{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2727", "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": 2727, "subject": "PEACE: The Elm", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-07-17T15:52:57+00:00", "last": "2001-07-18T09:11:47+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2001-07-17T15:52:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: The Elm", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"The elm tree planted by Eleanor Bold, the judge's daughter, fell last\nnight.\"\n\nFor all the times I've read that sentence, it is only now that something\nstrange about it strikes me. How is it that Weer knew the tree in question\nto have been planted by her? There are two possibilities: 1) he recognized\nthe site as one known by him (while he was alive, of course) to be the grave\nof someone other than himself, another of Eleanor's friends, or 2) he\nrecognized his own (prearranged, necessarily) grave site and only _assumed_\nthe tree to have been planted by her. The first possibility is unlikely and\nlends nothing to the rest of the novel. The second possibility has its own\nproblems. Even if Weer and Eleanor had agreed in advance that the grave tree\nwould be an elm, for Weer to associate the fallen mature tree with Eleanor\nand her hobby, then--duh--he must be dead. No matter whose grave it was,\nsaplings do not grow to maturity and die, normally, in a lifetime; if\nEleanor planted that tree, then everyone he knew must be dead, and so must\nhe.\n\nSo, Weer had to know, from the first page of the novel, that he was dead.\nLeaving aside the metaphysical questions of how and why he came to be\nwriting his post-mortem memoir, knowing himself to be dead, why keep up the\ncharade of his frametale physical maladies? He _did_ know his consultations\nwith the doctors weren't real--he said as much to Dr. V. A non-existent 4lb.\naxe weighs no more than a non-existent 2lb. axe, and the axes could not\nexist, not unless the museum-roomed house had in fact been built and was\nstill standing, intact, however many years after his death that the elm tree\nhad been standing, and he had been buried on the grounds of his estate,\nunder that elm. That's pretty farfetched.\n\nOf course, any writer who writes about life after death gets to make up his\nown rules, so Wolfe was free to compound as many impossibilities as he cared\nto. But, not knowing the ground rules Wolfe was playing by makes it very\nhard to make judgements about Weer, whether based on his words or deeds. Of\ncourse, that's not going to stop me. \n\nIn CASTLE OF DAYS, where Wolfe talks about PEACE, he brings up the\npsychobabble term \"normalization\" to describe what Weer is going through in\nthe frametale, the process whereby individuals commonly (and unconsciously)\nattempt to impose an order on reality that isn't necessarily there. How can\nI argue with that? When Weer writes of eating, sleeping, feeling cold or\nsick, chopping wood, lighting candles, writing, etc., he only imagines he\ndoes those things; it's his way of coping with the situation he finds\nhimself in. For the dead to really do any of those things is \"contrary to\neveryday experience\".\n\nAt one point Weer speaks of being \"sicker, even, than I was this winter,\nbefore Eleanor Bold's tree fell\". In the frametale it is early spring, so it\ncan be inferred that he remembers a time before the tree fell, although that\ncontradicts the theory that the tree falling is what freed his spirit, which\nwoke him from the oblivion of death to his frametale existence. Yet his\naccount begins after the tree fell. So, which is it? Does his memory extend,\nin the frametale, for some unspecified length of time before the tree fell\n(perhaps all the way back to when the tree was first planted), or does it\nbegin with the tree falling? If the latter, then what did he mean about\nbeing \"sicker\" before then?\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-07-18T09:11:47+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: The Elm", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\n\"The elm tree planted by Eleanor Bold, the judge's daughter, fell last\nnight.\"\n\nEven if Weer and Eleanor had agreed in advance that the grave tree\nwould be an elm, for Weer to associate the fallen mature tree with Eleanor\nand her hobby, then--duh--he must be dead. No matter whose grave it was,\nsaplings do not grow to maturity and die, normally, in a lifetime; if\nEleanor planted that tree, then everyone he knew must be dead, and so must\nhe." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Does Weer say that the tree was mature? Maybe it was a sapling that fell. \nI don't like that idea. The language implies a full-sized tree. If it\nwere a sapling one would be more likely to say it got smashed or uprooted\nby the storm.\n\nI just figured that Weer knows who planted the tree because it was over\nhis grave, not because he was hovering around as a ghost and watched her\nplant it, but that he just has that knowledge because of its connection\nto him. Weer, like the reader on her first time through the novel,\nhasn't thought through the implications and realized what it means." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At one point Weer speaks of being \"sicker, even, than I was this winter,\nbefore Eleanor Bold's tree fell\". In the frametale it is early spring, so it\ncan be inferred that he remembers a time before the tree fell, although that\ncontradicts the theory that the tree falling is what freed his spirit, which\nwoke him from the oblivion of death to his frametale existence. Yet his\naccount begins after the tree fell. So, which is it? Does his memory extend,\nin the frametale, for some unspecified length of time before the tree fell\n(perhaps all the way back to when the tree was first planted), or does it\nbegin with the tree falling? If the latter, then what did he mean about\nbeing \"sicker\" before then?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If Weer's ghost just \"woke\" with the falling of the sapling in early\nspring, then the most recent winter he remembers is the winter before he\ndied, which, being before the tree was planted, is also before it fell.\n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }