Subject: (urth) PEACE: some scattered notes

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 16:14:57 +0000

Here are some notes from my recent rereading.  Hardcover this time.

1) branding as a finalization "brand new" -- steps of a process, near end
of sequence but prior to actual use.  (Weer's progress a similar process?
He is finalized in the end and taken elsewhere for actual use?)

2) Weer half-living, half-dead.  The stroke has crippled his left side.

3) Kate Boyne telling Hannah Mill (with Maud Mill and baby Mary Mill) the
banshee story c. 1860.  Kate Boyne sees Den from c. 1920 (60 years later),
Hannah sees him, too.  Kate sees someone else, a person Hannah cannot see
(PEACE published in the mid-seventies, about 60 years after Hannah told
Weer the story, and now Weer is telling the reader the story).  Kate seems
to have been awakened: first boundary violation.

Kate Boyne has a role in 4 out of 5 sections: first Hannah Mills tells Weer
Katie's tale of the Banshee; then Doherty tells about Old Kate and St. B's
boat; (nothing immediately obvious in section 3); then Kate's diary and the
Quantrill encounter; finally Dan French's sidhe story.

4) Weer's fifth birthday party: first the women forge the treaty, then the
fall of Bobby Black.  (Text presents fall then forgery.)

5) Weer's Christmas presents at age five: the knife and a book.  Is it the
one containing "princess and her three suitors" and ben Yahya?  Yes, it
seems! (167, 194)

6) Weer's dream last night of age 25 in the Chinese garden.  The dead bird
= Olivia, the toppled troll = Peacock; both dead by time Weer is 25.  Dream
like the china pillow story in style (the wall and the plain) and in
reality (old man Weer revisiting young Weer's situation).

7) Kate seeing Weer; Weer believing he is imagining Dr. Van Ness; Weer
believing he imagined visiting Dr. Van Ness.

8) Porcelain objects: the Napoleon figure, the elephant foot rest, the
china pillow.

9) China Pillow Story.  Wishes come true, even the wish to start over
again.  But it also reflects "a man who dreamed his future" which is a case
of ben Yahya : Weer (age 9), as well as the "last man" fantasies : Weer
(aged beyond death).

10) Smart's tale of Tilly.  Lonely guy used to talking to himself ->
frametale Weer (who may be talking to himself)

11) Writing materials: first mentioned in interruption of Tilly Tale (145),
notebook and pen (next para), scribbling (159).  The TAT card showing
writer comes later (166), so it is not being originated there.  Pen, paper,
illness (194).  Notebook and pen, writing in the apartment in the Commons
(216).

Weer is no more "writing" anything than he is "imagining" anything; he is
haunting through time and space.  He is a confused ghost, but he is getting
better!

12) Smart's vest and gold chain in the 1950s (159).

13) Frametale Weer hears door close (162).

14) Map problems: Gold's Books "1 1/2 blocks" from Macafee/Dubarry's (192),
so on map switch Mulberry and Plum?  And Gold's is by River Street, too.
More than 3 blocks from Olivia's house/city library (192).

15) Bella's ghost article (195-200) and Gold's "reminiscences of vanished
circles of wits ( . . . mostly about jokes played after midnight in the
corridors of second rate hotels)" (168): possibly a mundane explanation for
the event.

16) Wish he could find the Persian Room (200)

17) Weer leaves Dr. Van Ness's office as president again (236), post-stroke
(250).

18) Two pictures (243), where letter said only one included and described
Candy photo in g-string and pasties (238).
    "tramp" woman who looks like Carole Lombard
    tall man (presumed Tom Lavine the Canadian Giant) wearing vest and gold
chain, standing next to another man

19) Dan French reminds Weer of who?  First seems like ghost of coldhouse.
Then seems like Doherty, which is the link to Kate Boyne.

20) Spray tower: a rain that dries before it hits the ground echoes that
circle in the Inferno (258).

21) The old potato farmer drags his =left= leg (259).

=mantis=

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 19:10:18 +0000

Just a few observations. My page numbers are for the Berkley paperback.

>one containing "princess and her three suitors" and ben Yahya?  Yes, it

Den was about 6-and-a-half (May to December) years old that Christmas. (17)

>8) Porcelain objects: the Napoleon figure, the elephant foot rest, the

You forgot the famous egg! (106)

>illness (194).  Notebook and pen, writing in the apartment in the Commons

I don't know if it is significant, but just before writing of Arabella's
article he mentions using a pen, in the frametale memory-mansion office
(181). As a child Den was probably using a pencil to "scribble on paper, and
to draw little pictures", as his mother told Bella just before Bella started
reading. After writing of the article, he says he has left the office for
"Mab Crawford's kitchen", where he sits "still scratching with my little
pencil, at her kitchen table" (187). It seems Weer has reverted from
grown-up president to child, in the frametale, or is trying to.

-Roy

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