Subject: Re: (urth) PEACE: embedded stories

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 15:30:27 +0000

Roy wrote:
>What, then, is the relevance of Arabella's magazine article to Weer? I mean,
>most, if not all, of the imbedded stories in PEACE, ghostly or not, can be
>shown to have some bearing on his life, or afterlife, even if only
>indirectly as the story pertains to someone close to him, such as Olivia.
>Arabella's ghost story is inserted into the middle of the account of Weer
>and Lois going to Gold's to pick up the fake Boyne diary. And Weer heard
>that story when he was six, when he and his mother went to her father's for
>Christmas. How is that ghost story related to either of those events?

My current position on the embedded stories has shifted dramatically from
my previous position.  The green book stories are blueprints for Weer's
life, and this because the book is magical.  The two story fragments we
have concern the most important people to Weer: Olivia and himself.  The
other stories are not in the same category, and while they have importance,
I was wrong to try using the same skeleton keys that work on the green book
stories with any of the other stories.  So I've gone back to seeing the
stories as reflecting the teller, for an immediate purpose as well as an
underlying purpose.

As for Aunt Bella's article.  I'm not entirely sure, but I will offer a few
comments.  In the past we have said it illustrates the timewarping nature
of haunting (taking what she sees as being a typical automobile congested
street scene of decades in her future).  What I thought was funny and
telling this time was grampa's argument -- at first one thinks he will say
there are no such things as ghosts, but what he really says is that ghosts
haunt houses and burial grounds!  This seems significant.  Also Bella's
insistance that it was true, and that there was more that she did not write
for fear that it would not be believed.  (And also to point out that Santa
Claus had really visited at grampa's house, when the ghost-expert had not
been there! <g>)

The timewarping nature is touched again in the same section ("Gold") when
Gold reads from the Necronomicon, and the litch tries to banish the unborn
shades of the future from the light of his day.

There are story-tellers, like Kate Boyne, and there is a forger, Lou Gold.
Weer is a writer, not a forger; but he is still just a beginning writer,
only hitting his stride a few centuries after his death.

=mantis=

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