{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3517", "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": 3517, "subject": "PEACE: trolls and troglodytes", "messages": 6, "voices": 5, "first": "2002-10-28T01:59:51+00:00", "last": "2002-11-07T23:36:21+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "StoneOx17", "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com" }, "date": "2002-10-28T01:59:51+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: trolls and troglodytes", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Inspired by mantis's identification of Santa Claus as the switcher of \nthe presents, I reread the section of Peace containing Christmas at \nGrandfather's.I am inclined to agree that Santa Claus switched the \npearls and the toilet water, but still think the stories in the books \nwere switched only in Weer's memory, as I contend the three Irish \nstories have also been similarly switched (although I admit I don't \nunderstand how the St. Brandon story reflects in the book at all).\n\nThat's not my main reason for this posting, though. I noticed the \nfollowing line: \n\n\"... trolls (of whose existence I remained convinced for years after \nthis visit, as I remained, for that matter, convinced of the reality of \nSanta Claus).\" \n\nSo, if Santa Claus is real, then trolls presumably are as well. We \nalready have a candidate. From mantis' \"scattered notes\" on Peace, \nwe have" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "6) Weer's dream last night of age 25 in the Chinese garden. \nThe dead bird= Olivia, the toppled troll = Peacock; both dead by \ntime Weer is 25. Dream like the china pillow story in style \n(the wall and the plain) and in reality (old man Weer revisiting \nyoung Weer's situation)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Prof. Peacock certainly has some trollish properties. He is associated \nwith caves, as he finds the cave with the skull and also he proposes to \nAunt Olivia that they \"'live like the troglodytes known to classical writers' \nand 'to Montesquieu' \". Could Aunt Olivia have been killed while in some \nsense on a bridge (or is crossing a street somehow a modern correlate)? \nDid Prof. Peacock die by being turned to stone?\n\nAnd finally, and I think most exciting, I found the troglodytes \"known to\nMontesquieu\" that Prof. Peacock mentioned. Did anybody think of \nlooking for them before? ... It would have been a lot harder before the web. \nAnyway, they can be found in letters 11 and 12 of Montesquieu's \"Persian \nLetters\" (Lettres persanes). To me, they seem quite clearly relevant for \nPeace. These two letters are quite short, and it's impossible for me to do \nthem justice with a summary, so I'll simply give the URL, and say that if \nthese are indeed the trolls Wolfe is talking about, then they are in a sense \nreal, and Prof. Peacock appears to be is one of their number. The URL \nI found is:\nhttp://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Montesquieu%20-%20Letters.htm\n\n--Stone Ox" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-10-28T08:10:41+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: trolls and troglodytes", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Stone Ox wrote:\nProf. Peacock certainly has some trollish properties. He is associated\nwith caves, as he finds the cave with the skull and also he proposes to\nAunt Olivia that they \"'live like the troglodytes known to classical\nwriters'\nand 'to Montesquieu' \". Could Aunt Olivia have been killed while in some\nsense on a bridge (or is crossing a street somehow a modern correlate)?\nDid Prof. Peacock die by being turned to stone?\n\nAnd finally, and I think most exciting, I found the troglodytes \"known to\nMontesquieu\" that Prof. Peacock mentioned. Did anybody think of\nlooking for them before? ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, I don't recall that anyone has. Great find!\n\nThe two \"letters\" might be summed up as pointing the moral that \"virtue is\nits own reward\" (as regards the original question addressed in the letters).\nHowever, I have trouble associating Peacock with the selfish troglodytes.\nThe sentence which contains that quote begins, \"Professor Peacock--that\nlean, good-natured man . . .\" I always thought he was the best choice among\nthe three original suitors, even though the poorest. He would never be rich\nas a teacher, which seems to me the major strike against him, in Olivia's\neyes, though he was closest to her own age and shared a common intellectual\nbackground lacking in the other two. Had Wolfe not named him as her killer,\nI would never have thought it of him. That he did kill her seems to exclude\nhim from the idyllic second generation of trogs encountered in the second\nletter.\n\nThat sentence I mentioned is one of those long, convoluted ones Wolfe uses\nfrom time to time. Those kinds of sentences are always hard to puzzle out.\nThe ending of that one has always bugged me: \". . . save when some new\narrival, some promising new member of the faculty, was at table and the\nfuture of the whole establishment turned, as upon less than a hair, on his\njudgement--when they would have roast pork and dressing, particularly if it\nwas July.\" Why July? In the first quarter of the last century food\ndistribution and preservation was nothing like today, when all sorts of\nthings may be had out of season. While smoked pork products might be found\nyear-round in rural areas then, hog-slaughtering time was, and remains,\nprimarily in the autumn. Wolfe knows this: it was one of the ways Severian\nmarked the turning of the seasons when he was a boy, iirc, by fresh pork\nappearing on his plate. I don't understand what Wolfe was saying here.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-10-28T15:41:30+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: trolls and troglodytes", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks to Stone Ox for pointing us toward an online version of PERSIAN LETTERS.\n\nThe section under discussion does not give, imho, an accurate sense of what\nthat novel is about. IIRC, it is about a Persian travelling in Europe,\ntold through his letters to friends in Persia describing his adventures in\nthe exotic West, and letters from his friends to him. As might be guessed\nfrom such a set up, beneath the travelogue it is a satire of French\ninstitutions, customs, etc.\n\nI read PERSIAN LETTERS around 15 years ago and have not looked at it since.\n(I regret not adding more to the \"Montesquieu\" entry in the \"PEACE\nIndexicon\": even though space was getting tight, I really could/should have\nadded the novel's title. I wrote it into my personally annotated copy and\nencourage others to do the same.) Without looking again at the text I had\nsupposed that the troglodytes were a European group, but they are not. So\nthe section by itself reads like a straight entry from Pliny the Elder's\nnatural history.\n\nPERSIAN LETTERS has a more immediately direct link to Wolfe's \"Seven\nAmerican Nights,\" I think, where the hero is a Persian travelling in the\nformer USA." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Stone Ox wrote:\nProf. Peacock certainly has some trollish properties. He is associated\nwith caves, as he finds the cave with the skull and also he proposes to\nAunt Olivia that they \"'live like the troglodytes known to classical writers'\nand 'to Montesquieu' \". Could Aunt Olivia have been killed while in some\nsense on a bridge (or is crossing a street somehow a modern correlate)?\nDid Prof. Peacock die by being turned to stone?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There is also the gnome suitor in the green book story.\n\nI think the bridge is there in the Chinese garden dream because trolls are\noften depicted as living under bridges.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mark Millman", "address": "millman at heimdallr.dyndns.org" }, "date": "2002-10-28T16:25:44+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: trolls and troglodytes", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Roy,\n\nWolfe is saying that Peacock would have been indulging\nin conspicuous consumption so as to impress the visit-\ning faculty member. A digression is in order here:\nDuring the nineteenth century, enterprising vendors in\nlarge cities customarily set up booths along the main\nstreets on Independence Day, at which they would sell\nroast suckling pig. There are contemporary descrip-\ntions of the aroma of roast pork floating over Manhat-\ntan while booths lined all of Broadway. Roast pork in\nJuly would be both festive and, for an individual in\nPeacock's financial position, likely to be a signifi-\ncant expenditure--the vendors in the cities were often\nfarmers who were willing to spare a pig for the anti-\ncipated profits, but Peacock might have to pay a con-\nsiderable sum to get one from a local farmer for his\nown use (especially if the sucklings had already been\nculled for the Fourth), and--since Olivia doesn't cook\n--to have it prepared in suitable style. These pork\ndinners might be among the couple's few luxuries--Pea-\ncock is, after all, envisaging them as troglodytes in\nthis passage (page 45 of the hardcover and Orb trade;\n43 of the Berkeley paperback)--but they would clearly\nhave come at some cost, both in money and in stress.\n\nMark Millman" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\n[snip]\n\nThat sentence I mentioned is one of\nthose long, convoluted ones Wolfe uses\nfrom time to time. Those kinds of sen-\ntences are always hard to puzzle out.\nThe ending of that one has always bug-\nged me: \". . . save when some new ar-\nrival, some promising new member of\nthe faculty, was at table and the fu-\nture of the whole establishment turned,\nas upon less than a hair, on his judge-\nment--when they would have roast pork\nand dressing, particularly if it was\nJuly.\" Why July? In the first quarter\nof the last century food distribution\nand preservation was nothing like to-\nday, when all sorts of things may be\nhad out of season. While smoked pork\nproducts might be found year-round in\nrural areas then, hog-slaughtering\ntime was, and remains, primarily in\nthe autumn. Wolfe knows this: it was\none of the ways Severian marked the\nturning of the seasons when he was a\nboy, iirc, by fresh pork appearing on\nhis plate. I don't understand what\nWolfe was saying here.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-10-28T20:38:47+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: trolls and troglodytes", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mark Millman wrote:\nWolfe is saying that Peacock would have been indulging\nin conspicuous consumption so as to impress the visit-\ning faculty member." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks, Mark.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2002-11-07T23:36:21+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: trolls and troglodytes", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 10/28/02 10:25 AM, Mark Millman at millman at heimdallr.dyndns.org wrote:\nRoy,\n\nWolfe is saying that Peacock would have been indulging\nin conspicuous consumption so as to impress the visit-\ning faculty member." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not quite. The key line is \"the future of the whole establishment turned,\nas upon less than a hair, on his judgment.\" (45, hc) It is not Peacock, but\nthe proprietor of the boarding house who will serve roast pork; the \"new\nmember of the faculty\" is not just visiting, but considering taking a room\nat the house, and the purpose of the pork is not merely to impress him, but\nto mislead him into thinking pork is regularly on the menu.\n\n--Adam" } ] } ] }