Subject: (urth) Doris

From: Robert Borski <rborski at charter.net>
Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002 19:54:02 +0000

Blattid having objected to my certitude about the Weer-Gold parentage of
Doris:

> Cool ... One thing, though ... Robert, you refer to Doris as
> "almost certainly" the daughter of Den Weer and Sherry Gold.
> Perhaps I've missed (or simply forgotten) something in the
> past coinscriptions on PEACE, but ... how does this, which
> seems to-me-here-now highly conjectural, reach the point of
> almost certainty?

In my original draft of "The Devil His Due" I included a lot of footnotes,
but later dropped them on subsequent rewrites. It was also here that I
attempted to elaborate why I thought the evidence was strong that
Doris-the-carnie was Den Weer's daughter by Sherry Gold. Let me now attempt
to reprise those notes for you.

I believe the best evidence that Doris is Den's daughter can be found in the
letter written to Weer by Charlie Turner, canis carnivalis.

For starters, there's Charlie's rather upfront reason for writing, which he
states immediately after his odd reading predilections (Dickens, Jane
Austen, Stendhal, Proust, but no Albert Payson Terhune): "The reason I am
writing to you is because of some of the people we talked about that night
when you had me to dinner." Though we do not know it yet, he is specifically
writing to tell Weer that Doris--a homeless girl whose tale roughly reprises
that of Cinderella--has died. Moreover, as we will also soon learn, Den
seems to have expressed some early interest in Doris during his original
get-together with Charlie. Writes the dog-boy: "You remember that when I was
at your place we talked about Doris and had fun thinking about what could
happen to her that could be good." But whysoever would Den be interested at
all in the life of this poor girl or imagining how it could be better? This
seems totally alien to the Den Weer we come to know in PEACE; if on the
other hand Doris is his daughter, that would go a long way to explain his
interest.

Secondarily, there is the mysterious visitation of an unidentified woman
when Mrs. Mason's little tit-and-raree show hits Gladewater, Texas. Remarks
Charlie: "A lady came looking for Doris there--a woman about fifty, maybe,
dressed nice the way country people dress." Doris will later return "dressed
nice in new clothes from Sears, some of them with their labels still on."
Ethel Fishman, the snake charmer, talks to Doris and learns that her
benefactress is "an old girl friend of Mr. M.'s [supposedly her father], and
when he died--this is what the lady told Doris, but I don't know any reason
not to think it's true--he wrote her and said how he was turning his
daughter over to Mrs. M., and asked the woman to check up on her if the show
ever got close to Kilgore, which was where she lived."

I would now like to suggest to you that this mysterious woman is none other
than Margaret Lorn Price of the Murchison clan. You may see this as
literally or typologically so, depending on your druthers--the same way Mr.
Tilly may or may not be Julius T. Smart. But for me it works either way.

Margie, an old girlfriend, would now be about fifty, and as a Christian
woman might be a little more forgiving of Den's sexual escapades than
others. Plus Doris might represent for her the child she and Den never had.

Just as Em Lorn, her mother, wished to sell the Chinese egg so she could buy
a sewing machine and make clothes for the poor, Margie clothes poor
tatterdemalion Doris.

Margie is a farm girl (Den will later describe the Murchisons--Margie's
relatives on her mother's side--as "Country people"), and when Den as a boy
visits the Lorn farm, he contrasts their clothes with those of his aunt "in
her beautiful clothes."

At fifty, Margie's children by her husband Mr. Price may well be grown and
gone from the nest. It seems likely that as an only child she would have
inherited her parents' farm (if they kept it, that is, and didn't return to
missionary work), but keep in mind Louis Gold's observation about how
"Country families don't stay in the country these days," as well as the old
potato farmer's remarks about the demise of the family farm. Is it possible
that in her later years Margie Lorn (or her typological equivalent) moved on
to do charitable work of her own, heading down "close to Kilgore?"

But why of all places here?

Well, considering that Texas is Gene Wolfe's native state (and I'm surprised
Lone Star Roy didn't pick up on this), surely he's aware that just down the
road from Kilgore (in fact they share the same latitude, being separated by
only 1º of longitude) is a small town with the serendipitous name of
Murchison.

Could it be here--home in a sense--that Den's long lost love at last finds
peace?

Robert Borski

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002 21:33:32 +0000

> Blattid having objected to my certitude about the Weer-Gold 
> parentage of Doris:

Whoa. I didn't object, I questioned, and was very careful to

> > seems to-me-here-now highly conjectural, reach the point of

This isn't saying "you shouldn't be so certain" -- it's asking
"how did you become so certain?"

Which you've explained. It still seems like a lot of conjecture
to-me-here-now, but I'll keep it in mind nextime I reread PEACE,
because if it's true it might explain a great deal. What you've 
done (for me) is to make this conjecture plausible, but I'll be
looking for something concrete, some kind of, well, smoking gun.

At any rate, it's certainly a well-woven web. Me 'at's off.

overture, hit the lights

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 16:02:12 +0000

Robert wrote:

>Doris-the-carnie was Den Weer's daughter by Sherry Gold.

I know I've refuted this idea before, but maybe it was just to mantis.

Den was five years old when the fake deerskin was painted, nine during the
Year of the Egg Hunt. He met both Lois and Sherry during the Gold Hunt year.
Sherry was sixteen when he met her. He was rich at fifty, poor at forty. The
years these events took place in can be disputed, but not the core "facts".

Lois stated that the fake deerskin treaty had been painted "about" forty
years before she met Weer, and he concurred. That makes him about forty-five
at the time of the Gold Hunt, when Sherry was sixteen. Den, while president,
started to tell the Tilly tale to Bill Batton "thirty-five or forty years"
after the YEH, which would make him age 44-49. Taken together, those two
statements make it clear that Den became president when aged 45-49.

Weer's dialogue with Batton, therefore, took place early in his presidency.
The visits of Bill Batton, Charlie Turner, and Eleanor Bold Porter all
happened on the same day. The first line of Charlie's letter to Weer
indicates that it was written as a "thank you" for his recent visit with
Weer, at which time they discussed Doris over dinner. Internal evidence
indicates that the events described in the letter took place not too long
after Charlie's visit, including the death of Doris. Doris was a minor, but
past the age of puberty. I would guess her age to be about 15-16.

If Weer met the 3 visitors mentioned above within a few years of meeting
Sherry, then any hypothetical child he might have fathered on her couldn't
be much more than four years old. Doris cannot possibly be the child of Weer
and Sherry.

If Weer fathered Doris, then he would have to have done so when he was in
his mid thirties, a decade of his life we know nothing about. And Doris died
while Weer was president, yet he was still poor at forty. So, if Weer
fathered Doris, Sherry can't be the mother.

-Roy

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 19:01:17 +0000

on 8/1/02 2:54 PM, Robert Borski at rborski at charter.net wrote:

Blattid says that your explanation makes the Doris-is-Weer's-daughter theory
plausible to him, but it doesn't to me.  Your major evidence is Weer's
interest in Doris.

> Writes the dog-boy: "You remember that when I was

On the contrary, it would make his behavior incomprehensible.  According to
your theory, he learned, at dinner with Charlie, that his daughter was being
horribly abused, and did nothing except make up fairy-tale endings for her;
and this was apparently "fun."  He can't have shown much concern for Doris,
in any case, or Charlie wouldn't have broken the news of Doris's death the
way he does; for one thing, Charlie gives no indication of thinking that
Weer might be sad over her death.  And indeed, Weer shows no sign of being
sad over the "news."  (Of course, since this is something he's
reconstructing in his mind, he already knows Doris is dead, but still there
should be some sign of emotion.)  If Doris really was Weer's daughter, then
Weer is incredibly cold-hearted, and his interest in Doris is more likely to
stem from sadism than concern, something which doesn't fit how Weer is
portrayed.

One could argue that Weer pretended unconcern before Charlie to hide the
fact that Doris was his daughter, and secretly arranged for the woman from
Kilgore to help her.  But this isn't plausible, either.  Why channel help
through the woman from Kilgore, who might never find Doris, and not through
Charlie who sees her every day?  He wouldn't have to tell him she was his
daughter.  And after what Charlie told him at dinner, buying new clothes for
Doris is a pathetically inadequate gesture.  If Weer were really concerned,
he could and would have done much more.

(Of course, if Weer really is the devil, then that would explain everything;
but I don't believe that either.)

As for the assertion that the mysterious woman who buys Doris clothes is
"literally or typologically" Margaret Lorn Price, the only shred of
"evidence" for her being literally Margaret is her living near a town with
the same name as Margaret's great-grandmother.  And her being
"typologically" Margaret would do nothing to show that Doris was Weer's
daughter.

Why, then, does Weer take an interest in Doris?  I suggest that Doris
doesn't exist.  Charlie made up her sad tale to entertain Weer (he seems to
have ambitions of being a writer; at least he compares himself to Dickens).
Doris is too put-upon, and her story parallels Cinderella's too closely, to
be believable.

--Adam

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 19:20:22 +0000

Roy wrote against the notion of Doris-as-daughter-of-Sherry-Gold.

So Roy, remind me: is it still possible that Doris is Sherry Gold herself?
Whoops, no -- I guess not, since you are taking the Doris story as being
both real and in real time.

In addition there is the complicated linkage of Sherry's death and Weer's
stroke.  If Doris = Sherry, then the stroke would have been before Weer
heard the story about Doris's death from Charlie Turner, and this seems
quite early on in Den's presidency (whereas evidence of the stroke's
aftermath suggests it was later in the presidency).

Okay, new approach: Doris attracts Weer because he sees in her the same
thing he saw in Lois, i.e., Olivia.  She is not his daughter, she is not
related to him by blood, it is that Wolfe "reincarnation" buzz thing.

If this holds up, we might expect Doris's story to match up with the
Olivia/Lois pattern (aside from just the fairy tale aspects of both
Olivia's "Suitors" and Doris's "Cinder-ella").  How do the years hold up?
Well, Olivia died after Lois was born, right?  (25 years ago, and we think
Lois is 35?)  So if we can accept the "Olivia" in Lois, we can go along
with the same in Doris.

This might be something, because it would mean that Weer loses Olivia,
chases after Lois-as-Olivia, sees the photo of Doris-as-Olivia, and then,
in the end of the book, finally hears Olivia's voice again (bringing
closure to this thread).

=mantis=

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From: Robert Borski <rborski at charter.net>
Date: Sat, 03 Aug 2002 00:34:54 +0000

Deep in the heart of Texas, with his calendar and stopwatch in hand, Roy L.
has written:

> happened on the same day.

I don't agree with this. They may _seem_ to take place on the same day, but
also on that same day we see Den's secretary, Miss Birkhead, being healthy
enough to report to work at one stage, sick enough a short time later so she
has to leave and be replaced by Miss Hadow (neither secretary apparently
communicating this to the man they work for), then still later on the same
day a notice is posted that Helen Birkhead Tyler has died and we learn that
she is neither single nor childless, and moreover that she has been A. D.
Weer's "long-time secretary." According to information presented in the
Peace Indexicon, however, Miss Birkhead was originally Julius Smart's
secretary, and old uncle Julius has only recently died, leaving the factory
to his nephew--yet Miss Birkhead is Den's "long-time" secretary? I find it
much more likely to assume that he inherited her with the president position
rather than think Julius Smart shuffled her off to him much earlier. (Do we
know at what previous stage in his career Den was assigned to a position
where he would even need a secretary?) Others have offered their
interpretatations of the Birkhead anomaly, but I believe it represents a
conflation of events over years, seen over the trajectory of Miss Birkhead's
life: single at one stage, married and twice bearing children (surely, she
would have required maternity leave), and finally dying. As others have
noticed, this merging of different temporal strata takes place throughout
PEACE (another good example of this is when Den first meets Sherry Gold and
asks to be excused for not rising because he suffers from stroke-induced
partial paralysis--yet the cerebrovascular event in question is some 15
years or so in the future) and probably represents the workings of a
disordered mind. Therefore attempting to wrest a tried-and-true chronology
from such flawed data is not only extremely precarious in my opinion, but
subject to extreme individual interpretation.

If Charlie Turner's visit and letter reception take place close to the day
on which long-time secretary Helen Birkhead Tyler actually dies, this might
well be later in A. D. Weer's presidency--perhaps even as late as a decade
and a half after he couples with Sherry Gold, which would then allow him to
have a teenage daughter.

Robert Borski

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sat, 03 Aug 2002 08:46:33 +0000

>in the end of the book, finally hears Olivia's voice again (bringing

Not to nit-pick, and I know we covered this before, but there was no photo
of Doris. As I read it, the two sepia photos depict a total of three people.
One is the girlie picture of Candy, alone, that Charlie mentioned in the
letter. She is the "tramp" Miss Hadow refers to, who looks like Carole
Lombard and has an old-fashioned hairdo. The other photo is of two men; one
of them very tall (who is probably Tom Lavine), and a much shorter man
(possibly J. T. Smart).

Robert B. quoted me and wrote:

>day a notice is posted that Helen Birkhead Tyler has died

The day of the three visitors and the day Miss Birkhead died are two
different days at least ten years apart. As I noted before, the visit by
Bill Batton occurred early in Weer's presidency. Various comments he made
indicate that it was his first visit to the plant: "Nice office you have
here." (135); "'That's your founder, isn't it?' Batton was looking at the
picture above the bar at one side of the room. 'Formulated the original
product and thought up the name? Good Brand name, by the way.'" (136);
""Call me Bill. You know I'd expected I'd be drinking your juice when I was
at your plant." (168).

Miss Birkhead brought in coffee for both Weer and Batton, at which point she
also informed Weer that the hairy man was waiting to see him (168). It is
Batton who ties the other two visitors to them all being present in Weer's
office on that particular day. "Bill Batton has been scratching his head,
crossing and uncrossing his legs as he sits on the red leather couch beside
the bar in my office. 'What was that all about?' 'Mrs. Porter? You heard
her--she wants to plant a tree on my grave when I'm gone.' [ . . .] 'And
you're going to have dinner with the hairy man?'" (193). Weer is close to
fifty years old at this time. (Margaret is also about fifty, as you pointed
out, and she and Weer are the same age.)

Miss Birkhead died on the same day that Dan French took the reporter on a
tour of the plant, the same day he told Weer the Sidhe story (243). Weer was
over sixty years old on that day, as he told Dan French: "'Haven't you ever
noticed how many corporate presidents are in their sixties and seventies?'
He nodded. 'Those are men who couldn't possibly continue to work at any job
requiring concentration or endurance. I should know--I'm one of them
myself.'" (233) (Page numbers are for the Berkley paperback.)

>and we learn that
>secretary,

Correct. She had been Weer's secretary from the time he took over the plant
to the day she died, something in excess of ten years.

In my reading, it just isn't possible for Doris to be the child of Weer and
Sherry; neither, to answer mantis's question, do I think Sherry = Doris. I'm
inclined to agree with Adam that Doris doesn't exist.

-Roy

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