote:\nAlthough I'm not sure how (if?) it fits with the creation narratives in\nGenesis, the Lilith myth seems to take place before the Fall. There is a\ntradition that before the Fall, humanity and all of nature were different,\nmore glorious. This accounts for Adam's godlike appearance, his authority\nto condemn Lilith, and for the weirdness of the place where the new\nPresident ends up; he's in the unfallen Eden where the trees sing and the\nthe ram's horns make music." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Could be, now that the snakes have been exchanged.\n\nTo expand on the Lilith angle: each person mentioned in the story is named,\n*except* the two \"boys\" (Cain and Abel), the president's wife (=\"First\nLady\"=\"first woman\"=Eve), the president (by logical extension the \"first\nman\"=Adam), and \"Jane Doe\". Wolfe deliberately doesn't name them because to\ndo so would give his game away too easily. However the theologians care to\nfit Lilith into the creation story, she, as you indicated, popularly is\npresented as Adam's first mate, necessarily before Eve, who herself\nantedates the Fall; therefore Lilith, too, existed before the Fall. Whether\nsexual coupling before the Fall was regarded as innocent recreation, no more\nsinful than that of the animals, or not, by the creators of the myth, Lilith\nwasn't added to the Genesis story because of her culinary skills. In any\nevent, the woman in Wolfe's story is SEX, big time, the snake in the grass,\nso to speak, who brings havoc and discord wherever she goes. How Wolfe\nthought to work her into the Cain and Abel story, I don't know, but her\ncomplicity makes at least as much sense as the Genesis account, and, as he\nhas done with other mythological material (e.g., the Sidhe story in PEACE),\nhe doesn't let the \"facts\" get in his way when he wants to incorporate such\nmaterial into his work.\n\nLilith is shepherded in the story by Karen (=\"Purity\"), a hopeless task,\nwhich is why the NP says to her \"You're beat,\", and sends her off to sleep\nin his wife's bed--he hopes, the hypocrite. Besides, he couldn't help\nhimself; like Sev and Horn before him, the woman tempted him. And everyone\nknows Lilith was a redhead. \n\nDan'l writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Dunno. I've seen \"to grouse,\" a verb for a kind of habitual\ncomplaining, but I've never heard or seen a nominal form." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "MW on line only lists (as noun) the bird and \"a complaint.\"<<\n\nThe definition I gave is from _Webster's New World Dictionary Of The\nAmerican Language_, College Edition, 1966. \"n. [Slang], 1. a complaint. 2. a\nperson who habitually complains.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "But why, I wonder, doesn't the \"glorious\" naked man speak with\na similar accent...?<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Because he's not a snake. Snakes are known to talk funny. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "... when Lilith grabbed the Changer and pressed the button, *she*\nexchanged the NP for the old Adam she disdained, who \"grunted\" over\nher, who is the very tall man at the end of the story. And he is a\nman, not God; Wolfe conflates the biblical passages alluded to so\nthat it is the new Adam who does both the cursing and who \"shall\ncrush your head under my heel.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Umm... is it maybe both? You put the words there: \"the new Adam.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Who, in Pauline terms, is Christ, is the God-and-Man, and in fact\nthe one who crushes the serpent's head underneath His heel.<<\n\nCould be, but that's not what I intended. I had it right the first time; she\nwound up with the old Adam she didn't like, and the \"glorious\" man is only\nthe newest incarnation of him. But if Wolfe intended his appearance to be\nthe advent of the Second Coming, then he's whistling up a theological\ntempest that a whole rowboat full of Augustines wouldn't put to sea in.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-05-10T08:49:43+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) The redhead", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 10 May 2001, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nHowever the theologians care to\nfit Lilith into the creation story, she, as you indicated, popularly is\npresented as Adam's first mate, necessarily before Eve, who herself\nantedates the Fall; therefore Lilith, too, existed before the Fall. \n[...]How Wolfe\nthought to work her into the Cain and Abel story, I don't know, but her\ncomplicity makes at least as much sense as the Genesis account, and, as he\nhas done with other mythological material (e.g., the Sidhe story in PEACE),\nhe doesn't let the \"facts\" get in his way when he wants to incorporate such\nmaterial into his work." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Still, that's a big problem - Cain and Abel, and murder particularly, are\ndefinitely post-Fall, so it's hard to see how Adam (and Eden) could still\nbe glorified and unfallen if Cain has already killed Abel.\n\nI suspose it's possible that Lilith is referring to the Cain and Abel of\nthe new President's timeline/universe/dimension/whatever, and marvelling\nover what it led to. Or maybe the Adam that gets grabbed by the changer\n(and the Eden the new Pres gets changed to) are from a third timeline,\nbefore the Fall. But neither of those explanations seem very elegant.\n\nBtw, what do you see as the incongruity in the Sidhe story in PEACE? \n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }