Subject: Re: (urth) Silkicide

From: Jason Ingram <j_ingram at mac.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 20:08:43 +0000

I read Silk's wounds as being self-inflicted; but it seems to me that an 
actual suicide attempt by Silk would have been successful.  I felt that 
he gashed himself in some sort of mourning frenzy, which was consistent 
with a substantial self-destructive urge and the loss of a will to live.

At one point the narrator remembers (or is reported to have remembered) 
that, shortly after his transfer to the whorl, he felt a sort of horror 
for a knife that he was holding and cast it away.  I interpreted this 
emotion as circumstantial evidence that the knife had been used against 
Silk.

Sepia

On Thursday, July 11, 2002, at 09:17 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> Stephen Case: you have presented the best & most coherent argument
> for the "Silk commits suicide theory" I have ever encountered --
> others may have expressed it before, but if they did it well enough
> for me to understand, I must have missed it (which is quite possible;
> I skim a lot of email when I'm busy).

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 22:01:41 +0000

He-who-must-forever-be-in-Kansas writes:

> At one point the narrator remembers (or is reported to have 
> remembered) that, shortly after his transfer to the whorl,
> he felt a sort of horror for a knife that he was holding
> and cast it away.  I interpreted this emotion as
> circumstantial evidence that the knife had been used
> against Silk.

Yes; I reread that passage last night. I don't think there is
any real doubt that his arm wounds are self-inflicted; the
only serious question is whether they are mourning gashes,
as we know to be practiced in Viron, or an attempt at self-
slaughter. 

In favor of suicide is the observation that some of the wounds 
are quite deep; against it is the very word "some -- it implies 
a frenzied hacking and not a concerted attempt to sever the 
arteries.

I'm not sure whether we _can_ know whether Silk was attempting 
suicide; I'm watching for any further clues as I read. 

Also of note: throughout his parts of the text, beginning in
OBW, the Narrator makes occasional slips of the tongue and pen
which indicate the presence of the Silk persona -- for example,
referring to his sons, Hide and Horn; or talking about Nettle
but using the word "Hyacinth." Anyway, the point here is that
he begins to make these slips almost immediately after the
transference of the Horn persona to the Silk body. 

... unfortunately, this being the "reconstructed from his
words" part written by the "redactors," we can't know if they
are reporting what he has actually said or inserting them for
"consistency." There are places in the main narrative when he
is recording his own conversations and reports such slips with
no comment, and so one might suppose that he reported similarly 
when talking to the kids about what happened on the _Whorl_; 
contrariwise, one might suppose that, in reconstructing the
events on the _Whorl_ from (there memories of) his comments on
them, they inserted such slips so as to be consistent with the
primary narrative. Indeed, if one wants to be paranoid enough
about it, one can even suppose that they inserted _all_ such
slips, because the Narrator (striving to preserve his belief
in himself as Horn) would certainly not have kept them.

All of which, again, brings me to something I said months 
ago: that one of the glories and annoyances of the "Short Sun" 
books is that our attempts to get from them to "what actually
happened" is not a bad analogy to attempts to tease out the
"historical Jesus" or the "authentic kerygma" from the 
received Gospels...

John Barleycorn must die

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From: Jason Ingram <j_ingram at mac.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 00:49:48 +0000

Blattid, I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore . . .

> as we know to be practiced in Viron, or an attempt at self-
[...]
> suicide; I'm watching for any further clues as I read.

I agree that the evidence is ambiguous.  I read the wounds as 
self-inflicted, amounting to more than ritual gashes but less than an 
intentional suicide attempt.  I half agree with Nutria, who writes:

"It seems to me that Silk's throwing away a knife might be a knife he 
used in a vain attempt to ward off attackers, not one he used to inflict 
wounds on himself. The Neighbor says Silk's body is okay. It seems to me 
that if he had been trying for suicide, he would have succeeded. But I 
may be wrong."

An excess of emotion might have led Silk to harm himself.  One 
possibility I wanted to check when I re-read is whether Pig might have 
been involved in hyacinth's death.  Other than that I'm not sure who the 
attackers would have been.  Is there textual evidence?

Regarding the slips of self-naming mentioned: when I was scanning 
through some of the books (incidentally, looking for textual evidence 
that Silk gave blood to inhumi.  I was unable to find anything 
convincing--he offers some to Krait as the latter is dying--IGJ p. 81 
Tor hardcover-- and wishes he had thought to give some to Jahlee to 
awaken her.  However, my search didn't amount to a perusal) I came 
across a passage where the narrator notices that he had made a mistake, 
and talks about why he didn't correct it.  I was also led to think that 
the narrator would be worried about others reading his journal, which 
might go far to account for Wolfe's intentional indirection.  The 
passage that triggered that thought was one where the narrator writes 
that he won't say where he hid his Azoth . . . I'll see if I can locate 
the precise passages again should there be interest.

Sepia

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 05:24:28 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason Ingram" <j_ingram at mac.com>
> > as we know to be practiced in Viron, or an attempt at self-

Having read this passage several times, I believe that Wolfe meant the
ambiguity and that it therefore cannot be resolved by us.

One point, however, is that Silk is a practiced butcher and if he meant to
kill himself would have probably done so easily and efficiently.

    hartshorn

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 15:41:17 +0000

> Blattid, I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore . . .

Sorry, I had that backwards. Kansas is in sepia.

[...]

> possibility I wanted to check when I re-read is whether Pig 
> might have been involved in hyacinth's death.  Other than that
> I'm not sure who the attackers would have been.  Is there
> textual evidence?

Pig mentions that he went to Silk's place and didn't find him 
there. I regard this as evidence that he didn't kill Hyacinth 
-- and besides, I don't think his rider would have permitted it.

If one wanted to say someone had killed Hyacinth, one could 
suppose it was the Gaonese led by Hari Mau, who came out to
Endroad looking for Silk and didn't find him; however, I would
be inclined to suspect that they didn't find him because they
arrived after Horn's spirit entered Silk's body and the newly
formed Narrator left the building. At this point, I think 
Hyacinth just died, and Silk gashes himself in grief.

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 23:28:29 +0000

While we have pondered "did he or didn't he?" over years past, and will do
so into the future, still I think we can all agree that it is ambiguous.

Likewise I'm reasonably sure that we can all agree that we are in the
bleachers of the arena, and the referees made the call: they said the words
(talk of combining two persons), they backed it up with actions (taking out
the non-corporeal parts of Silk aged 40-something; transferring in Horn's
non-corporeal parts; the download from Mainframe of Silk-23 later on may
have been their doing or not, if it happened, that is).

The umpires made their call.  This is not ambiguous.

=mantis=

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From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 01:08:43 +0000

>so into the future, still I think we can all agree that it is ambiguous.

So far I'm with you, yes.

>The umpires made their call.  This is not ambiguous.

Now you've lost me. Who are the referees/umpires? And why Silk-*23*? 
I don't mean to be irritating, but I could use some clarification.
-- 

William Ansley

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