{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3679", "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": 3679, "subject": "Free Live Free: Liberty Four", "messages": 2, "voices": 1, "first": "2002-12-16T23:56:01+00:00", "last": "2002-12-17T02:12:10+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-12-16T23:56:01+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Free Live Free: Liberty Four", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam Stephanides wrote:\nThis response is way late, but..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It is not that late, really!\n\nI'll start with the last bit first:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And if the four will not become the quadrumvirate of Madame Serpentina's\nprediction, what was the point of including the prediction at all?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It is a common staple of myths, fairy tales, and genre to have prophesies\ncome true, but with a surprise twist -- that is, they come true, in a\nsense, but not exactly as everyone assumed they would. This is different\nfrom sacred writings, where prophesies come absolutely true with no\nambiguities. I believe I can think of examples where Wolfe uses prophesies\nthat come true with a twist, but I cannot remember a single case where a\nprophesy comes absolutely true with no ambiguities and no twists.\n\nIf Madame Serpentina's prediction comes absolutely true with no ambiguities\nand no twists, then it would be as you say -- they would be, let's call\nthem, the Liberty Four. Allow me to develop the idea further." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Having reread the end of FLF (from the man in the duffel coat's speech), I\nsee that I'd gotten the circumstances of Free's death wrong, and that the\nU.S. government is no longer being run from the High Country. But\nnevertheless I think my reading still holds up. When the man in the duffel\ncoat arranges to have the four's dreams crushed, he is acting (he thinks) as\nan agent of Big Government; granted, it's the Big Government of 1942, but I\nvery much doubt that Wolfe thinks the federal government has improved since\nthen. And the man in the duffel coat's speech, it seems to me, establishes\nBig Government as the book's philosophical antagonist, whether or not he\nbelieves it himself at this point.\n\nI see the revelation that Whitten who will become Free is on the High\nCountry, and that he has been \"conspiring\" to help the four (unknown to his\npast self as well as to his subordinates), not as undermining the anti-Big\nGovernment position, but as Wolfe's way of giving the story a fairy-tale\nhappy ending -- like Dorothy learning that she can still get home even\nthough the balloon is gone, if you will." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "When Stubb asks duffle-coat why he had \"tried to take all of you [four]\ndown as far as we could,\" duffle-coat answers, \"Because those were our\norders from on top\" (end of chapter 54, p. 365). I assume this is what you\nare referring to.\n\nOpinions will differ as to where he thinks he is getting those orders from;\nwhether he is lying or not; etc.\n\nBefore this, duffle-coat has described HC as a government above the president:\n\n\"The President's not one of the key people. Never has been. Basically a\nfront man. These were the decision makers\" (p. 357).\n\nTechnically the key people could be members of Congress, but there is a\ndefinite \"non-elected\" sound to what he is saying, which suggests, imho,\nthat HC is living up to its image as Laputa: a sky-castle of illuminati\npuppet-masters. Or we could be more pedestrian and call them the\nmilitary/industrial complex. In any event, HC is an emergency shadow\ngovernment established in time of terrible war and not entirely dismantled\n40-odd years later.\n\nNow sure, if you like you can say Wolfe is attacking FDR and FDR's legacy,\nbut I think you have to say that it is an oblique attack, since it isn't\nsome vague FDR-thing in the text, it is a specific not-real thing, the High\nCountry cabinet. Wolfe is not talking about income tax, or welfare state,\nor makework programs, or any of that stuff in Archie Bunker's song: he is\nsaying that the governing of the country had been taken over by a secret\nplutocracy. It is less \"Big Government\" than it is conspiracy theory; it\nis less FDR's programs than the fact that as a president he made this\nchoice to protect the country from Hitler (who had his own weird powers\nthing going, according to the text) and presumably even a Republican or\nSocialist president would have done the same.\n\nLook, duffle-coat paints a downbeat picture of American from the moment the\nEuropeans arrive -- the arrival of FDR's government is hardly the worst (in\nfact, it doesn't even seem to rank at all)! But the take-over of the\nelected government by a plutocratic cabal is that nightmare scenario shared\nby far-Left and far-Right, as well as the entertainment media: if this is\nthe source of the curse that has turned 1980s America into a dreary Kansas,\nthen yes, the Liberty Four can expose the shadow government, putting the\nfat cats into prison and releasing political prisoners, and restore \"Ozma\"\n(democratically elected government) to the throne. (Gee, that sounds more\nand more like Oz book #2!) Making the prediction come true.\n\n(Duffle-coat seems a bit disillusioned with things at the time of that\nspeech. His break with the HC command may be starting with these weird\norders to torment a bunch of nobodies and send them up to HC.)\n\nFurthermore, if this is the case, then the four must represent not just\nindividuals but American society: Candy does not represent abstract\nGluttony but American Gluttony/Obesity; Ozzie is American satyrism/deadbeat\ndads; the witch is American occultism; and Stubb is American cynicism.\nThat is to say, they must each exihibit a facet of \"what is wrong with\nAmerica,\" and thus as they are healed, America is healed/balanced/made\nright again.\n\nThe answer then is not \"return to the frontier\" but \"return to the republic.\"\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-12-17T02:12:10+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Free Live Free: Liberty Four", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I should mention that a lot of inspiration for the Liberty Four came from\nMrs. Baker's comment to Robin Valor:\n\n\"But look at the way we do here. We don't try to change the way things\nare. If one of those boys down the street steals a car, why he goes to\nprison for years. But if some rich man that's had everything a person\ncould want all his life steals a million dollars, the only thing that\nhappens is he doesn't get elected again unless he's pretty lucky. The\ncomics in the paper have all these men that fight against crime. If they\nwere real, they'd go and find that man and shoot him. Maybe if we were\nreal, we'd do the same thing\" (ch. 42, p. 284).\n\nWhat Mrs. Baker is saying sounds like a call for a Chinese-style Cultural\nRevolution (as opposed to the American style counter-culture revolution of\nthe 1960s). But she is identifying a few details which seem to go along\nwith the witch's prediction, as well as the plutocratic situation that\nduffle-coat describes. Which suggested to me the idea of looking at the\nfour as being more like comic book heroes.\n\n=mantis=" } ] } ] }