{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3342", "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": 3342, "subject": "Silkicide", "messages": 7, "voices": 5, "first": "2002-07-11T20:08:43+00:00", "last": "2002-07-13T05:24:28+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jason Ingram", "address": "j_ingram at mac.com" }, "date": "2002-07-11T20:08:43+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Silkicide", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I read Silk's wounds as being self-inflicted; but it seems to me that an \nactual suicide attempt by Silk would have been successful. I felt that \nhe gashed himself in some sort of mourning frenzy, which was consistent \nwith a substantial self-destructive urge and the loss of a will to live.\n\nAt one point the narrator remembers (or is reported to have remembered) \nthat, shortly after his transfer to the whorl, he felt a sort of horror \nfor a knife that he was holding and cast it away. I interpreted this \nemotion as circumstantial evidence that the knife had been used against \nSilk.\n\nSepia" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thursday, July 11, 2002, at 09:17 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nStephen Case: you have presented the best & most coherent argument\nfor the \"Silk commits suicide theory\" I have ever encountered --\nothers may have expressed it before, but if they did it well enough\nfor me to understand, I must have missed it (which is quite possible;\nI skim a lot of email when I'm busy)." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-07-11T22:01:41+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Silkicide", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He-who-must-forever-be-in-Kansas writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At one point the narrator remembers (or is reported to have \nremembered) that, shortly after his transfer to the whorl,\nhe felt a sort of horror for a knife that he was holding\nand cast it away. I interpreted this emotion as\ncircumstantial evidence that the knife had been used\nagainst Silk." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes; I reread that passage last night. I don't think there is\nany real doubt that his arm wounds are self-inflicted; the\nonly serious question is whether they are mourning gashes,\nas we know to be practiced in Viron, or an attempt at self-\nslaughter. \n\nIn favor of suicide is the observation that some of the wounds \nare quite deep; against it is the very word \"some -- it implies \na frenzied hacking and not a concerted attempt to sever the \narteries.\n\nI'm not sure whether we _can_ know whether Silk was attempting \nsuicide; I'm watching for any further clues as I read. \n\nAlso of note: throughout his parts of the text, beginning in\nOBW, the Narrator makes occasional slips of the tongue and pen\nwhich indicate the presence of the Silk persona -- for example,\nreferring to his sons, Hide and Horn; or talking about Nettle\nbut using the word \"Hyacinth.\" Anyway, the point here is that\nhe begins to make these slips almost immediately after the\ntransference of the Horn persona to the Silk body. \n\n... unfortunately, this being the \"reconstructed from his\nwords\" part written by the \"redactors,\" we can't know if they\nare reporting what he has actually said or inserting them for\n\"consistency.\" There are places in the main narrative when he\nis recording his own conversations and reports such slips with\nno comment, and so one might suppose that he reported similarly \nwhen talking to the kids about what happened on the _Whorl_; \ncontrariwise, one might suppose that, in reconstructing the\nevents on the _Whorl_ from (there memories of) his comments on\nthem, they inserted such slips so as to be consistent with the\nprimary narrative. Indeed, if one wants to be paranoid enough\nabout it, one can even suppose that they inserted _all_ such\nslips, because the Narrator (striving to preserve his belief\nin himself as Horn) would certainly not have kept them.\n\nAll of which, again, brings me to something I said months \nago: that one of the glories and annoyances of the \"Short Sun\" \nbooks is that our attempts to get from them to \"what actually\nhappened\" is not a bad analogy to attempts to tease out the\n\"historical Jesus\" or the \"authentic kerygma\" from the \nreceived Gospels...\n\nJohn Barleycorn must die" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jason Ingram", "address": "j_ingram at mac.com" }, "date": "2002-07-12T00:49:48+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Silkicide", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Blattid, I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore . . ." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Blattid wrote:\nYes; I reread that passage last night. I don't think there is\nany real doubt that his arm wounds are self-inflicted; the\nonly serious question is whether they are mourning gashes,\nas we know to be practiced in Viron, or an attempt at self-\nslaughter." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm not sure whether we _can_ know whether Silk was attempting\nsuicide; I'm watching for any further clues as I read." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree that the evidence is ambiguous. I read the wounds as \nself-inflicted, amounting to more than ritual gashes but less than an \nintentional suicide attempt. I half agree with Nutria, who writes:\n\n\"It seems to me that Silk's throwing away a knife might be a knife he \nused in a vain attempt to ward off attackers, not one he used to inflict \nwounds on himself. The Neighbor says Silk's body is okay. It seems to me \nthat if he had been trying for suicide, he would have succeeded. But I \nmay be wrong.\"\n\nAn excess of emotion might have led Silk to harm himself. One \npossibility I wanted to check when I re-read is whether Pig might have \nbeen involved in hyacinth's death. Other than that I'm not sure who the \nattackers would have been. Is there textual evidence?\n\nRegarding the slips of self-naming mentioned: when I was scanning \nthrough some of the books (incidentally, looking for textual evidence \nthat Silk gave blood to inhumi. I was unable to find anything \nconvincing--he offers some to Krait as the latter is dying--IGJ p. 81 \nTor hardcover-- and wishes he had thought to give some to Jahlee to \nawaken her. However, my search didn't amount to a perusal) I came \nacross a passage where the narrator notices that he had made a mistake, \nand talks about why he didn't correct it. I was also led to think that \nthe narrator would be worried about others reading his journal, which \nmight go far to account for Wolfe's intentional indirection. The \npassage that triggered that thought was one where the narrator writes \nthat he won't say where he hid his Azoth . . . I'll see if I can locate \nthe precise passages again should there be interest.\n\nSepia" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-07-13T05:24:28+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Silkicide", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message -----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "From: \"Jason Ingram\" \nYes; I reread that passage last night. I don't think there is\nany real doubt that his arm wounds are self-inflicted; the\nonly serious question is whether they are mourning gashes,\nas we know to be practiced in Viron, or an attempt at self-\nslaughter." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Having read this passage several times, I believe that Wolfe meant the\nambiguity and that it therefore cannot be resolved by us.\n\nOne point, however, is that Silk is a practiced butcher and if he meant to\nkill himself would have probably done so easily and efficiently.\n\n\n hartshorn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-07-12T15:41:17+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Silkicide", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He-who-adds-tone-to-this-list writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Blattid, I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore . . ." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sorry, I had that backwards. Kansas is in sepia.\n\n[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "An excess of emotion might have led Silk to harm himself. One \npossibility I wanted to check when I re-read is whether Pig \nmight have been involved in hyacinth's death. Other than that\nI'm not sure who the attackers would have been. Is there\ntextual evidence?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Pig mentions that he went to Silk's place and didn't find him \nthere. I regard this as evidence that he didn't kill Hyacinth \n-- and besides, I don't think his rider would have permitted it.\n\nIf one wanted to say someone had killed Hyacinth, one could \nsuppose it was the Gaonese led by Hari Mau, who came out to\nEndroad looking for Silk and didn't find him; however, I would\nbe inclined to suspect that they didn't find him because they\narrived after Horn's spirit entered Silk's body and the newly\nformed Narrator left the building. At this point, I think \nHyacinth just died, and Silk gashes himself in grief." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-07-12T23:28:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silkicide", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "While we have pondered \"did he or didn't he?\" over years past, and will do\nso into the future, still I think we can all agree that it is ambiguous.\n\nLikewise I'm reasonably sure that we can all agree that we are in the\nbleachers of the arena, and the referees made the call: they said the words\n(talk of combining two persons), they backed it up with actions (taking out\nthe non-corporeal parts of Silk aged 40-something; transferring in Horn's\nnon-corporeal parts; the download from Mainframe of Silk-23 later on may\nhave been their doing or not, if it happened, that is).\n\nThe umpires made their call. This is not ambiguous.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "William Ansley", "address": "wansley at warwick.net" }, "date": "2002-07-13T01:08:43+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Silkicide", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 4:28 PM -0700 7/12/02, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\nWhile we have pondered \"did he or didn't he?\" over years past, and will do\nso into the future, still I think we can all agree that it is ambiguous." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "So far I'm with you, yes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Likewise I'm reasonably sure that we can all agree that we are in the\nbleachers of the arena, and the referees made the call: they said the words\n(talk of combining two persons), they backed it up with actions (taking out\nthe non-corporeal parts of Silk aged 40-something; transferring in Horn's\nnon-corporeal parts; the download from Mainframe of Silk-23 later on may\nhave been their doing or not, if it happened, that is).\n\nThe umpires made their call. This is not ambiguous." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now you've lost me. Who are the referees/umpires? And why Silk-*23*? \nI don't mean to be irritating, but I could use some clarification." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "William Ansley\n\n-- " } ] } ] }