Subject: (urth) Rereading the Short Sun

From: Stephen Case <scase at olivet.edu>
Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2002 02:46:08 +0000

I got a summer job at the planetarium here in town, and it's given me a lot of time to read.  Over the course of the past couple weeks, I've been rereading the Short Sun books for the first time.  I'm almost done with Return to the Whorl, and I know they've probably been discussed to death on the list; but I didn't really get involved in the discussion much, and I thought I'd voice my thoughts now.  If you feel this has already been covered, don't respond.  Or direct me to the proper places in the (intimidatingly immense) archives.
     First of all, with all the talk that went back and forth around here a while back as to the merits of the books themselves, a rereading has firmly convinced me of my opinion. Whether or not the books bring up questions that should be answered and are not or are answered ridiculously vaguely, a rereading reminded me that I really love these books.  The characters, the conversations, the way Wolfe shows us what they feel in the way they speak.  One scene in particular that illustrates what I like so much about these books: Hound, Horn, and Pig are sitting in the ruins of Blood's villa.  Not only is the atmosphere soaked in the memories that we have from the Long Sun, but just listening to the characters talk to each other-- I love it.  Hound is so solid, a simple, good man.  Silk is showing through in everything Horn says.  And even Pig's dialect doesn't bother me.  It's a riddle trying to figure out what he says, but it adds weight somehow.  Maybe that doesn't make sense, but I didn't come out and say it as firmly as I should have earlier when all the discussion as to good/bad book was going around.  The Short Sun, IMO, deserves to stand in the ranks with Long Sun and New Sun.
     Okay, I KNOW this has been covered before, but again, just voicing my own thoughts.  Fel free to skip this whole paragraph.  When did Horn become Silk?  I think it was determined pretty surely that of course Horn is dead in the lander on Green and somehow his spirit is in Silk in the Whorl, sort of.  But it really struck me how Wolfe shows this transition in his writing, something that I think I missed in my first reading.  In In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl, I LIKE the narrator.  I really like him.  On Blue's Waters, I didn't.  Horn bugged me.  He was whiny and unfaithful and hated his son for what I still don't think was any good reason.  (This is still one of my biggest unanswered questions in the books: why does Horn hate Sinew so much?)  But after a bit through In Green's Jungles, I like the narrator. He's a good guy.  He doesn't just whine about trying to be a good guy; he is.  (And yes, this is the same good guy that's in Gaon in OBW, but I don't think we spend enough time with him there to really know him)  Even though he thinks he's Horn, anyone that's read the Long Sun and admires Silk as much as I do, sees the change.  Okay, this is probably very elementary to all you, but I caught it the second time though and enjoyed it.  Maybe that's what makes the difference.  The first time, I read each book as it came out.  The second time I read them all together, and they seem to flow much better.  Go figure.  
     Anyway, this is my longest post to the list so far and I'm sure everything I've said is old news to you guys.  But there it is.  

-Steve  

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002 17:45:32 +0000

I'm a bit behind where Stephen is -- partly because I have so much
else to read (yes, Kevin, the reviews are coming, and soon); I'm 
about halfway through rereading IGJ and would strongly confirm &
agree with his opinion that these are really very good books, 
especially when read as a whole rather than spaced several months 
apart.

Also I have to agree with Stephen that there is a strong and 
recognizeable break in the personality of the Narrator from OBW to 
IGJ -- the former took me almost two weeks to reread; the latter I 
am almost racing through (well, for me these days) & have read half 
of it in four days. 

I'm simply not convinced of Marc's overarching tree theory at this 
point, and doubt that I will come away convinced from the whole. 
There's clearly something weird going on with the trees, but for
them to "be" the Neighbors, just doesn't work with what I'm seeing.
Nor does it appear to me that Horn dies in the pit: yes, Seawrack
thinks he has, but her experience of life and death on land is 
very narrow; something comatose in the ocean might as well be
dead, because it will be, as she puts it, food. The bigger 
carnivores just won't wait for brain activity to stop, you know?

While I'm not 100% sure of (Marc's?) "Horn goes into Babbie at 
the end of OBW" theory, it does explain a great deal, and I'm 
definitely wanting to favor it. Right from the beginning of IGJ, 
the Narrator starts talking with a lot more of Silk's speech 
patterns (which, though not as, ah, _blatant_ as Pig's, are 
nonetheless recognizeable and distinctive). I see no other 
specific point at which this very clear change is likely to have 
taken place.

The question is -- who writes the passage where the transition 
actually seems to take place? I offer this semi-analysis.

Silk, grieving for Hyacinth, is "dying in spirit." Despite the
repeated attempts to say he is committing suicide, I find this
untenable; the Neighbor makes it clear that they are moving Horn
into a healthy body, and it's well-established that gashing your
arms with a knife is standard mourning practice in Viron. Silk 
is either replaced or totally submerged by Horn. Later, the bit 
of Silk which came from Silk-in-Pas and resides in Pig is 
transferred to the Silk body that contains Horn. This is small
and weak, so to say, but it's there and begins to affect the
Narrator's behavior to the extent that he can make _some_ Silk-
like decisions while he is the Rajan of Gaon.

Now, the Outsider, for His own reasons which we need not know 
("That's ineffability for you," observes Crowley), decides to 
straighten out the mess, and removes Horn -- probably to Babbie's 
body, which explains a great deal about Babbie's appearance and
behavior on Urth. Note that every other case of something that
is not human but becomes [more] human during the "astral travel"
sequences is in fact carrying human soul: Oreb carrying (a piece
of) Scylla, the various inhumi carrying (bits of) soul taken from 
their human victims. I think there's a strong implication that
Babbie, too, has somehow acquired human soul. OTOH, this leaves
begging Seawrack's comments that he is already a "person" near the
end of OBW ...

The rather confused state of the final paragraphs of OBW, then,
seem to me to reflect the state of the Silk persona, which has
been pretty much submerged up to this point, just influencing the
Narrator but allowing Horn to remain in control. This has just
changed. The Silk persona really does not know what has happened 
(though he recognizes it as something 'good') and is trying to 
reassemble himself with his formerly-dominant personality gone. 
He stumbles through the kinder, gentler forest of Blue and comes
upon Brother and Sister, spends some time with them, and when he
is more "together" moves on, meeting Cugino and getting the staff.

The mystery now is, why he still denies that he is Silk. Is it 
because the only way he can understand the removal of the Horn
persona is that it has died? That he cannot accept the guilt of
living at the expense of Horn's death? Perhaps. Or perhaps he,
submerged in Horn so long, is in the habit of thinking he is Horn; 
or perhaps, simply, that to acknowledge that he is Silk means 
acknowledging that Hyacinth is gone. 

Or something else I haven't thought of. (I'll be watching the
transition from IGJ to RTTW very carefully. I suspect that
there is another major developmental step in that interstice.)

Some other bits...

Re: Stephen's "Why does Horn hate Sinew so much?" That's a darn 
good question. It does, however, provide more fodder for the idea 
that Silk becomes the dominant personality of the Narrator 
somewhere around the break between the two volumes. In OBW, when 
the Narrator speaks of the relationship between himself and Sinew, 
he is almost venomous; he makes it clear that he's done all he can 
and the trouble between them is Sinew's fault. This element seems 
to me entirely missing from the second volume. 

Re: the Narrator as inhumu. While the "Oreb alarm" seems to 
militate against it, there are two factors to consider that make
this bit of evidence somewhat more ambiguous. First, there is 
Oreb's long disappearance after the Narrator is brought back to 
Blue by the Gaonese, leading me to think that he is in some way 
disturbed by whatever the Narrator is or has become ... though
of course this probably has more to do with the scrambled souls
than anything else. When he returns, he seems to have decided 
that, yes, this is Silk after all.

Second, Oreb seems capable of recognizing that (say) Fava has 
become a 'good girl' rather than a 'bad thing, thing fly.' An 
inhumu with Silk's personality might well be a 'good Silk' to 
him. (Of course, all of this ignores the question of what effect 
Scylla has on Oreb's ability to detect the presence of 'bad things.')

Nonetheless and notwithstanding ... I don't really think that the
Narrator is an inhumu. The strongest bit of evidence, his general
lack of appetite, is established fairly clearly in Silk in _Long
Sun_; he only seems to get really hungry when he hasn't eaten in 
a day or longer. This tendency would likely increase with age.
(I suspect that his genegineered body simply has a tremendously
efficient metabolism.)

sad experience teaches me

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2002 12:37:04 +0000

>(I suspect that his genegineered body simply has a tremendously

Quite possible - added extras along with the inspirational ability.  But
it's unnecessary.  "Hunger" for those of us in the developed world is more
a matter of habit. It's not that difficult to become acustomed to a far
small intake and operate quite well on it.

Matthew

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From: Robert Borski <rborski at charter.net>
Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2002 19:48:10 +0000

The bug-eyed one having writ:

> is either replaced or totally submerged by Horn.

I don't like the suicide theory either (can't see Silk committing
selbstmord, it being too heinous a sin in Wolfe's Catholicism), but like
the-slash-and-gash-boohoo-theory even less. This is because, if memory
serves me right, there's no mention of the practice anywhere in the Short
Sun books. Thus the mystery of Silk's death--the how and the why and under
what circumstances he receives his lethal wounds--cannot be resolved by
simply reading SS alone. This seems most churlish and meanspirited of the
author, and hardly likely to win him new readers, especially if Soleil Bref
is their first encounter with the Sun books; whereas if the answer can be
gleaned without resort to a completely different series (as I believe all
the central questions of SS can and must be), it's a much tidier,
well-crafted, and aesthetically-pleasing book.

Robert Borski

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