Subject: Re: (urth) Re: The Invisible Library, PEACE, and timeline alert

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 15:47:14 +0000

on 6/13/01 1:00 AM, Roy C. Lackey at rclackey at stic.net wrote:

> From PEACE: (p.-160, Berkley)
> 
> OH, RARE AMANDA  (a biography, author unknown)
> 
> By Amanda Ros:
> 
> IRENE IDDESLEIGH
> 
> DELINA DELANEY
> 
> DONALD DUDLEY
> 
> FUMES OF FORMATION (poetry)
> 
> POEMS OF PUNCTURE (poetry)

As mantis has pointed out (great catch!  It never occurred to me to check)
Amanda Ros does indeed exist.  In fact, she has somewhat of a reputation
among connosieurs of bad writing.  There is even a website devoted to her --
http://www.oddbooks.com/amanda -- which confirms that all the books listed
above indeed exist, and THE LUSTY LAWYER does not.  But an unpublished book
of Ros's was to have been titled THE LUSTY LAWYER at one point, and she even
listed it on the title page of POEMS OF PUNCTURE.

Wolfe's sample of "Ros's" writing, though, is probably an inside joke.
While she was fond of alliteration, she did not take it to the extreme Wolfe
does (the ridiculousness of her prose resided in its extreme purpleness).
Nor was she likely, as far as I can gather, to have written a racy book; her
"Lusty Lawyer" would have been a novel attacking lawyers (nor would it have
appeared in the nineteenth century, as Blaine says his LUSTY LAWYER did;
indeed, Ros's first book was published only in 1897).

> MARVELLS OF SCIENCE by Morryster (197)
> 
> CULTES DES GOULES by the Comte d'Erlette (198)

The CULTES DES GOULES is also an invention of HPL.  MARVELLS OF SCIENCE also
occurs in an HPL story, where it is mentioned in the same sentence as the
NECRONOMICON, but it was first invented by Ambrose Bierce, though whether
Wolfe was aware of this I don't know.

mantis wrote:

> 1954 . . .  you know what that means!  Timeline Alert!
> 
> <klaxon sounds>
> 
> "Breach in PEACE timeline at 1953."
> 
> We have a problem, since we place GOLD HUNT (preludes with Amanda Ros stuff
> at library) at 1953.  More research required: was ORA =first= published in
> 1954?  Is "Lusty Lawyer" a documented case of forgery in our world?

Yes; and not only that, but DONALD DUDLEY was first published (posthumously)
in 1954.  Of course, sometimes books which list a certain date of
publication were actually published in the latter half of the previous year,
which might give you an out (I can't find any indication in the text of
whether the Gold hunt takes place in the spring or fall, and can't put my
hands on your and Roy's timeline at the moment).

--Adam

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