{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3391", "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": 3391, "subject": "Doris", "messages": 7, "voices": 5, "first": "2002-08-01T19:54:02+00:00", "last": "2002-08-03T08:46:33+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Robert Borski", "address": "rborski at charter.net" }, "date": "2002-08-01T19:54:02+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Doris", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Blattid having objected to my certitude about the Weer-Gold parentage of\nDoris:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Cool ... One thing, though ... Robert, you refer to Doris as\n\"almost certainly\" the daughter of Den Weer and Sherry Gold.\nPerhaps I've missed (or simply forgotten) something in the\npast coinscriptions on PEACE, but ... how does this, which\nseems to-me-here-now highly conjectural, reach the point of\nalmost certainty?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In my original draft of \"The Devil His Due\" I included a lot of footnotes,\nbut later dropped them on subsequent rewrites. It was also here that I\nattempted to elaborate why I thought the evidence was strong that\nDoris-the-carnie was Den Weer's daughter by Sherry Gold. Let me now attempt\nto reprise those notes for you.\n\nI believe the best evidence that Doris is Den's daughter can be found in the\nletter written to Weer by Charlie Turner, canis carnivalis.\n\nFor starters, there's Charlie's rather upfront reason for writing, which he\nstates immediately after his odd reading predilections (Dickens, Jane\nAusten, Stendhal, Proust, but no Albert Payson Terhune): \"The reason I am\nwriting to you is because of some of the people we talked about that night\nwhen you had me to dinner.\" Though we do not know it yet, he is specifically\nwriting to tell Weer that Doris--a homeless girl whose tale roughly reprises\nthat of Cinderella--has died. Moreover, as we will also soon learn, Den\nseems to have expressed some early interest in Doris during his original\nget-together with Charlie. Writes the dog-boy: \"You remember that when I was\nat your place we talked about Doris and had fun thinking about what could\nhappen to her that could be good.\" But whysoever would Den be interested at\nall in the life of this poor girl or imagining how it could be better? This\nseems totally alien to the Den Weer we come to know in PEACE; if on the\nother hand Doris is his daughter, that would go a long way to explain his\ninterest.\n\nSecondarily, there is the mysterious visitation of an unidentified woman\nwhen Mrs. Mason's little tit-and-raree show hits Gladewater, Texas. Remarks\nCharlie: \"A lady came looking for Doris there--a woman about fifty, maybe,\ndressed nice the way country people dress.\" Doris will later return \"dressed\nnice in new clothes from Sears, some of them with their labels still on.\"\nEthel Fishman, the snake charmer, talks to Doris and learns that her\nbenefactress is \"an old girl friend of Mr. M.'s [supposedly her father], and\nwhen he died--this is what the lady told Doris, but I don't know any reason\nnot to think it's true--he wrote her and said how he was turning his\ndaughter over to Mrs. M., and asked the woman to check up on her if the show\never got close to Kilgore, which was where she lived.\"\n\nI would now like to suggest to you that this mysterious woman is none other\nthan Margaret Lorn Price of the Murchison clan. You may see this as\nliterally or typologically so, depending on your druthers--the same way Mr.\nTilly may or may not be Julius T. Smart. But for me it works either way.\n\nMargie, an old girlfriend, would now be about fifty, and as a Christian\nwoman might be a little more forgiving of Den's sexual escapades than\nothers. Plus Doris might represent for her the child she and Den never had.\n\nJust as Em Lorn, her mother, wished to sell the Chinese egg so she could buy\na sewing machine and make clothes for the poor, Margie clothes poor\ntatterdemalion Doris.\n\nMargie is a farm girl (Den will later describe the Murchisons--Margie's\nrelatives on her mother's side--as \"Country people\"), and when Den as a boy\nvisits the Lorn farm, he contrasts their clothes with those of his aunt \"in\nher beautiful clothes.\"\n\nAt fifty, Margie's children by her husband Mr. Price may well be grown and\ngone from the nest. It seems likely that as an only child she would have\ninherited her parents' farm (if they kept it, that is, and didn't return to\nmissionary work), but keep in mind Louis Gold's observation about how\n\"Country families don't stay in the country these days,\" as well as the old\npotato farmer's remarks about the demise of the family farm. Is it possible\nthat in her later years Margie Lorn (or her typological equivalent) moved on\nto do charitable work of her own, heading down \"close to Kilgore?\"\n\nBut why of all places here?\n\nWell, considering that Texas is Gene Wolfe's native state (and I'm surprised\nLone Star Roy didn't pick up on this), surely he's aware that just down the\nroad from Kilgore (in fact they share the same latitude, being separated by\nonly 1ยบ of longitude) is a small town with the serendipitous name of\nMurchison.\n\nCould it be here--home in a sense--that Den's long lost love at last finds\npeace?\n\nRobert Borski" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-08-01T21:33:32+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Doris", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Blattid having objected to my certitude about the Weer-Gold \nparentage of Doris:" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Whoa. I didn't object, I questioned, and was very careful to\nqualify my statement as \"to-me-here-now\":" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Perhaps I've missed (or simply forgotten) something in the\npast coinscriptions on PEACE, but ... how does this, which\nseems to-me-here-now highly conjectural, reach the point of\nalmost certainty?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This isn't saying \"you shouldn't be so certain\" -- it's asking\n\"how did you become so certain?\"\n\nWhich you've explained. It still seems like a lot of conjecture\nto-me-here-now, but I'll keep it in mind nextime I reread PEACE,\nbecause if it's true it might explain a great deal. What you've \ndone (for me) is to make this conjecture plausible, but I'll be\nlooking for something concrete, some kind of, well, smoking gun.\n\nAt any rate, it's certainly a well-woven web. Me 'at's off.\n\noverture, hit the lights" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-08-02T16:02:12+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Doris", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Robert wrote:\nIn my original draft of \"The Devil His Due\" I included a lot of footnotes,\nbut later dropped them on subsequent rewrites. It was also here that I\nattempted to elaborate why I thought the evidence was strong that\nDoris-the-carnie was Den Weer's daughter by Sherry Gold." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I know I've refuted this idea before, but maybe it was just to mantis.\n\nDen was five years old when the fake deerskin was painted, nine during the\nYear of the Egg Hunt. He met both Lois and Sherry during the Gold Hunt year.\nSherry was sixteen when he met her. He was rich at fifty, poor at forty. The\nyears these events took place in can be disputed, but not the core \"facts\".\n\nLois stated that the fake deerskin treaty had been painted \"about\" forty\nyears before she met Weer, and he concurred. That makes him about forty-five\nat the time of the Gold Hunt, when Sherry was sixteen. Den, while president,\nstarted to tell the Tilly tale to Bill Batton \"thirty-five or forty years\"\nafter the YEH, which would make him age 44-49. Taken together, those two\nstatements make it clear that Den became president when aged 45-49.\n\nWeer's dialogue with Batton, therefore, took place early in his presidency.\nThe visits of Bill Batton, Charlie Turner, and Eleanor Bold Porter all\nhappened on the same day. The first line of Charlie's letter to Weer\nindicates that it was written as a \"thank you\" for his recent visit with\nWeer, at which time they discussed Doris over dinner. Internal evidence\nindicates that the events described in the letter took place not too long\nafter Charlie's visit, including the death of Doris. Doris was a minor, but\npast the age of puberty. I would guess her age to be about 15-16.\n\nIf Weer met the 3 visitors mentioned above within a few years of meeting\nSherry, then any hypothetical child he might have fathered on her couldn't\nbe much more than four years old. Doris cannot possibly be the child of Weer\nand Sherry.\n\nIf Weer fathered Doris, then he would have to have done so when he was in\nhis mid thirties, a decade of his life we know nothing about. And Doris died\nwhile Weer was president, yet he was still poor at forty. So, if Weer\nfathered Doris, Sherry can't be the mother.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2002-08-02T19:01:17+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Doris", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "on 8/1/02 2:54 PM, Robert Borski at rborski at charter.net wrote:\n\nBlattid says that your explanation makes the Doris-is-Weer's-daughter theory\nplausible to him, but it doesn't to me. Your major evidence is Weer's\ninterest in Doris." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Writes the dog-boy: \"You remember that when I was\nat your place we talked about Doris and had fun thinking about what could\nhappen to her that could be good.\" But whysoever would Den be interested at\nall in the life of this poor girl or imagining how it could be better? This\nseems totally alien to the Den Weer we come to know in PEACE; if on the\nother hand Doris is his daughter, that would go a long way to explain his\ninterest." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On the contrary, it would make his behavior incomprehensible. According to\nyour theory, he learned, at dinner with Charlie, that his daughter was being\nhorribly abused, and did nothing except make up fairy-tale endings for her;\nand this was apparently \"fun.\" He can't have shown much concern for Doris,\nin any case, or Charlie wouldn't have broken the news of Doris's death the\nway he does; for one thing, Charlie gives no indication of thinking that\nWeer might be sad over her death. And indeed, Weer shows no sign of being\nsad over the \"news.\" (Of course, since this is something he's\nreconstructing in his mind, he already knows Doris is dead, but still there\nshould be some sign of emotion.) If Doris really was Weer's daughter, then\nWeer is incredibly cold-hearted, and his interest in Doris is more likely to\nstem from sadism than concern, something which doesn't fit how Weer is\nportrayed.\n\nOne could argue that Weer pretended unconcern before Charlie to hide the\nfact that Doris was his daughter, and secretly arranged for the woman from\nKilgore to help her. But this isn't plausible, either. Why channel help\nthrough the woman from Kilgore, who might never find Doris, and not through\nCharlie who sees her every day? He wouldn't have to tell him she was his\ndaughter. And after what Charlie told him at dinner, buying new clothes for\nDoris is a pathetically inadequate gesture. If Weer were really concerned,\nhe could and would have done much more.\n\n(Of course, if Weer really is the devil, then that would explain everything;\nbut I don't believe that either.)\n\nAs for the assertion that the mysterious woman who buys Doris clothes is\n\"literally or typologically\" Margaret Lorn Price, the only shred of\n\"evidence\" for her being literally Margaret is her living near a town with\nthe same name as Margaret's great-grandmother. And her being\n\"typologically\" Margaret would do nothing to show that Doris was Weer's\ndaughter.\n\nWhy, then, does Weer take an interest in Doris? I suggest that Doris\ndoesn't exist. Charlie made up her sad tale to entertain Weer (he seems to\nhave ambitions of being a writer; at least he compares himself to Dickens).\nDoris is too put-upon, and her story parallels Cinderella's too closely, to\nbe believable.\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-08-02T19:20:22+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Doris", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Roy wrote against the notion of Doris-as-daughter-of-Sherry-Gold.\n\nSo Roy, remind me: is it still possible that Doris is Sherry Gold herself?\nWhoops, no -- I guess not, since you are taking the Doris story as being\nboth real and in real time.\n\nIn addition there is the complicated linkage of Sherry's death and Weer's\nstroke. If Doris = Sherry, then the stroke would have been before Weer\nheard the story about Doris's death from Charlie Turner, and this seems\nquite early on in Den's presidency (whereas evidence of the stroke's\naftermath suggests it was later in the presidency).\n\nOkay, new approach: Doris attracts Weer because he sees in her the same\nthing he saw in Lois, i.e., Olivia. She is not his daughter, she is not\nrelated to him by blood, it is that Wolfe \"reincarnation\" buzz thing.\n\nIf this holds up, we might expect Doris's story to match up with the\nOlivia/Lois pattern (aside from just the fairy tale aspects of both\nOlivia's \"Suitors\" and Doris's \"Cinder-ella\"). How do the years hold up?\nWell, Olivia died after Lois was born, right? (25 years ago, and we think\nLois is 35?) So if we can accept the \"Olivia\" in Lois, we can go along\nwith the same in Doris.\n\nThis might be something, because it would mean that Weer loses Olivia,\nchases after Lois-as-Olivia, sees the photo of Doris-as-Olivia, and then,\nin the end of the book, finally hears Olivia's voice again (bringing\nclosure to this thread).\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Robert Borski", "address": "rborski at charter.net" }, "date": "2002-08-03T00:34:54+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Doris", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Deep in the heart of Texas, with his calendar and stopwatch in hand, Roy L.\nhas written:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The visits of Bill Batton, Charlie Turner, and Eleanor Bold Porter all\nhappened on the same day." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't agree with this. They may _seem_ to take place on the same day, but\nalso on that same day we see Den's secretary, Miss Birkhead, being healthy\nenough to report to work at one stage, sick enough a short time later so she\nhas to leave and be replaced by Miss Hadow (neither secretary apparently\ncommunicating this to the man they work for), then still later on the same\nday a notice is posted that Helen Birkhead Tyler has died and we learn that\nshe is neither single nor childless, and moreover that she has been A. D.\nWeer's \"long-time secretary.\" According to information presented in the\nPeace Indexicon, however, Miss Birkhead was originally Julius Smart's\nsecretary, and old uncle Julius has only recently died, leaving the factory\nto his nephew--yet Miss Birkhead is Den's \"long-time\" secretary? I find it\nmuch more likely to assume that he inherited her with the president position\nrather than think Julius Smart shuffled her off to him much earlier. (Do we\nknow at what previous stage in his career Den was assigned to a position\nwhere he would even need a secretary?) Others have offered their\ninterpretatations of the Birkhead anomaly, but I believe it represents a\nconflation of events over years, seen over the trajectory of Miss Birkhead's\nlife: single at one stage, married and twice bearing children (surely, she\nwould have required maternity leave), and finally dying. As others have\nnoticed, this merging of different temporal strata takes place throughout\nPEACE (another good example of this is when Den first meets Sherry Gold and\nasks to be excused for not rising because he suffers from stroke-induced\npartial paralysis--yet the cerebrovascular event in question is some 15\nyears or so in the future) and probably represents the workings of a\ndisordered mind. Therefore attempting to wrest a tried-and-true chronology\nfrom such flawed data is not only extremely precarious in my opinion, but\nsubject to extreme individual interpretation.\n\nIf Charlie Turner's visit and letter reception take place close to the day\non which long-time secretary Helen Birkhead Tyler actually dies, this might\nwell be later in A. D. Weer's presidency--perhaps even as late as a decade\nand a half after he couples with Sherry Gold, which would then allow him to\nhave a teenage daughter.\n\nRobert Borski" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-08-03T08:46:33+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Doris", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "mantis wrote:\nThis might be something, because it would mean that Weer loses Olivia,\nchases after Lois-as-Olivia, sees the photo of Doris-as-Olivia, and then,\nin the end of the book, finally hears Olivia's voice again (bringing\nclosure to this thread)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not to nit-pick, and I know we covered this before, but there was no photo\nof Doris. As I read it, the two sepia photos depict a total of three people.\nOne is the girlie picture of Candy, alone, that Charlie mentioned in the\nletter. She is the \"tramp\" Miss Hadow refers to, who looks like Carole\nLombard and has an old-fashioned hairdo. The other photo is of two men; one\nof them very tall (who is probably Tom Lavine), and a much shorter man\n(possibly J. T. Smart)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Robert B. quoted me and wrote:\nThe visits of Bill Batton, Charlie Turner, and Eleanor Bold Porter all\nhappened on the same day." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't agree with this. They may _seem_ to take place on the same day, but\nalso on that same day we see Den's secretary, Miss Birkhead, being healthy\nenough to report to work at one stage, sick enough a short time later so\nshe\nhas to leave and be replaced by Miss Hadow (neither secretary apparently\ncommunicating this to the man they work for), then still later on the same\nday a notice is posted that Helen Birkhead Tyler has died" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The day of the three visitors and the day Miss Birkhead died are two\ndifferent days at least ten years apart. As I noted before, the visit by\nBill Batton occurred early in Weer's presidency. Various comments he made\nindicate that it was his first visit to the plant: \"Nice office you have\nhere.\" (135); \"'That's your founder, isn't it?' Batton was looking at the\npicture above the bar at one side of the room. 'Formulated the original\nproduct and thought up the name? Good Brand name, by the way.'\" (136);\n\"\"Call me Bill. You know I'd expected I'd be drinking your juice when I was\nat your plant.\" (168).\n\nMiss Birkhead brought in coffee for both Weer and Batton, at which point she\nalso informed Weer that the hairy man was waiting to see him (168). It is\nBatton who ties the other two visitors to them all being present in Weer's\noffice on that particular day. \"Bill Batton has been scratching his head,\ncrossing and uncrossing his legs as he sits on the red leather couch beside\nthe bar in my office. 'What was that all about?' 'Mrs. Porter? You heard\nher--she wants to plant a tree on my grave when I'm gone.' [ . . .] 'And\nyou're going to have dinner with the hairy man?'\" (193). Weer is close to\nfifty years old at this time. (Margaret is also about fifty, as you pointed\nout, and she and Weer are the same age.)\n\nMiss Birkhead died on the same day that Dan French took the reporter on a\ntour of the plant, the same day he told Weer the Sidhe story (243). Weer was\nover sixty years old on that day, as he told Dan French: \"'Haven't you ever\nnoticed how many corporate presidents are in their sixties and seventies?'\nHe nodded. 'Those are men who couldn't possibly continue to work at any job\nrequiring concentration or endurance. I should know--I'm one of them\nmyself.'\" (233) (Page numbers are for the Berkley paperback.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and we learn that\nshe is neither single nor childless, and moreover that she has been A. D.\nWeer's \"long-time secretary.\" According to information presented in the\nPeace Indexicon, however, Miss Birkhead was originally Julius Smart's\nsecretary," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Correct. She had been Weer's secretary from the time he took over the plant\nto the day she died, something in excess of ten years.\n\nIn my reading, it just isn't possible for Doris to be the child of Weer and\nSherry; neither, to answer mantis's question, do I think Sherry = Doris. I'm\ninclined to agree with Adam that Doris doesn't exist.\n\n-Roy" } ] } ] }