{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2722", "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": 2722, "subject": "PEACE: From the thicket", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2001-07-13T14:46:04+00:00", "last": "2001-07-13T14:46:04+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2001-07-13T14:46:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: From the thicket", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As has happened to me all too many times on this list, by the time I get\naround to posting something I find that someone else has beaten me to the\ndraw, said what I wanted to say, at least in part . . . blah . . blah, and\nthat is what's happened with this post, but I'm still too lazy to re-write\nit. So, some of what follows has already been touched on by others.\n\nAdam's doubts about whether or not the conversation(s) between Weer and Gold\never took place has caused me to re-evaluate the basic assumptions\nunderlying my interpretation of PEACE. What if Adam is right? To go further;\nwhat if _all_ the episodes dealing directly with Weer are fabrications,\nentire or partial? It has been mentioned before, by others, that much (most)\nof what is related in the book has little or nothing to do with Weer. Of\nwhat remains, the autobiographical details are scattered, all too skeletal,\nalmost arbitrary and incidental to what he has chosen to write about.\n\nIf it were not for the fallen elm, and Wolfe's own testimony to the\ncontrary, one might reasonably argue that Weer isn't even dead, that the\nwhole book is just a boy's idle bookish dreams, from which Aunt Vi will soon\nwake him, or an old man's bitter regrets, which death will soon make more\npalatable. But Weer _is_ dead, and that is the one solid fact from which an\nunderstanding of PEACE must proceed. The frametale--even if that frame\nexists only in the hollow of his grave-bound skull--is Weer's only\n\"reality\", the backdrop of his life-after-death. So far as can be\ndetermined, Weer is the sole occupant of the frametale. (Never mind the door\nhe thought he heard close, or his aunt on the intercom; there was no Persian\nroom either; it's all his imagination, and Wolfe is reported in an interview\nto have denied, in effect, that any such memory-mansion would have existed.)\n\nAll those instances where something from his frametale existence intrudes\ninto some seeming \"real-life\" event that he is \"remembering\" (consulting Dr.\nV for a non-existent stroke, telling the future to Dr.B, telling Lois that\nhe was waiting at his desk when he was sitting in his car, giving her his\nfuture phone number, begging Sherry's forgiveness for not rising due to his\n\"stroke\", etc.) clearly could not be true, did not happen in the real world,\nor at the least did not happen quite as he describes them. I think those\nanachronisms are Wolfe's way of telling the reader that Weer is fabricating\nthose episodes, in whole or part, as his way of coping with the\nlife-after-death situation he finds himself in, however and whyever he came\nto be in that situation.\n\nAs mantis pointed out early on in last autumn's big PEACE discussion, even\nwhen Weer re-tells an almost familiar tale, say from Lang or Burton, the\nstory he tells is never quite right, not as it was in the original. More\nrecently, I noted the same type of thing was done with the Sidhe story. The\npoint is that Weer is not above changing around the stories to serve his own\nends, which fact might be noticed by the knowledgeable reader. I think this\nis Wolfe's way of letting that reader know that what Weer writes about can't\nbe relied on as gospel.\n\nThe bit of the Boyne diary mentioned by Adam is told from the third-person\npov; diaries aren't written that way, nor is the excerpt quoted. When Gold\nstarts to read to Weer from the NECRONOMICON, what he translates starts off\nin quotation marks, then Weer stops to describe Gold's demeanor. When the\ntext continues in the next paragraph it is no longer quoted, and remains\nthat way to the end of the chapter. Gold is no longer reading. When Hannah\nstarts to tell Den the story of Jack and Molly, they are in his mother's\nkitchen, but the scene soon shifts to Sugar Creek and Katie is telling the\nstory to Hannah and Maud Mill, complete with interruptions from Maud. Weer\nhas to be making that up; he wasn't there to hear it. For that matter, even\nvery early in the book, at his birthday party, when his mother asks Hannah\nwhere the children are, he obviously wasn't there to hear her ask.\n\nI think mantis may be right about the Walter Mittyish nature of Weer's life,\nthat he lived vicariously through books--and lived to regret it. The\ncoldhouse prank may have been no more than just another ghost story, like\nthose told by his Aunt Bella and Uncle Julius. The whole Charlie\nTurner/Doris part has always struck me as very improbable. Sherry giving\nherself to Weer to save her father strikes me as unrealistic, more like a\nsexual fantasy. The \"non-explanation\", as Adam put it, of the gun and its\ndisposal is another instance of the frametale intruding on \"reality\"; one of\nthe options he tells Sherry for getting rid of it is to throw it in \"the\nbottom drawer of my bureau\". That not only doesn't get rid of the gun, but\nthe bureau is in the museum-room duplicate of his Commons apartment. As\nhappens elsewhere in the text, his mind wanders back to his frametale\nexistence and his distractedness is glossed over or ignored by the\n\"real-world\" character present, in this case, Sherry. As for Lois and the\nGold Hunt, well, I think mantis has covered that part of the story already\nin a recent post, even if not even he is buying it. \n\nMantis's dissatisfaction comes, I think, because if all, or even most of\nwhat Weer writes about is lies or fantasies, then what are we left with?\nWhat is the point? I'm no happier than is he with this kind of\ninterpretation, but how else to account for those real-world anachronisms\nabove? And those were just off the top of my head; there're bound to be\nmore.\n\n-Roy" } ] } ] }