Nutria wrote concerning my recent confusion of names...
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Yes. Twas me. But Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil, where the original man-eating
shark dwelt.
You see? I even get the names of my trees mixed up.
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But I'm hampered in analysis, not having the full text.
It might have been better if, suffering a similar lack, I had shared your reticence!
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Well, how likely is it that Wolfe managed to
find Severian's memoirs after they travelled
the corridors of time? And Latro's journal,
for that matter? Somehow, he gets hold of these
things. No one knows how. He's not telling.
He's obviously got some kind of inside track.
The ancients speculated that all things lost on earth might eventually end up on the moon. That, for example, is where Ariosto located Orlando's lost wits. But Ariosto and the ancients were wrong. The Limbo of the Lost is actually located in the basement of an ordinary-looking house in the suburbs of Chicago. Manuscripts, stories and ideas lost in other times, places and dimensions all end up there.
The owner of the basement comes down early every morning, dusts them all off and, having selected the finest and most unusual, proceeds to polish them and polish them until they shine with a light to rival that of the new sun at its zenith. He then passes them on to a merchant who lives on a high tor, and he in turn sells them to curious and discerning collectors around the world. They treasure these strange findings, though few understand their true meaning or purpose.
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Maybe the Outsider gives them to him.
I'm sure He does.
I still, on balance, see "The Tree is my Hat" as a story of damnation rather than a "just in time" repentance. I'm fascinated to find, though, as so often before, that when I look, or in this case listen, hard enough, I find a sort of counter-current running through the story which hints at a possible outcome completely opposite from the one that I still think is intended.
Just to illustrate how another writer might have tackled the story, here is the ending of the journal kept by another doomed narrator, this time the hero of the embedded tale in William Hope Hodgson's gothic masterpiece, The House on the Borderland (1908). The hero lives in a castle built over a chasm leading to a hellish parallel dimension. We join the story near the end. The hero is writing his journal, even as The Monster is finally about to break through into the castle and Get Him...
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"Hush! I hear something, down - down in the
cellars. It is a creaking sound. My God, it
is the opening of the great, oak trap. What
can be doing that? The scratching of my pen
deafens me.... I must listen.... There are
steps on the stairs; strange padding steps,
that come up and nearer.... Jesus, be
merciful to me, an old man. There is
something fumbling at the door-handle.
O God, help me now! Jesus - The door is
opening - slowly. Somethi-"
That is all.
Note.-From the unfinished word, it is
possible, on the MS, to trace a faint line
of ink, which suggests that the pen has
trailed away over the paper; possibly
through fright and weakness.-Ed.
I've always thought that this was a great ending, even if the idea of the hero scratching away at his journal while the Monster climbs the stairs and enters the room is patently ludicrous. (If only he had had a dictaphone!) But you don't have any doubt that the hero is going to meet An Awful Fate.
There are similarities with the ending of "The Tree is my Hat", but Wolfe, a far more sophisticated artist, says much less, and ends his narrative well before his hero actually encounters the fatal thunderstorm.
Incidentally, Hodgson provides a frame story to explain exactly how he and his friend discovered the doomed man's manuscript, which he then "edited" for publication. Wolfe does a little of this TBotNS, but provides no such account for "The Tree is my Hat".
Nigel