{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3211", "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": 3211, "subject": "A Fish story", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-05-01T22:25:00+00:00", "last": "2002-05-02T20:19:40+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matthew Davis", "address": "matthew at michaelscycles.freeserve.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-05-01T22:25:00+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) A Fish story", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "\"A Fish Story.\" Is the key to understanding this short short to be found\nin\nthe name \"Rob Salmon\"? (Or something like that--can't find my F&SF with\nthe\nstory at the moment) I.e., do ghosts return to the place they're \"born\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "too?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I found this one pretty impenetrable myself." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My interpretation of \"A Fish Story\" is about the fear and denial of the\ntruth (the opening line points this out - \"I've always been embarrassed by\nthe truth\"); and that how even when you try to evade the truth it will still\ncome to haunt you. The crux of the story is Rab's insistence that his aunt\nNOT tell him whether there's an afterlife. At the end of the story when his\nfriends lie to him by telling him, still that lie turns out to be true. And\nif I remember correctly a fish story is normally a yarn or exaggerated lie -\na false and distancing form of communication. Rab doesn't want to\ncommunicate (see the fact that he assumes that the hospital is only able to\ncontact him because the ghostly Rab gave them his phone number). At the\nheart of the story lies Rab's less than sterling nature. He's constantly\ntrying to avoid facing up to the events that have happened to him, as a\nchild, as an adult, in his relationships with his friends and his family. At\nthe hospital, meeting up with his aunt, there is a moment of\nself-recognition in how his aunt reflects all the things he's been trying to\nescape. Rab has shut something out of his life. The vision he has of himself\nunites both Rab's fear of the transcendent and also his knowledge of\nwhatever it is that he's lacking, resulting in this ghost of his better\nself, the Rab that he isn't, throwing into sharp contrast the unpleasant Rab\nthat he is.\n\nWhat to make of his name \"Rab Sammon\"? I don't know.\n\nAnybody want to make this out as some sort of weird religious allegory (fish\nin greek (icthys) = christ), please feel free. Rab as a sort of\nanti-apostle, the religous revelation refused?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-05-01T22:30:09+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) A Fish story", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "What to make of his name \"Rab Sammon\"? I don't know." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Irish legend of\nthe Salmon of Wisdom. Then there's always \"Samhain.\"\n\nBut I haven't read the story..." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matthew Davis", "address": "matthew at michaelscycles.freeserve.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-05-01T22:46:11+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) A Fish story", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message -----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "From: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \nTo: \nSent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 11:30 PM\nSubject: RE: (urth) A Fish story\nWhat to make of his name \"Rab Sammon\"? I don't know." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Irish legend of\nthe Salmon of Wisdom. Then there's always \"Samhain.\"\n\nBut I haven't read the story..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rab as a contraction of rabbi? Contraction of Robert?\n\nApparently Sammon as a surname is 1. a contraction of Solomon. 2. a varient\nof Salmon. 3. a variant of Seaman.\nAlso, apparently there's something called a Sammon projection which is a\nnonlinear mapping of high dimensional vectors onto a two dimensional space.\n\nNone of these seem highly pertinent." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-05-02T20:19:40+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) A Fish story", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message -----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Matthew Davis\" \nNone of these seem highly pertinent." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The Salmon of Wisdom is a figure in irish myth.\n\n\n\nTuan, like Suibhne and Merlin, becomes the leader of the stag herds of\nIreland, before taking the shape, in turn, of a boar, a hawk and a salmon,\nand finally a man again. Every time he wearies with age, he returns to a\ncertain cave where he fasts for three days, the period favored by Celtic\nseers for mantic journeys. Like Fintan, he undergoes intense hardships that\nring with all the authenticity of lived experience:\n\n**I passed into the shape of a river salmon....was vigorous and well-fed and\nmy swimming was good, and I used to escape from every danger and from every\nsnare - to wit, from the hands of fishermen, and from the claws of hawks,\nand from fishing spears - so that the scars which each one of them left are\nstill upon me.**\n\nTuan's life as a salmon is brought to an end when fishermen of the chieftain\nCairell catch him and serve him to his wife who eats the whole fish herself.\nShe becomes pregnant with Tuan who remains conscious while in her womb,\nfully aware of who he is and of everything that is happening in Ireland.\n\nSo in a mysterious reversal which serves to highlight the magical interplay\nof human and non-human forms in the Celtic tradition, the man that eats the\nsalmon to become a seer turns into the salmon who is eaten so that a man can\nbe born.\n\n..\n\n\n\nThis may or may not be relevant. I have not read \"A Fish Story\".\n\nBut I will remark that, while we talk a lot about the Biblical references in\nthe Briah cycle, the echoes from Celtic and Nordic myth - such as Horn's\nvery obvious identification with Odin - seem to pass most of us by.\n\nUrd, Skuld and Verdane are Odinistic in origin, for example - they are the\nnames of the Norns.\n\n hartshorn" } ] } ] }