Subject: (urth) Jonas <> Pinocchio

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 20:17:53 +0000

Jerry Friedman and Roy Lackey disagree with my casting Jonas as wanting to
become fully bio.  I guess I should have preped my statement with
qualifiers, since while I believe "Jonas Pinocchio" is a possible reading,
and may be required for some, I myself do not hold it too tightly,
preferring Tin Man and Tin Soldier.

Since I was responding to the posts of others, it seems I should have
written something like "Such a reading would seem to require that Jonas =
Pinocchio, whereas 98% of the time we talk of Jonas = Tin Man and/or Jonas
= Steadfast Tin Soldier.  OTOH, if Jonas = Pinocchio, then Miles represents
his wish come true, in contrast to Jonas = Tin Man, where Miles represents
the opposite of his wish, a cruel torment which is then furthered by the
knowledge that Jolenta has already died."

Jerry wrote:
>Can we
>imagine a prosthetic-bearing bio in love with a chem wanting to become
>fully a chem?

Putting aside the "doing it for Love" angle . . . Uh, would that be the
horde of boys who play at being robots?  Represented in animation by Fry,
the 20th century guy in "Futurama," who tells Bender he wanted a robot
friend (or to be a robot?) since he was five years old; and Fry has
fantasies about being a robot?   Andy Warhol's phrase "I want to be a
machine"?  All the starry-eyed singularity adventists who long to be
"uploaded"?

This is hard to imagine?

(Jerry asked for the source of Steadfast Tin Soldier: Hans Christian Andersen.)

But then Roy goes further, into his "lusty robot" kick:

>All the more reason to wonder what he wanted with Jolenta.

Again, Roy, you seem to be saying that Love is impossible without, er,
compatible sexual interface devices.  I mentioned this before, I don't
recall that you answered: Is Love impossible for Jonas because he is a
robot, or is it impossible because his beloved is a bio, or is non-sexual
Love simply impossible?

=mantis=

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From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 21:13:10 +0000

> knowledge that Jolenta has already died."

I like that version better, although my version wouldn't say that
Jonas equaled any other literary character.  Maybe a matter of taste
in interpretation.

> machine"?

There's a big difference between fantasizing and going to a surgeon.

In one sense, I have to agree with you, since I gather there are
people who have limbs amputated for sexual reasons.  (Cf. another sf
Wolfe.)  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's got to
be the very very tail of the bell curve.  As Roy pointed out, Jonas
hasn't always wanted to be biological--far from it--so I really can't
see him wanting something so drastic to get closer to Jolenta.

> All the starry-eyed singularity adventists who long to be
> "uploaded"?

Whole different thing.  As far as I can tell, they imagine it's going
to be like being a bio human, only better, or like being a demigod.

> This is hard to imagine?

Still.

> (Jerry asked for the source of Steadfast Tin Soldier: Hans Christian

Thanks!  I'll check it out.  Andersen was a very small part of my
childhood.

> robot, or is it impossible because his beloved is a bio, or is

Here I agree with you even if I have to disagree with Roy.  ObNewSun:
the bit where Severian mentions women who desire (love?) men who are
impotent save with men like themselves, and men who desire women whose
legs are locked with paralysis.  I don't remember whether the context
of this had to do with Jonas and Jolenta.

Jerry Friedman

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 02:36:07 +0000

Maybe a little background on the Tin Woodman, for those who are familiar
mainly with the movie or the first book only. We know that Wolfe knows the
Baum books well, through "Eyeflash" and references elsewhere. Baum wrote 13
books in this series (and it was continued by other writers, but that is
irrelevant). Among them was -The Tin Woodman of Oz-., which recounts the
story of the TW (Nick Chopper) and his brother, the Tin Soldier (Captain
Fyter), and which I think influenced Wolfe without the least doubt, when he
conceived of Jonas. ((I think he intended the reference to be humorously
picked up by those in the know.)

Both brothers were in love with a girl named Nimmie Amee who had rather a
thing for metal.As various body parts were chopped off or blown away and
replaced with tin by Ku-Klip the Tinsmith she was more and more attracted.
Both men liked their new bodies too, as they gradually became more and more
artificial: "brilliant and durable" (TW 207) and "a great improvement on
their meat bodies" (223). Ku-Klip made a Frankensteinian monster-man
(Chopfyt) of the brothers' cast-off parts, but he was not a
success--awkward, whiny and always hungry. At any rate, the brothers, who
had each been incapicitated by rust long enough to lose track of Nimmie
Amee, go off to find her to ask her to choose between them and find that she
is married--to whom? To Chopfyt, of course--Ku-Klip had given him one tin
arm, which excited her fetish. And she thinks she'll keep him, since she has
spent a good deal of time training him to be a good husband. This is rather
an amusing scene.

The point, re Jonas, is that both brothers are extremely grateful to be made
entirely of metal (each had gone through a period where they were part tin,
part meat), and look down on Chopfyt, made of their old parts.

Also, just for fun, you should look up Terry Bisson's short-short "They're
Made Out of Meat" on the web--it's been illegally copied everywhere (almost
literally) and there is an amusing illustrated version at Seeing Eye
Theater.

-alga

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 06:36:57 +0000

>robot, or is it impossible because his beloved is a bio, or is non-sexual

The answer to both of the first two questions is: yes, for the obvious lack
of "compatible sexual interface devices", but it is the third question, I
believe, that most concerns you, and others. For me, the third question
doesn't even arise with regard to Jonas and Jolenta.

What you are calling "Love" was not Love; it was unadulterated Lust, as far
as Jonas is concerned. Neither is even an issue for Jolenta; she wouldn't
look at him twice, even if he paid her. She felt nothing at all for him.

Jolenta was an artificially enhanced, stereotypical sexpot--and nothing
more. She was, with the glamour cast on her by Talos, literally the most
desirable woman on the planet. By design, no man could resist her sexual
allure. Jonas, perhaps because of his biological replacement parts, proved
no exception.

Jonas laid eyes on Jolenta exactly twice in his life. The second time was
just after he and Sev had been captured on the grounds of the House
Absolute. He caught sight of her, started to call her name, and was knocked
senseless before he finished the first syllable. That was all that happened,
and the last time he saw her. The first time he saw her was on the road just
outside the Piteous Gate. Jolenta was afraid of the imposing gate and moved
close to Talos for protection. When he ignored her, she then took the
stirrup strap of Jonas's merychip. Her "fear made her press the side of one
full breast against the thigh of the man on the merychip". It was Lust at
first touch, as well as at first sight. He made a passing query to Talos
about "why this lady, the loveliest I've ever seen, is walking in the dust".
Jolenta took offence, rebuked him in two sentences, and moved away. Jonas
blushed. Then he started to tell his "bean" story, was interrupted by Talos,
then said to Jolenta, "May I continue, most marvelous of women?" That single
question was the only thing he ever said to her in his life. Her
two-sentence rebuke, above, was the only thing she ever said to him. What I
have related in this paragraph is a summation of the entirety of their
relationship.

There was, in effect, _no_ relationship between Jonas and Jolenta outside of
Jonas's head. There was no basis in their common history for even a Platonic
relationship, none at all. Jonas, illogical as it may be for an android,
lusted after Jolenta just as Sev and every other man who saw her did, and
that's all it was. Lust, not Love.

Even Sev recognized it. Just before Jonas was knocked senseless, he wrote:
"When Jolenta was nearly opposite us, she turned her head. To me, at that
moment, it seemed she must have winded his desire, as among the mountains
certain unclean spirits are said to be attracted by the odor of meat that
has been cast upon a fire for them." (II, chap. 14)

-Roy

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 18:43:03 +0000

Regarding Alga's background on the Tin Woodman:

Ok. Now I have brand new interest in the sequels to "The Wizard of Oz", but
I still don't see more than a superficial connection to Jonas. Jolenta was
"in love" with a man who was *entirely* synthetic...ah! Perhaps you're
saying she was in love with Baldanders "right-arm man"! Nice flag, that
links Jolenta to Nimmie Amee. But still, she was rejected by him. And she
never loved his artificiality. If Baldanders or Jonas would or could have
maintained her beauty products she would have loved either of them as much.

But the big thing is that ...Jonas *becomes* human, right? He doesn't repair
the robot parts. He repairs the human prosthetics to the point of growing a
whole body. He becomes the human Miles. This surely was his intent when
going to be "repaired". Is it not generally agreed that Jonas left Severian
and became Miles? I searched the list on this and didn't find anything to
the contrary.

The Tin Woodman may have been an *inspiration* to Wolfe's images of
synthetic people, but can the connection be drawn any more tightly?

-- Crush

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 19:42:28 +0000

>and became Miles? I searched the list on this and didn't find anything to

No, I don't think there is general agreement on that point. On 9/6/02 mantis
wrote:

------------------------
Jonas steps into the mirrors after speaking of being repaired.  When next
we see him, he is fully biological.  I have often speculated that in Yesod
his biological prosthetics were expanded into a full biological body into
which the Jonas-software was integrated . . . along with the biological
software that was present-yet-dormant in the prosthetics, now full-blown in
the reconstructed bio body.

(A somewhat cleaner version is that the Jonas-spirit was drawn from Yesod
by the Claw to ride the body of the annonymous dead soldier.)

In any event, two personalities in one body.
------------------------

As I argued in an earlier post, Jonas hoped to be repaired so as to return
to his original android state, not become a bio. So I prefer the "cleaner
version" mantis outlined above. He expanded on it yesterday:

-------------------------
I guess it all resolves this way:
since Severian heard the utterance and saw Jonas go into the mirror, the
Claw heard it too, so that later on at that point in Severian's life when
he really needed a friend, yet all there was at hand was a corpse, then the
Claw drew down the Jonas software from the borderland between Briah and
Yesod, installed it in the reanimated corpse, and thereby solved two wishes
with one snappy miracle.
-------------------------

I don't think there was _anything_ of Jonas in that dead soldier before Sev,
in his fevered delirium, put it there.

-Roy

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 02:20:21 +0000

> synthetic people, but can the connection be drawn any more tightly?

I don't think it's tight. But consider an author's thinking: A Tin Soldier
(and I think he *was* thinking of Andersen's tin soldier too, thank you,
mantis). What about a Tin Sailor? The Baum Tin Soldier likes being Tin more
than meat--so will my Tin Sailor--but we'll reverse the process of repair. A
Tin Soldier in love? My Tin Sailor will be too, but of course with the most
artificial woman he can possibly find (Anderson's soldier loved a paper
doll--make of that what you will). And that, in a curious writerly way,
leads to the invention of Jolenta who is created by another metal man (the
original mythical Talos was made of bronze). If you think about it, Jolenta
doesn't have an important plot role, though GW has given her some nice small
scenes; my guess is that he conceived her after dreaming up Jonas and
developed her role after that to make some points about Talos and Sev,
killing her off fairly quickly. Sev thinks she might have been in love with
Talos--like Nimmie Amee, attracted to metal. So perhaps Talos was the
trigger--but I think Jonas

Now we don't know for sure about the Miles identification--I wouldn't make
too much of that. Unless you have a really good theory about Inire's
mirrors.Or Sev's projections.

-alga

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