{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3418", "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": 3418, "subject": "The Coldhouse Prank", "messages": 4, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-08-21T06:33:35+00:00", "last": "2002-08-24T01:54:07+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Robert Borski", "address": "rborski at charter.net" }, "date": "2002-08-21T06:33:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The Coldhouse Prank", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "One of the bigger mysteries in PEACE involves the coldhouse prank. Who is\nits perpetrator and who is victim? Most people seem to believe that Den is\nthe perpetrator, but in the 27 years since PEACE first came out, I've read\nonly one attempt at identifying the victim (mantis, hypothesizing a son of\nProfessor Peacock; see http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0030/0549.shtml).\nIf for nothing other than at least doubling the alternatives, I'd like now\nto offer my own theory about who it is that's locked up in the coldhouse\nprank and why he ends up there.\n\nI'll be the first to admit there are several different ways of looking at\nPEACE (in fact, I use the Purgatory model in the essay I wrote for\nScribner's), but one of the virtues of the Faust reading that I outline in\nmy \"The Devil His Due\" essay is that it allows me to resolve several of\nPEACE's more enduring mysteries--at least within the terms I establish. Why,\nfor example, the relationship between Den and Margaret Lorn never works out,\nor why Julius Smart is, by Den's definition, the book's central character.\nIt wasn't, however, until I discovered how integral alchemy is to the book's\noverall organization that I was able to glean an answer about the coldhouse\nprank's victim. In essence, as a good model should, it allowed me to predict\nan answer I never expected to find.\n\nAs you may or may not recall, I postulate that each chapter in PEACE\nrepresents a step in the alchemical process of transforming a base material\ninto gold. Each chapter has a representative character, color, and animal\nassociated with the process--all derived from, or based on, classical\nalchemy. Each of the characters, in turn, is met in the opening scene, when\nDen finds himself in Dr. Van Ness's waiting room. The lone character,\nhowever, that seems hardest to fit into the scheme is Ted Singer,\nrepresenting the chapter \"The President.\" That is, until you investigate the\nanimal associated with red, the fifth and final color in the alchemical\nsequence: the pelican. Symbolically, the bird has an incredibly rich history\nassociating it with Christ, mainly due to the medieval belief that it fed\nits young with blood torn from its own breast (what it really does is dip\nits beak into its pouch to retrieve fish).\n\nLet us therefore consider a little more deeply the implications of a\npelican-Singer connection, which if you'll accept the above scheme as\npossibly legitimate, associates Ted Singer with God (el presidente grande de\ncielo, no? just as Weer is later president of the juice factory). The name\nTed is the Anglicized version of Theo--Greek for God. And what is the\nlivelihood of Ted's grandfather? He's a building contractor, which makes\nTed's father Joshua ben Joseph--the likeliest victim of the coldhouse prank.\n(Remember, all through PEACE, whether we're talking about the Weers, the\nLorns, or the Singers, we're talking about families, and just as the Devil's\nname is legion, so too might we expect God to be pluripresent and\nmulti-generational.) One further connection exists, but before I end with\nthat, I'd like to recast the Singer-Weer polarity, this time looking at Den\nand Ted as another mythic dyad, Dionysius and Orpheus.\n\nWhere Late The Sweet Birds Sang\n\nI've already mentioned the Dionysius/Dennis link in the main body of \"The\nDevil His Due.\" But is it possible that \"Singer\" also represents\nOrpheus--like Jesus, another harrower of hell, who's seeking to undo the\ndamage caused by a serpent--and that this classically-based allusion\naccounts for Den killing a member of the Singer clan? Dionysius, after all,\ndoes sic the Maenads upon Orpheus when he doesn't pay him the proper\nrespects, whereupon the Maenads tear Orpheus limb from limb. It's also\npossible that Singer has been involved with Sherry Gold. Not only is there\nan argument between Ted and Sherry's brother Aaron at one point (Den says it\nis of a religious nature, and what is probably the prime area of contention\nbetween a Christian and a Jew? Whether Jesus Christ was the Messiah,\nright?); but Sherry admits to Weer that she's had sex with several high\nschool boys, one of whom might be Ted. Onomasts will note that the last\nsyllable of Theodore and the first syllable of Doris derive from the same\nGreek word--doros, meaning gift. Could Doris therefore be the possible\ndaughter of Ted and Sherry Gold? This might subsequently play to the notion\nof Sherry-as-Eurydice, where Ted/Orpheus attempts to prevent her from\nbecoming further involved with Den Weer or possibly having his child. But\nTed, like his Greek exemplar fails, and Eurydice-Sherry is unable to avoid\nor leave symbolic hell. (Eurydice, of course, has died from a snakebite.)\n\nAs for Ted's grandmother, Sophie, she bears the faux Indian name Princess\nSinging Bird. But observe what Den's grandfather Elliot has in his\nmuseum-like front parlor: a stuffed \"large bird beneath a glass bell jar on\nthe center table.\" Think Christic pelican here, or cockeral--another bird\nassociated with the reddening process. In addition, when Den has the Chinese\ngarden dream that is so enticing to him, \"that to wake would be a horror,\"\nand therefore \"that it was best to remain twenty-five and happy, walking the\nwandering little sanded path under the cypresses and cedars for as long as I\ncould,\" he finds two objects of significance: \"an earthenware troll with a\nfierce, sad face and stumpy limbs, fallen from his little pedestal\" and a\ndead bird whose breast feathers blow across the path, are caught, and turn\nout to be the remnants of a paper lantern. The garden, I'm going to suggest,\nis therefore Eden, site of the Adversary's greatest victory--the successful\ntemptation of Adam (note that adam means \"earth, clay\" in Hebrew and that\nthe troll is \"fallen\"), and this is why Den does not want to leave--imagine\nRobert E. Lee revisiting Fredericksburg. Both birds also symbolize the\nstatus of the doomed Singer/Orpheus clan-member in PEACE, and in the garden\ncase show that fire will win over--as does perhaps an earlier comment from\nDen, who compares an Indian artifact given to him by Peacock to \"a feather\nfrom a bird petrified,\" suggesting it is not the prehistoric saurians that\nhave died out, but the Orpheid birds.\n\nFor the love of God, Montressor!\n\nAs can be seen by a careful reading of the novel, Ted Singer, his family,\nand their symbolic equivalents, crop up in some rather unusual places, but\nby far the strangest of them occurs in PEACE's second chapter. In what is\nquite possibly Gene Wolfe's oddest sentence ever, Den is going on and on\nabout people having sex, and finally gets around to Ted, who's apparently\nbumping uglies with a fellow high school student named Melissa. Or as Wolfe,\nalready in mid-parenthesis, convolutedly puts it:\n\n\"Melissa whom I used to see waiting with her textbooks and notebook propped\non one hip when I drove my cold-natured, reluctant old Plymouth to the plant\nin the mornings, waiting for the school bus that never seemed to come early\nor even on time) and Ted (who never got into the game unless Consolidated\nwas fourteen points ahead; Ted ran the four-forty but who cares about the\nfour-forty?) leave Melissa's father's brick ranch-style and Ted's mother's\nApt. 14 and become four-legged, two-backed, four-armed (oh, be forewarned!)\ntwo-headed Ted and Lisa into which each less-than-half has vanished more or\nless utterly, and (though the monster is not completely indissoluble still)\nnever to reappear.\"\n\nBeside the Othello-like nature of Weer's rant (he is, after all, Black\nDutch--a descendant of Phillip II's Spanish soldiery), which might play to\nthe green-eyed-monster-jealousy-revenge angle, there are a number of things\nnoteworthy here. One is the conjoined polarities of Lisa-Ted copulating--an\nimage perhaps of the Androgyne, a potent alchemical symbol. Another is Den's\nrather in-depth knowledge about what sports Ted participates in and the fact\nthat Ted lives not with two parents, but his mother. What has happened to\nMr. Singer, and is Den's obsessive detailing of Ted's sporting and sexual\nactivities due to the fact that he's trying, either nobly or out of guilt,\nto act as surrogate father? Then there's also the hard-to-ignore repetition\nof the variant \"four\" nine times. Does this perhaps refer to the Sacred\nTetragrammaton--Ted-Theo-YHWH? And is there any connection between this, and\nthe passage where Sally Gold says of her daughter, Sherry: \"Very forward for\na girl of her age.\" Which is then echoed twice, once by Sherry, \"Forward,\nfor God's sake\" (the italicization is Wolfe's), then by her mother, \"Yes,\nforward for God's sake. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Like an old\nbattle cry. I don't believe soldiers talk that way anymore, but it might be\ninteresting to find out when they stopped, and why.\"\n\nThen again, perhaps long ago, in the coldhouse of Julius Smart's factory,\nthis refrain from the oldest battle of all was said by a young man freezing\nto death, and echoes there still.\n\nRobert Borski" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "StoneOx17", "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com" }, "date": "2002-08-22T04:26:43+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) The Coldhouse Prank", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Robert Borski argues quite eloquently that Ted Singer's father is the victim \nin the coldhouse prank. I don't think this can be right, because the victim \nlived in a boarding house, was locked in on Friday, and nobody noticed he was \nmissing until he was discovered on Monday. If the victim had had a wife or \ngirlfriend, surely he would have been discovered sooner. I've pondered this \nquestion myself, and wondered whether the victim came from a farm family who \nlived far enough out of town that he had to take a room in town to work for \nthe factory, and whether he could have been an acquaintance of the Lorns. I \ndidn't find any suitable candidates mentioned, so I haven't said anything.\n\n- Stone Ox" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Robert Borski", "address": "rborski at charter.net" }, "date": "2002-08-23T05:53:35+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) The Coldhouse Prank", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Stone Ox writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Robert Borski argues quite eloquently that Ted Singer's father is the\nvictim\nin the coldhouse prank. I don't think this can be right, because the\nvictim\nlived in a boarding house, was locked in on Friday, and nobody noticed he\nwas\nmissing until he was discovered on Monday. If the victim had had a wife\nor\ngirlfriend, surely he would have been discovered sooner." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But look who imparts this information about the weekend tragedy and the\nboarding house connection: Dan French, who, not having been a factory\nemployee at the time, is simply repeating the sanitized version of the story\nas it's been spun down through the years and perhaps even through\nsemi-official channels, since there's been a coverup. (I do, however, and\nfor obvious reasons, like the notion that the victim died on Friday.) He\ndoesn't remember the name of the victim and is completly unaware there is an\neven more sinister side to the entire episode, with a lone person being\nresponsible for the victim's death. As Den also reminds us earlier, such\nstories have a way of becoming \"both faded and embroidered by time,\" which\nresults in a further blurring of the details. And lastly when Dan French\ntells the story of the sidhe, it deviates from the traditional in several\nrespects.\n\nIn other words I think there's plenty of reason to doubt his version of the\nstory.\n\nRobert Borski" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "StoneOx17", "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com" }, "date": "2002-08-24T01:54:07+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) The Coldhouse Prank", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In a message dated 8/23/2002 7:57:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Robert Borski \nwrites:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Stone Ox writes: " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Robert Borski argues quite eloquently that Ted Singer's father is the \nvictim\nin the coldhouse prank. I don't think this can be right, because the \nvictim\nlived in a boarding house, was locked in on Friday, and nobody noticed he \nwas\nmissing until he was discovered on Monday. If the victim had had a wife \nor\ngirlfriend, surely he would have been discovered sooner." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But look who imparts this information about the weekend tragedy and the\nboarding house connection: Dan French, who, not having been a factory\nemployee at the time, is simply repeating the sanitized version of the story\nas it's been spun down through the years and perhaps even through\nsemi-official channels, since there's been a coverup. (I do, however, and\nfor obvious reasons, like the notion that the victim died on Friday.) He\ndoesn't remember the name of the victim and is completly unaware there is an\neven more sinister side to the entire episode, with a lone person being\nresponsible for the victim's death. As Den also reminds us earlier, such\nstories have a way of becoming \"both faded and embroidered by time,\" which\nresults in a further blurring of the details. And lastly when Dan French\ntells the story of the sidhe, it deviates from the traditional in several\nrespects." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In other words I think there's plenty of reason to doubt his version of the\nstory." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "When Dan French is telling the story of the sidhe, it's an embedded story, \nand Wolfe has changed, or invented, many (if not all) of the embedded \nstories, so as to shed light on events in the book. On the other hand, if we \nbelieve that Weer was the perpetrator of the coldhouse prank, I'd consider it \npart of Weer's own life story, and I'm much more reluctant to believe that \nWolfe is altering the details here. But this relates to the whole unicorn \ndebate, which I think we could argue about for eternity.\nI just had the thought that maybe part of the reason there's been so much \ndiscussion about Mr. Tilly's story and Doris's story is that it's not clear \nwhether they should be counted as embedded stories or not.\n\n-Stone Ox" } ] } ] }