{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3512", "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": 3512, "subject": "PEACE: Sherry as Mrs. Ted Singer?", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-10-24T23:19:36+00:00", "last": "2002-10-25T12:58:51+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-10-24T23:19:36+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: Sherry as Mrs. Ted Singer?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Here's a wild thought: what if swinging Ted Singer did the honorable thing\nand married bad-girl Sherry Gold?\n\nThere has always been a strange link between the two in the text. When\nSherry tells Ted, in the waiting room, \"I've got . . . \" many re-readers\nhave voiced the opinion that while they expect her to be saying \"I'm\n[pregnant],\" given the sentence construction, she must be saying \"I've got\n[v.d.].\"\n\nSherry tells Weer that she has had sex with two \"boys at school,\" but she\nmay be lying about the age of one (one must be a school boy -- she wears\nnext years graduation ring on a chain, iirc). Readers suspect that Sherry\nat 16 is pregnant because Dr. Van Ness says she is putting on weight.\n\nTwenty-something Ted Singer has that memorable sequence about, basically,\ncruising along and picking up high-school girls like Melissa and/or Lisa\nand having sex with them.\n\nWeer, for his part, has an ingrained habit of referring to women by their\nmaiden names.\n\nIf Sherry is pregnant, by one of three fellows, Ted might well be her first\nchoice to try and pressure into marriage.\n\nIf Sherry marries Ted, then we can see how Weer would know about her for\nthe rest of her life.\n\nAs for what Sherry said in the waiting room, I think it was something like\n\"I've got cancer.\" That is, the voice of 1970s Sherry is grafted on the\nimage of 1950s Sherry, and the message of Sherry's impending death is there\nand Weer does not want to hear it.\n\nGranted, this is all pretty vaporous. Except there is a haunting line\nabout a female singer in the desert, which comes after . . . well look:\n\n(Berkley 63; Doubleday 66)\n\nPara beginning: \"It is very hard for me to remember sometimes that my aunt\nOlivia is dead.\"\n\nNext line: some sort of religious/philosophical argument between Aaron Gold\nand Ted Singer (which must have been before Aaron quit, i.e., before Weer\nhad sex with Sherry).\n\nNext para: about the birth of children.\n\nNext para: about Ted Singer having sex with teenage girls.\n\nNext para: about death. About seeing a woman in the desert, hearing her\nsong as she moves out of view, we wait for the next note but it does not\ncome; we go to find her, there are only bones and rags.\n\nThis sequence, starting off with Olivia, then slewing around to Ted's\nargument with Sherry's brother, a seeming digression on the birth of\nchildren, then Ted's sexcapades (flowing from the birth part, as if to\nanswer where they come from), and ending on a sad note about a female\nsinger suddenly dying . . . well, it has a lot of weight to it.\n\nOlivia's sudden death cast a long shadow over Weer's life, but the death of\nSherry seems to have triggered his non-fatal yet debilitating stroke. Weer\nis very skittish about dealing with Sherry's death, since it also points to\nhis own; so when he sees her in the waiting room he regresses her to the\nsafe age of 16, etc.\n\n===\nTEXTUAL VARIATION ALERT\nIn the hc it is \"twenty . . . pounds underweight\" (3).\nIn the Berkley pb it is \"twenty . . . pounds overweight\" (3).\n===\n\nI'm certain we have talked in the past about the argument between Ted and\nAaron as being about Sherry: I recall someone writing that the \"religious\"\nangle was probably something like \"Keep your filthy goyim paws off my\nsister!\" and the \"philosophical\" part was \"Play the field around the plant\nlike I do or I'll have you arrested for statutory rape!\"\n\nI don't recall if we've ever discussed Sherry as Mrs. Ted Singer, but if we\nhave, please remind me! I'm ready to believe.\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSirius Fiction\nbooklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley\n29 copies of \"Snake's-hands\" until OP!\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "StoneOx17", "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com" }, "date": "2002-10-25T12:58:51+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: Sherry as Mrs. Ted Singer?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Mantis writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Here's a wild thought: what if swinging Ted Singer did the honorable \nthing and married bad-girl Sherry Gold?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But that same paragraph shows Ted marries Melissa. \"... two-headed\nTed and Lisa into which each less-than-half had vanished more or less \nutterly and (though the monster is not completely indissoluble still) \nnever to reappear.\"\n\nDespite the usual meaning of \"the beast with two backs,\" the \"never \nto reappear\" makes it clear that in this case, Wolfe is talking about \nmarriage and not just sex.\n\nBut I suspect that you're right that Ted was one of the boys Sherry \nslept with. Do we really know that Ted and Sherry weren't in high \nschool together? Is there anything that puts Ted working with Aaron \nand Den in the same time frame as the Gold Hunt, and not a couple \nof years later, when Ted might be out of high school? Did Ted go to \ncollege? Would that be a job requirement?\n\n-- Stone Ox" } ] } ] }