Subject: (urth) PEACE: Smart

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 04:37:20 +0000

We know even less about Julius Smart than we know about Weer, for all his
being a "symbolic" figure and "the central character of this book". I want
to address two facts related to him that seem to be antithetical.

We are told that for 25 years, since the death of Olivia, that Smart did not
speak to his nephew, Weer. We are not told why. Despite this estrangement,
when Julius died, Weer inherited the company. Again, why? It would seem that
the fact of, or circumstances surrounding, Olivia's death triggered the
alienation. If the former, it raises (A) questions about their relationship
while she was alive; if the latter, what were (B) those circumstances
regarding her death that would cause Julius to want to have no more to do
with him?

(A) Weer lived with his aunt and Julius for two years after their marriage,
in his aunt's house, and was living there for almost an equal length of time
before the marriage, the entire time they were courting. Smart was, de
facto, a father surrogate for Weer, from the age of ten or eleven to
thirteen. He was about fifteen years older than his nephew. Weer returned to
his parent's house, just down the alley from his aunt's house, when they
came back from Europe. Weer was either in high school or college when his
aunt died, which is cause for a digression.

It is usually assumed that the choice not to speak was Smart's. The dates of
Olivia's death and when the juice plant was built may be relevant. Weer
states that Smart was already making money while Olivia was still alive and
he was still living with them, but the source of the income isn't given. It
almost has to be from the drugstore, because Blaine's account of his own and
his bank's fortunes implies that it wasn't until a few years after the start
of the Depression that a local market for potatoes was created by the
plant's operations. The plant had to have existed by 1935, because Weer
accepted a job there while he was still in college. The fact that Olivia
named the juice product implies that it had been invented, certainly, and
possibly that it was in production before her death. In any event, this
would seem to place both her death and the plant's founding sometime in the
early Thirties.

That Weer continued to live with his aunt for two years after her marriage
means that he was about eleven when they married, which places the year as
1925. If the assumptions in the preceding paragraph are correct, then Olivia
lived for 6-8 years after marriage. Whatever strain, if any, that Weer's
presence for the first two years put on the marriage should have ended when
he went back to his parents. Did it? He states that his parents remained
forever strangers to him after abandoning him for several years. Did he
cling to the stability that had been afforded to him by his aunt, whether or
not Julius was amenable, and despite the fact that he resented the changes
that Julius brought to his life? Did Julius resent the boy, only tolerating
him for his wife's sake?

(B) And then there's the question of Olivia's infidelities. How could Weer,
a boy, be aware that she was having sex with both Peacock and Macafee, and
Julius not be? When Weer wrote that "--when she was Mrs. Smart--repent three
or four times a year of her casual connection with Professor Peacock and her
occasional nights with Mr. Macafee", did he mean that he was present when
she confessed to Julius? (And where was young Den those nights?) To whom
else would such an even token confession be meaningful? Which brings me back
to the circumstances of her death. Was it an accident? Not likely. We know
only from Wolfe's say so that Peacock was the culprit; the text gives no
hint. Why did he do it? Jealousy? Of Macafee? I don't see the relevance; she
was married anyway. Or was that the reason, that Julius was jealous, and
Peacock was his friend, who would kill for him? Or was jealousy the pretext
and the real reason money? Would Olivia's death bring Smart some money (he
sold her house to the city), money he needed to start up the plant? Was that
nailed-down letter from Peacock to Smart (which would/should not have been
on either Weer's real or replica desk) relevant?

What if that letter, which Weer obviously has knowledge of, implicated Smart
in Olivia's death, whether before or after the fact? (Perhaps Peacock was
blackmailing Smart, or threatened to, or Smart feared he would. Perhaps,
also, Smart's pharmaceutical skills were used to silence Peacock, who "died
only a few years afterward of a complicated series of disorders said to have
been aggravated by hypertension". Shades of the Tilly tale.) What if Weer
had read that letter? What if the choice not to speak to one another after
the funeral was Weer's? That he despised Julius, but with his father's
wealth being sapped by the Depression, he took advantage of the situation to
make Julius an offer he couldn't refuse? In a Faustian twist, Weer agreed to
a fixed term of silent service--say twenty-five years--at the end of which
Julius would hand over the company to him and fade away--maybe to join the
circus or live on the beach in Florida. Smart would have accumulated a
handsome personal fortune by then, enough to live out his days in comfort.
Smart would have only been in his early sixties when Weer took over his
company. People just assume that Smart had to die in order for Weer to gain
control of the company, and that he did die. But the text doesn't ever say
that Smart died, or even hint at it. And during those twenty-five years Weer
would be guaranteed a living wage.

This scenario might also explain the "what went wrong" angle. Weer wouldn't
inherit his father's estate "between the ages of twenty and thirty" as he,
and perhaps Margaret, had rather optimistically and unrealistically planned.
But he _would_ inherit his uncle's wealth between the ages of forty and
fifty. Either he felt he was unable to tell Margaret of his scheme, because
she might rat on him, or he did tell her and she was unable or unwilling to
wait that long.

-Roy

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From: Bratt Ian <ian.bratt at colorado.edu>
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 05:05:23 +0000

On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Roy C. Lackey wrote:

> when Julius died, Weer inherited the company. Again, why?

I had always thought that Weer gaining control of the company was
completely independent of his connection to Smart.  When Smart died (or
retired) Weer had been at the company the longest and was the best man for
the job.  Is there any evidence that disproves this?  It has been a while
since I read PEACE.

-ian

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 05:31:36 +0000

>the job.  Is there any evidence that disproves this?  It has been a while

The plant existed before Weer went to work there, so whether or not he was
the longest-tenured employee, after Smart, I couldn't say. But in any event,
succession to ownership of a business by seniority of employment is unheard
of, at least by me. And Weer was hardly the best qualified employee; by his
own account he was "an unimportant employee of the corporation he [Smart]
had founded". (148)

-Roy

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 23:26:23 +0000

Roy C. Lackey's post on Smart.  Again, that delightful feeling of seeing
someone else write what I was on the verge of writing a week ago!

So good, we are thinking along the same lines!

However, I argued with myself before so now I'll give you the same.

First I would like to express my sense of the "EZ reading," which Roy first
brought to my attention (though I was the one who named it).  I was
building a timeline on the assumption that 1) Weer had been the responsible
prankster in the coldhouse prank, and 2) Weer was lying about the date when
it happened to obscure his role.  I had arrived at this position from
talking (perhaps too much) with others about PEACE -- it was not an
individualistic reading, and the new trick was to try and build a timeline
around it.

Roy's attitude at the time seemed to be this: First, trust the text.

Well anyway, enough of that for now.

I, too, wondered at the possibility of a murder for hire at the bottom of
the "nailed letter."  And I went through the same permutations that Roy
went through (some or maybe most I've seen other people try in informal
settings such as this).  There is a potential there, but I begin to
disbelieve it myself.

As for Smart's behavior towards Weer.  In order for a "sundering" at the
funeral, there would have to be a "togetherness" beforehand, and while the
two fellows were living under the same roof, even though they have a
quasi-father/son relationship (or maybe make that "especially because they
have a quasi-father/son relationship"), they might not be such pals at all.
In contrast to the chummy antics of the other suitors, iirc we have no
indication of the same with Smart and Weer.  So, even if there were no
other weirdness, the woman Olivia is the lynchpin that holds them in
proximity: once she is gone, they might well drift apart.  They don't go
fishing together; they do not talk about books together; etc.

Ah, but there is other weirdness!  Weer sees Olivia in the bathtub; Weer
knows about Olivia's confessions of adultry (I imagine that she told Weer
in some offhand manner ala Auntie Mame); Weer himself is a manslaughtering
little weirdo who becomes a quasi-stepson during his teenage years
(challenging period).  Smart suffers having this spy in his life, this kid
who knows all the dirty laundry since he functions as his wife's confessor,
and after the tragedy of losing his wife, Smart throws himself into his
work, where he was always most comfortable anyway.

So the simplest solution would appear to be that Smart and Weer had nothing
to say to each other, and that Weer inherited because Smart had no other
family and Weer is related by the marriage to Olivia.  (Or as Wolfe said to
Damien Broderick, something like: Weer inherited from grumpy old Smart.)

(Nevermind how the coldhouse prank may have had an effect on anything.)

The letter from Peacock might be a confession that Peacock ran down Olivia
(if we assume that it was a hit and run and nobody was ever charged).

The other thing about Smart that I've been mulling over again is how he
equates to Napoleon, and what this means to the larger text.  There is the
biography that they all read; there is the statue Olivia buys for Smart;
Smart's child-like size points to Napoleon's small stature; even Smart's
possible earlier marriage (to "Mrs. Tilly") might point to Napoleon's
marital scenario (Josephine and then Marie Louise) . . . and thus the
strange anecdote about Napoleon's hand, which Weer alludes to, a tidbit
which our dedicated fellow readers have =not= been able to find in the
biography itself, may relate directly to Smart himself rather than Napoleon.

I really should read PEACE again, soon.

=mantis=

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 05:57:27 +0000

>someone else write what I was on the verge of writing a week ago!

That sort of thing has happened to me far too often on this list; someone
beating me to the punch, but "delightful" is not the word I would choose to
describe my reaction. <g> I still can't believe that, back during the
LITTLE, BIG discussion, you used that Jefferson Airplane line from "White
Rabbit" to deflect some question to alga. I was gonna use that!

>fishing together; they do not talk about books together; etc.

We agree, I think, that Weer and Smart were never pals, even when Olivia was
alive. But to literally not speak to one another after her death betokens
hard feelings on behalf of at least one party. Living in the same block as
they did, in a small town, such an abrupt rift would call attention to
itself, as it almost surely did. Whether intentional or not, such a rift
would have to have extended to the entire Weer family; though unstated in
the text, I doubt that Smart was on speaking terms with any of the Weers.

>Damien Broderick, something like: Weer inherited from grumpy old Smart.)

But Smart _did_ have other family, some of them blood kin. All those
"relations" he had helping him look for a job after college; his "various
aunts, you know, and cousins and in-laws" (115-16) They can't _all_ be dead.
And Wolfe's comment doesn't address _why_ Weer inherited.

>biography itself, may relate directly to Smart himself rather than
Napoleon.

You meant, it was Smart who bought the Dresden figure for Olivia. I didn't
know that no one had found the hand reference in Ludwig's bio. Strange.
Maybe it has something to do with one of Smart's shoulders being "noticeably
larger than the other". In depictions of Napoleon, is the shoulder
corresponding to the hand in his waistcoat elevated higher than the other,
making it look bigger? Anyone know?

-Roy

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From: Mark Millman <millman at heimdallr.dyndns.org>
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 08:39:29 +0000

On Tue, 15 Oct 2002, Roy C. Lackey wrote:

> larger than the other". In depictions
> of Napoleon, is the shoulder corres-
> ponding to the hand in his waistcoat
> elevated higher than the other, making
> it look bigger? Anyone know?
>
> -Roy

Regrettably, I don't know about the size of
Napoleon's shoulders; I certainly don't re-
call anything unusual from the pictures I've
seen, but that doesn't mean much.

What struck me when you mentioned this is
the fact that contemporary descriptions of
Richard III describe him as having one
shoulder that was higher than the other
(the source for Shakespeare's propagandist-
ically exaggerated "Crookback Dick"), and
his portraits confirm this.  I don't recall
whether he was of unusually short stature,
but he certainly stood in the shadow of his
elder brother, Edward IV, during Edward's
lifetime.

Mark Millman

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From: StoneOx17 <stoneox17 at aol.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 13:41:38 +0000

In a very interesting post, Roy C. Lackey writes:

> peak to his nephew, Weer. We are not told why. Despite this estrangement,

Good questions.  I note that Weer's comment about not speaking to Julius
for 25 years was not addressed to the reader, but to Aaron Gold, which,
at least by my rules for interpretation, means he might be lying (possibly 
to avoid mentioning the coldhouse prank).  Weer and Julius certainly weren't 
buddies, though -- Weer does tell us directly that the only occasions from
which he remembers Julius well after the funeral were laboratory inspections.

> Which brings me back
> to the circumstances of [Olivia's] death. Was it an accident? Not likely. 
We  
> know only from Wolfe's say so that Peacock was the culprit; the text gives  
> no hint.

There are a few things I think are hints.  It's revealed that Peacock owned a
car.  He doesn't show up at the funeral, and Weer assumes that he isn't 
grieving (thus revealing that Weer, at least, suspected that it was murder).  
Finally, in the Chinese garden dream, the earthenware troll under the 
bridge possibly resembles Aunt Olivia's ceramic garden gnomes.  And 
in the princess fairy tale, the suitor representing Peacock is the youngest 
son of the king of the gnomes.  However, if Wolfe hadn't confirmed it, I 
suspect I wouldn't be convinced.

> Was that
> nailed-down letter from Peacock to Smart (which would/should not have 
> been on either Weer's real or replica desk) relevant?

> blackmailing Smart, or threatened to, or Smart feared he would. 

It was on the President's desk, so I presumed that Weer saw it when he
went through Julius's files after he inherited the company, and that Julius
received it when he was President, thus probably after Olivia's death.  
This means Weer couldn't have seen it before Aunt Olivia's funeral (and 
how would he have gotten his hands on Julius's private mail anyway?),
so I don't see that it could be Weer's grounds for suspicion at the funeral.

> Perhaps,
> been aggravated by hypertension". 

Alternatively, he could have died from medical disorders brought on by guilt.

> What if the choice not to speak to one another after
> wealth being sapped by the Depression, he took advantage of the 
> situation to make Julius an offer he couldn't refuse? In a Faustian twist, 
> Weer agreed to a fixed term of silent service--say twenty-five years--at 
> the end of which Julius would hand over the company to him and fade 
> away--maybe to join the circus or live on the beach in Florida. Smart 
> would have accumulated a handsome personal fortune by then, enough 
> to live out his days in comfort.  Smart would have only been in his early
> sixties when Weer took over his company. 
> People just assume that Smart had to die in order for Weer to gain

I like the idea that Weer doesn't speak to Julius because he suspects
complicity in Aunt Olivia's death.  I don't know that I believe that Weer
would have voiced his suspicions at this point, as I don't see how he could
have any proof, so I don't buy a Faustian pact at this point.  Maybe after
the coldhouse incident.  

I also think (for reasons connected with the Doris story, which I'll put in 
my 
next posting), that Smart had to be dead by the time Charles Turner spoke 
with Weer, which means it is very likely that Weer inherited when Smart 
died. But alternatively, the terms of the pact could have been that Weer
inherited from Smart (which he would likely have done anyway, if he was 
Smart's closest living relative).

-- Stone Ox

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From: StoneOx17 <stoneox17 at aol.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 19:50:59 +0000

> it look bigger? Anyone know?

There's another possible reason for one
of Smart's shoulders to be higher than the
other.  Mr. Tilly seems to have killed his
dogs, wife, and son with side effects of
the "medicines" he was testing on them.
If he was trying out his new "hunchback 
medicine" on his assistant before he died,
this could account for Smart's shoulders.

It seems like this should have taken more
than five days, but I've argued before that
part of Smart's story of Mr. Tilly may be a 
lie (note that Smart is described as having 
a long nose) and that Mr. Tilly was really
poisoned by Smart.  

-- 
Stone Ox

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 13:17:36 +0000

on 10/14/02 4:37 AM, Roy C. Lackey at rclackey at stic.net wrote:

> in Olivia's death, whether before or after the fact?
[snip]
> What if Weer

An interesting speculation; but it strikes me as unlikely that, had Weer
been in a position to blackmail Smart in his youth, he would have chosen to
live in poverty for twenty-five years and collect only in his fifties,
rather than ensure a comfortable living now.  (Not to mention that your
scenario would provide Smart ample time to dispose of the Weer "problem" in
other ways.)  I'm inclined to agree with mantis: Smart was president and
Weer a lowly engineer, they hadn't hit it off at Olivia's, and once Olivia
was dead, there was no reason for them to stay in contact.  As for why Weer
inherited, Smart did have other relatives, but they were distant; and he may
have preferred to leave the factory to someone who knew the business, though
related only by marriage, rather than a distant relative by blood who might
wreck the business through ignorance.

(It just occurred to me, though: is it certain that Weer did in fact receive
the company from Smart, by inheritance or otherwise?  Is it possible that he
was simply chosen president by the board after Smart's death or retirement,
and got rich through his salary (and stock options)?  Perhaps he had worked
his way up to head of research by that time, and so been in a position to be
considered for the presidency; and his connection by marriage to Smart might
have also worked in his favor.  A quick look at the book didn't turn up
anything to rule this out, though I may be forgetting something obvious.  At
any rate, I have no attachment to this idea; I just throw it out as another
possibility.)

--Adam

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 21:46:40 +0000

Adam wrote:
[snip]
> As for why Weer

Perhaps; it's just that I have a hard time believing that a man would
willingly leave his estate to someone he wouldn't even speak to. I wouldn't
allow it to happen; it strikes me as "contrary to everyday experience".

>any rate, I have no attachment to this idea; I just throw it out as another

Neither am I attached to the idea that Smart didn't necessarily die in order
for Weer to inherit. It just seems to me that Weer had to have had a good
reason for sticking with that dead-end job for twenty-five years. After
W.W.II, jobs for a college-educated man in his early thirties shouldn't have
been hard to find. So why did Weer stay there?

The theory that Julius was, in effect, blackmailing Weer (in the wake of the
coldhouse prank) to get him to work for slave wages, if true, might have
given Julius some vindictive satisfaction, but it would have had little
impact on the bottom line. One cheap laborer, more or less, was
insignificant, given the large number of employees at the plant. Also, if
Julius was that petty, that's all the more reason to doubt he would
willingly leave the company to Weer.

And the company _was_ Weer's. He wasn't just president; he was also "board
chairman and chief stockholder" (108). The board of a corporation is not in
a legal position to bequeath a majority of its stock to an employee, even if
the board were inclined to do so, which isn't likely. If Smart died
intestate, which I doubt, the courts could have and probably would have
found a closer relative. And those relatives would have been clamoring for a
chunk of the pie. No, Smart had to have passed the company to Weer legally.

While writing about the construction of his memory mansion, Weer says:
"Furthermore I made the mistake, when the company at last came into my hands
and I had funds enough to build, of duplicating, or nearly duplicating,
certain well-remembered rooms whose furnishings had fallen to me by
inheritance." (35) It's that "at last" which makes me inclined to believe
that he had reason to believe that he would someday get his hands on Smart's
company. That's why I was looking for a reason for him to believe that, and
to have stayed with the company for twenty-five years. When Aaron asked if
Weer would "come into some stock when Uncle Julius kicks off", Weer's answer
isn't an answer. "Do I look like a fair-haired boy?" is just a rhetorical
brush off, and the part about Smart not speaking to him for twenty-five
years tells me, at least, that Smart wouldn't have put Weer in his will if
he could help it.

-Roy

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 13:48:43 +0000

> allow it to happen; it strikes me as "contrary to everyday experience".

If he doesn't speak to Weer because of loathing, yes.  If, as I and mantis
have argued, they just don't have occasion to speak to each other, then it's
not so strange, given that we don't know of any other relatives Smart speaks
to.  In any case, your scenario seems more unlikely to me, especially given
the added twist of Smart as serial killer who lets his blackmailer live
untouched for twenty-five years.

> been hard to find. So why did Weer stay there?

If Weer is blackmailing Julius to get the company when Julius was
sixty-something, why does he have to stick around if he can get a better job
elsewhere?

> chairman and chief stockholder" (108).

Well, a "chief stockholder" isn't necessarily a majority stockholder, just
the individual with the most shares.  And if Weer is indeed the owner of the
company, than why doesn't the doctor (or Weer speaking through the doctor)
just say "owner"?

> The board of a corporation is not in
> the board were inclined to do so, which isn't likely.

As I said above, it doesn't have to be a majority.  And the board of a
corporation can grant stock options to an executive; I believe they can even
issue new stock and give that to their executives.  Or Weer could have
bought the stock himself from his salary as president and board chairman.
But, as I said before, I'm not attached to this scenario; I just present it
as oone possible solution.

> company.

Perhaps; but if he was lying by implication to Aaron about inheriting from
Smart, he could also have been lying about not having spoken to Smart.

Another objection to your scenario just occurred to me: if Weer were indeed
blackmailing Smart, and if the payoff were not to come for twenty-five
years, is it really likely that Weer would not once in those years have
approached Smart to remind Smart of his hold over him, and make sure Smart
hadn't changed his mind?

--Adam

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From: David DiGiacomo <david at slack.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 02:27:12 +0000

>she confessed to Julius?

This is saying that the repentance took place after her marriage, not the
sex.  I don't see any evidence of infidelity in the passage.

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 05:17:27 +0000

>sex.  I don't see any evidence of infidelity in the passage.

Remember the infamous "leather-covered couch"? Weer wondered ". . .if Mr.
Macafee had ever been able to explain to himself why my aunt, who had been
impossible of access before her marriage, had become so easy after . . ."
(180) In fact, it was while crossing Main Street after one such tryst, from
Macafee's store to Dubarry's Bakery, that she was killed by Peacock.

-Roy

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