Subject: (urth) PEACE: Venus sans arms

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 23:54:14 +0000

Andy Robertson quoted me and wrote:
>> (Still hunting for another source to that wonderful "Venus di Milo" story!
>> So haunting, since I all-but-swore that I'd seen it before, somewhere,
>just
>> before reading PEACE . . . )
>
>A Lafferty story?????
>

Intriguing notion! I haven't read much Lafferty, he exists in one of my
blindspots, but it is possible.  APOCALYPSES, perhaps?  Not that
collection, STRANGE DOINGS, I don't think . . . certainly not ANNALS OF
KLEPSIS, nor "900 Grandmothers," nor "Continued on Next Rock."

The story in PEACE is about how the statue we call Venus di Milo is a
forgery, in that it is not as old as it is thought to be, nor is it Venus.
The fellows who "found" it in the cave (by the sea?) sold it to the
(English?) gentlemen, and then they offered to sell him the arms, as well,
but he declined.

Something like that.

(It does seem like something Lafferty would do, sheesh!)

=mantis=

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 13:53:27 +0000

on 5/7/02 6:54 PM, Michael Andre-Driussi at mantis at siriusfiction.com wrote:

> blindspots, but it is possible.  APOCALYPSES, perhaps?

That would certainly be a prime candidate.  The first short novel in it,
"Where Have You Been, Sandaliotis," is about forgery and contains a Master
Forger.  But checking the most likely places (and it's been a long time
since I read it), I didn't find any reference to the Venus de Milo.  The
closest I found was a story told by the Master Forger about how he forged
the "Weeping Hermes of Praxiteles," a lost masterpiece of ancient Greek
sculpture, and then discovered the real sculpture and found it wasn't as
good as his forgery.

--Adam

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 17:17:20 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Stephanides" <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
> sculpture, and then discovered the real sculpture and found it wasn't as

I don't have acces to APOCALYPSES, but I think this is where I remember the
motif from.   It was about forging statue(s), but not necessarily the Venus

    hartshorn

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