{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3234",
    "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": 3234,
    "subject": "Black Easter",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-05-08T04:41:04+00:00",
    "last": "2002-05-08T04:41:04+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0205-922@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-05-08T04:41:04+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Black Easter",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Last of my posts on Wolfe's superlative \"Seven American Nights.\"\n\nBoth Joan Gordon and Kathryn Locey, in their analyses of \"Seven American\nNights,\" are able to find elements of hope and resurrection in the story,\nbut I think this is a total misread. More to the point, although it takes\nplace in the week preceding Easter, I believe \"Seven American Nights\" is\nabout as far from a prelude to the spiritual or physical revitalization of\nAmerica as it is possible to get, being rather a symbolic descent into Hell\n(a trope that is inordinately common in Wolfe's work, both long and short),\nif not the Anti-Parousia itself.\n\nLet us begin with what is always a good place to start when attempting to\nrender sense of Wolfe: onomastics.\n\nWhile seeming a plausible Arab name, \"Nadan,\" in fact, is something you\nwould be ill-mannered in calling anyone. In Farsi it means \"stupid, idiot;\"\ntherefore, by extension, the same thing that 'cretin' does. (I speak here,\nof course, less of the medical condition than its use as a pejorative,\nthough both are related.) \"Cretin\" itself is an interesting word, deriving\nfrom the Franco-Provençal, \"creitin, crestin: human being, lit. Christian,\nhence one who is human despite deformities.\" And throughout \"Seven American\nNights\" we see a veritable horde of deformed creitins. But given that\nanother prominent character is named Kreton--in actuality, he's the actor\nBobby O' Keene, who plays Gore Vidal's \"morally retarded\" alien in the stage\nproduction of \"Visit to a Small Planet\"; Nadan, however, is unable to think\nof him as anything but Kreton)--it's almost certain we're meant to see him\nas Nadan's alter ego. Kreton, like so many lupine characters, limps, the\nresult of a recent stage injury; plus in the theater company's next\nproduction he will play Mephistopheles, so it's very difficult not to see\nhim as a devil figure. (A limp is frequently associated with the devil.)\n\nThen there's the hallucinogen that Nadan doses his candy eggs with. Though\nit's never actually named, it is almost certainly LSD--a synthetic\nderivative of the psychoactive chemical found in ergot, a fungus of rye and\nother cereal grains. This plays off the potent grain imagery found\nthroughout \"Seven American Nights.\" There's Golan Gassem, the grain merchant\nwho may be a known dealer in stolen artifacts (and hence this is why Nadan\nmust avoid him--out of fear he too may be thought a dealer. It's also\npossible there's class rivalry here. Gassem is a merchant, while Nadan may\nbe a member of royalty--Mirza, the name of Nadan's uncle, means \"prince\");\nNadan's dream of \"bread that retained the fragrance of the oven...though it\nwas smeared with gray mold\"; and the wheat penny, which is now a necklace\ngewgaw. Writes Locey about the bread loaf, and with which I wholeheartedly\nagree, \"This contaminated bread, symbolic of an America which has prized\neffect over substance, is the antithesis of communion bread, in which\nCatholics 'see' the presence of Christ.\" The LSD thus becomes a substitute\nhost, a black Eucharist taken by devilish Nadan.\n\nFurther evidence that the devil is about to rise transcendent over Christ\ncan be found in the scene where Nadan witnesses a Good Friday procession\ninvolving the Stations of the Cross. (Gordon posits this is actually Easter\nDay, but Locey gets the chronology right). Yet its followers are\n\"inattentive\" and \"bickering,\" and watch the ceremony \"as uncomprehendingly\nas they might if they themselves were only travelers abroad.\" Hardly the\nattitude you would expect from Catholics on this most solemn day of the\nChristian calendar, and once more indicative of America's fall from grace.\n\nNor do I buy Gordon's argument that the rebirth of the theater signifies an\nincipient renaissance. Both plays being produced are neither of a religious\nor patriotic nature. \"Visit to a Smart Planet\" features an extraterrestrial\n\"cretin,\" while the title character in \"Mary Rose\" disappears for 25 years,\nbut when she reappears has not aged--associating her with the\npreservative-laden bread that still smells fresh, but is moldy.\n\nSo, to recapitulate: Nadan, having taken the black host on Good Friday, the\nday of Christ's death, sees both fallen angel (peri Ardis) and demon\n(werwolf Ardis) even as Mephistophelean Kreton, in his twisted black shoes,\ncauses an earthquake, and thunder sounds.\n\nThe Devil has risen.\n\nRobert Borski"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}