Subject: (urth) PEACE: trolls and troglodytes

From: StoneOx17 <stoneox17 at aol.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 01:59:51 +0000

Inspired by mantis's identification of Santa Claus as the switcher of 
the presents, I reread the section of Peace containing Christmas at 
Grandfather's.I am inclined to agree that Santa Claus switched the 
pearls and the toilet water, but still think the stories in the books 
were switched only in Weer's memory, as I contend the three Irish 
stories have also been similarly switched (although I admit I don't 
understand how the St. Brandon story reflects in the book at all).

That's not my main reason for this posting, though.  I noticed the 
following line: 

"... trolls (of whose existence I remained convinced for years after 
this visit, as I remained, for that matter, convinced of the reality of 
Santa Claus)."  

So, if Santa Claus is real, then trolls presumably are as well.  We 
already have a candidate. From mantis'  "scattered notes" on Peace, 
we have

> 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).

Prof. Peacock certainly has some trollish properties.  He is associated 
with caves, as he finds the cave with the skull and also he proposes to 
Aunt Olivia that they "'live like the troglodytes known to classical writers' 
and 'to Montesquieu' ".  Could Aunt Olivia have been killed while in some 
sense on a bridge (or is crossing a street somehow a modern correlate)?  
Did Prof. Peacock die by being turned to stone?

And finally, and I think most exciting, I found the troglodytes "known to
Montesquieu" that Prof. Peacock mentioned.  Did anybody think of 
looking for them before? ... It would have been a lot harder before the web.  
Anyway, they can be found in letters 11 and 12 of Montesquieu's "Persian 
Letters" (Lettres persanes).  To me, they seem quite clearly relevant for 
Peace.  These two letters are quite short, and it's impossible for me to do 
them justice with a summary, so I'll simply give the URL, and say that if 
these are indeed the trolls Wolfe is talking about, then they are in a sense 
real, and Prof. Peacock appears to be is one of their number.   The URL 
I found is:
http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Montesquieu%20-%20Letters.htm

--Stone Ox

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 08:10:41 +0000

Stone Ox wrote:
>looking for them before? ...

No, I don't recall that anyone has. Great find!

The two "letters" might be summed up as pointing the moral that "virtue is
its own reward" (as regards the original question addressed in the letters).
However, I have trouble associating Peacock with the selfish troglodytes.
The sentence which contains that quote begins, "Professor Peacock--that
lean, good-natured man . . ." I always thought he was the best choice among
the three original suitors, even though the poorest. He would never be rich
as a teacher, which seems to me the major strike against him, in Olivia's
eyes, though he was closest to her own age and shared a common intellectual
background lacking in the other two. Had Wolfe not named him as her killer,
I would never have thought it of him. That he did kill her seems to exclude
him from the idyllic second generation of trogs encountered in the second
letter.

That sentence I mentioned is one of those long, convoluted ones Wolfe uses
from time to time. Those kinds of sentences are always hard to puzzle out.
The ending of that one has always bugged me: ". . . save when some new
arrival, some promising new member of the faculty, was at table and the
future of the whole establishment turned, as upon less than a hair, on his
judgement--when they would have roast pork and dressing, particularly if it
was July." Why July? In the first quarter of the last century food
distribution and preservation was nothing like today, when all sorts of
things may be had out of season. While smoked pork products might be found
year-round in rural areas then, hog-slaughtering time was, and remains,
primarily in the autumn. Wolfe knows this: it was one of the ways Severian
marked the turning of the seasons when he was a boy, iirc, by fresh pork
appearing on his plate. I don't understand what Wolfe was saying here.

-Roy

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 15:41:30 +0000

Thanks to Stone Ox for pointing us toward an online version of PERSIAN LETTERS.

The section under discussion does not give, imho, an accurate sense of what
that novel is about.  IIRC, it is about a Persian travelling in Europe,
told through his letters to friends in Persia describing his adventures in
the exotic West, and letters from his friends to him.  As might be guessed
from such a set up, beneath the travelogue it is a satire of French
institutions, customs, etc.

I read PERSIAN LETTERS around 15 years ago and have not looked at it since.
(I regret not adding more to the "Montesquieu" entry in the "PEACE
Indexicon": even though space was getting tight, I really could/should have
added the novel's title.  I wrote it into my personally annotated copy and
encourage others to do the same.)  Without looking again at the text I had
supposed that the troglodytes were a European group, but they are not.  So
the section by itself reads like a straight entry from Pliny the Elder's
natural history.

PERSIAN LETTERS has a more immediately direct link to Wolfe's "Seven
American Nights," I think, where the hero is a Persian travelling in the
former USA.

>Did Prof. Peacock die by being turned to stone?

There is also the gnome suitor in the green book story.

I think the bridge is there in the Chinese garden dream because trolls are
often depicted as living under bridges.

=mantis=

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From: Mark Millman <millman at heimdallr.dyndns.org>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 16:25:44 +0000

Roy,

Wolfe is saying that Peacock would have been indulging
in conspicuous consumption so as to impress the visit-
ing faculty member.  A digression is in order here:
During the nineteenth century, enterprising vendors in
large cities customarily set up booths along the main
streets on Independence Day, at which they would sell
roast suckling pig.  There are contemporary descrip-
tions of the aroma of roast pork floating over Manhat-
tan while booths lined all of Broadway.  Roast pork in
July would be both festive and, for an individual in
Peacock's financial position, likely to be a signifi-
cant expenditure--the vendors in the cities were often
farmers who were willing to spare a pig for the anti-
cipated profits, but Peacock might have to pay a con-
siderable sum to get one from a local farmer for his
own use (especially if the sucklings had already been
culled for the Fourth), and--since Olivia doesn't cook
--to have it prepared in suitable style.  These pork
dinners might be among the couple's few luxuries--Pea-
cock is, after all, envisaging them as troglodytes in
this passage (page 45 of the hardcover and Orb trade;
43 of the Berkeley paperback)--but they would clearly
have come at some cost, both in money and in stress.

Mark Millman

On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Roy C. Lackey wrote:

> [snip]
> from time to time. Those kinds of sen-
> tences are always hard to puzzle out.
> The ending of that one has always bug-
> ged me: ". . . save when some new ar-
> rival, some promising new member of
> the faculty, was at table and the fu-
> ture of the whole establishment turned,
> as upon less than a hair, on his judge-
> ment--when they would have roast pork
> and dressing, particularly if it was
> July." Why July? In the first quarter
> of the last century food distribution
> and preservation was nothing like to-
> day, when all sorts of things may be
> had out of season. While smoked pork
> products might be found year-round in
> rural areas then, hog-slaughtering
> time was, and remains, primarily in
> the autumn. Wolfe knows this: it was
> one of the ways Severian marked the
> turning of the seasons when he was a
> boy, iirc, by fresh pork appearing on
> his plate. I don't understand what
> Wolfe was saying here.
>
> -Roy

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 20:38:47 +0000

Mark Millman wrote:

>ing faculty member.

Thanks, Mark.

-Roy

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2002 23:36:21 +0000

> in conspicuous consumption so as to impress the visit-

Not quite.  The key line is "the future of the whole establishment turned,
as upon less than a hair, on his judgment." (45, hc)  It is not Peacock, but
the proprietor of the boarding house who will serve roast pork; the "new
member of the faculty" is not just visiting, but considering taking a room
at the house, and the purpose of the pork is not merely to impress him, but
to mislead him into thinking pork is regularly on the menu.

--Adam

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