Subject: (urth) Marble on NPR

From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 21:10:41 +0000

Today on National Public Radio, Terry Gross of "Fresh Air" interviewed poet
Sekou Sundiata about receiving a kidney transplant from a female friend. He
mentioned that transplant recipients sometimes report taking on attributes
of the donors.

It made me think of Marble and Rose.

-- Crush

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From: cilluff1 at optonline.net <cilluff1 at optonline.net>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 21:26:43 +0000

Crush wrote:

<<Today on National Public Radio, Terry Gross of "Fresh Air" interviewed
poet
Sekou Sundiata about receiving a kidney transplant from a female friend. He
mentioned that transplant recipients sometimes report taking on attributes
of the donors.

-- Crush >>

...or the Treehouse of Horror where Homer gets a hair transplant from Snake.

: )

- Joe

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From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 22:22:02 +0000

You know, since you mention it I have to bring up something that's been 
nagging at me persistently since I first read it.

The easiest and most coherent explanation of what happens with Marble and 
Rose is exactly as you describe, that some of the attributes/personality of 
Rose came over with her parts when Marble scavenged them. This is what I 
intuited, at any event, even before Silk realizes what's going on. *But* 
then I got thrown a loop which I find disturbing. There's a passage where 
Rose/Marble is speaking as Rose, which basically implies that she was 
present in Marble *before* the parts came over. I this is the same passage 
where she uses the phrase "reclaim" (in reference to the prosthetics) which 
has led some people here to theorize that it was Marble speaking, and that 
Rose had originally taken those parts from Marble long ago. However, the 
sense of it was that Rose was explaining why she had to take back the parts 
from her old body, and it makes no sense for her to go through this thought 
process (even as a rationalization) unless she was present in Marble just 
beforehand.

Of course, Rose/Marble could just be very confused by what she's gone 
through. I am uncomfortable dismissing it so easily, though.

Chris

>It made me think of Marble and Rose.

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 22:52:05 +0000

Crush wrote...

> The easiest and most coherent explanation of what happens 
> with Marble and Rose is exactly as you describe, that some
> of the attributes/personality of Rose came over with her
> parts when Marble scavenged them. 

Agreement: I understand/understood this* as based on the
holographic model of memory. In this model, we postulate 
memories as stored not in a specific "location" but 
distributed, like the information which constitutes a 
hologram, throughout the host's neural net/nervous system.

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* I mean understanding in the scientific/scientifictional
  sense of "finding a rational/rationalizing explanation 
  for"; with the Books of the Foo Sun, we also have to allow 
  for at least the possibility of a "mystical" and/or 
  "spiritual" explanation, too.
-----

Thus, with a bit of hokey-pokey and handwaving, we say 
that Rose's "parts," connected for so long to her nervous
system, participate in the holographic storage of her memory.
When removed from her body and attached to Marble's, they 
carry that holographic store of memory with them, like the
pieces of a cut-up hologram that still show the "whole" 
picture (albeit with blurred detail: see also Samuel R.
Delany's stories "High Weir" and "Time Considered as a 
Semi-Precious Stone"). 

I expect that, yes, Rorble/Mase does undergo a great deal of
confusion, leading to the comments you cite. Later, she makes
comments about how she had not fully "integrated" Rose's 
memories.

The Morsle/Rabe case also sets up (though I do not think 
it "foreshadows" in the sense that Wolfe probably did not
have the plot of SS in mind when he created this particular
situation) the confusing state of the Narrator of SS.

I can't help wondering, though, whether Wolfe intended a
sly tribute to William Gibson in this. After all, I think
it reasonable to refer to the memories that Marble receives
from her beneficiary as "Fragments of a Hologram Rose."

Scurrying _very_ quickly under the sink,

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