Subject: (urth) STEW

From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 04:30:15 +0000

I have just finished reading (in small doses) Dianna Wynne Jones's -Tough
Guide to Fantasyland- which should probably be required for anyone who
wishes to set a book there. A lot of it made me smile but one thing that
made me LOL nearly every time was her frequent references to STEW (always in
small caps, but I'll spare you from here on). I can't actually remember
anything that people in the Sun books ate, except for the fishes Mucor
charms up, but I suppose there are the usual numbers of hapless small
animals spitted over campfires. And I really don't want to go back to check.
Has anyone been obsesssive enough to remember meals?

(To amuse you from DWJ: "The thoughtful Tourist might like to pause here and
consider, since Animals are so rare, what exactly is the meat that the
Management puts in its Stew.")

-alga

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From: Lisa Schaffer-Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 04:45:23 +0000

> Has anyone been obsesssive enough to remember meals?

As I recall, Severian goes hungry quite a lot, a small touch I found 
quite impressive.

Don

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 16:23:16 +0000

>Has anyone been obsesssive enough to remember meals?

Ahem.

In Long Sun I remember the fried green tomatoes (Silk salivating over) and
watercress sandwiches (that Hyacinth would never eat, remembering the
drudgery of harvesting watercress).

In New Sun, which I happen to be reading now, there is the feast of Saint
Katharine (big list of showy foodstuffs); the leeks, lentils, and bread
given to Thecla; the seasonal mutton; the fish Severian demands at the inn
on his first night out; the meal ordered at Inn of Lost Loves (roast fowl);
pomegranate, grapes, apple, etc., at Ctesiphon's Cross; Saltus breakfast
(warm bread, fresh butter, pickled duck's eggs, peppered chocalate beaten
to a froth); Vodalarii lunch (thrushes); antechamber meals (coffee and
pastries, twice a day); Casdoe's meal (boiled vegetables without salt or
butter, coarse bread, a little meat); strips of dried meat on the trail;
snow on Mount Typhon; fresh fish, water fowl, wild rice, honey, new bread,
butter, vegetables, salad (Severian orders of the hetman); duck (quartered
and grilled),fish, fried cakes (clams and cattail flour), baked potatoes,
salad of mushrooms and greens (what he gets); cooked fish and root
vegetables among the lake people . . .

I will note, however, that the word "stew" is used in URTH (ch. 30,
"Ceryx") as the common term for a public bath house.

=mantis=

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From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 17:28:39 +0000

Well, there ARE a few important details about food in New Sun.  The 
pomegranate that drips from the eater's mouth, and Dr. Talos' lack of apetite, 
etc.  Meals are important in Wolfe, but what they eat is not necessarily 
emphasized EXCEPT in Long Sun for those stupid tomatoes that Silk and Maytera 
Rose have a disgusting battle of wills over. I've always thought that that 
scene was far more important than I understood ... why else would we talk 
about slices of food forever?

Also, it is important that Silk from Book of the Short Sun never eats and gets 
sick in winter.  So, yes, I think it is worthwhile to pay attention to the 
meals in Wolfe books, but I spend countless pages skimming over the banquet 
scenes in other fantasy books.  Who cares what they ate if I can't learn 
anything from it? (Unless it's weird, orginal food, like in Jack Vance's "The 
Face") Can Severian use the Claw to eliminate his excrement if someone is 
following him? Are fantasy people immune from parasites when they pee in a 
stream? Does Robinson Crusoe have any sexual urges while he's trapped on the 
island?  Some things are better left unexplored in a fantasy world ... I 
think.

Marc Aramini

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 18:21:35 +0000

Does mate' qualify as a stew?

> Some things are better left unexplored in a fantasy world ... I
> think.

We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to
see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.
G.W. Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse

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From: cilluff1 at optonline.net <cilluff1 at optonline.net>
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 18:42:32 +0000

<<<Well, there ARE a few important details about food in New Sun.  The 
pomegranate that drips from the eater's mouth, and Dr. Talos' lack of
apetite, 
etc.  Meals are important in Wolfe, but what they eat is not necessarily 
emphasized EXCEPT in Long Sun for those stupid tomatoes that Silk and
Maytera 
Rose have a disgusting battle of wills over. I've always thought that that 
scene was far more important than I understood ... why else would we talk 
about slices of food forever?>>>

This isn't specifically in response to Marc's email but is on the "meals
that were eaten in BOTNS/LS/SS" theme.  I don't think anyone mentioned this
meal yet (I didn't see it in Mantis' list), but of course one of the most
important meals is when Sev eats Thecla (and his predecessor Autarch). 
Also (although this is stretching it a touch) when the alzabo eats little
Sev's father.  

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 19:37:03 +0000

>  Meals are important in Wolfe, but what they eat is not necessarily

Haven't lookt back at it, but remember thinking of tomatolike apple 
(identified in folklore only, of course) of the Garden of Eden, esp. since 
this happens early in the narrative, linked to garden, women eating first, etc.

Nutricious

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 01:14:28 +0000

Highly amused by replies. Mantis, you are obsessive! Of course so is
Nutricious. And how could I have forgotten, for even one moment, of Roast
Thecla.

-alga

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 02:17:28 +0000

>Mantis, you are obsessive!

No, no -- I forgot to mention the corn meal gruel at the shepherd's shelter
between Mount Typhon and Lake Diuturna.

Now I'm obsessive.

=mantis=

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 06:35:17 +0000

Marc wrote:
>>Also, it is important that Silk from Book of the Short Sun never eats and
gets sick in winter.<<

Tisk, tisk. You're letting your pet theories ride roughshod over what the
text actually says--or, sometimes, doesn't say--again. _Of course_ Silk eats
in SS. To wit:

"'I had resolved to eat very little tonight, and look at this.' While we had
been talking, I had practically cleaned my plate." (IGJ, 71)

That quote is from the first story-telling dinner at Inclito's; it was the
first example to come to mind. True, Silk isn't a big eater in SS, but
neither was he in LS. The point is, he _does_ eat in SS.

As for the Silk/Rose fried-tomato scene, the context of the above quote may
shed some light. Silk had just declaimed against "strong emotions of any
kind", among them "greed", which he specifically links with food. When he
selfishly declined to share his tomatoes with Rose, he felt a great deal of
guilt over it afterward, even though food is a necessary condition of life.
His experience with the inhumi, to that point, had taught him that their
quest for food--for blood--went beyond what was strictly necessary to
maintain life: they wanted _human_ blood, to become like men. The irony is
that, to become like men, to acquire the blood, they must kill (unless they
take extraordinary care) what they most love. Their animal nature overrides
their borrowed humanity. Remember those clogged sewers on Green. Should an
inhumi have the misfortune to acquire a "conscience" (if such a thing is
possible), its position becomes untenable. Silk has a conscience, therefore
can take no joy in eating, an activity he must condemn in the inhumi.

-Roy

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 07:14:10 +0000

>From Middle English, stewen; to bathe in a steam bath.  Hence informal 
modern usage; to suffer with oppressive heat.  Thence also possibly to 
worry, be agitated.

By Early Modern English (c1400) stew as in bath-house had become 
synonymous with brothel, especially in the plural.  Also by derivation a 
prostitutue.  Even when not directly meant the term suggested squalour, 
poverty and crime as in London's c16 theatres being in the stews of 
Southwark and Shorditch.

Matthew

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From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 17:37:21 +0000

I think that this misses a very important point. It's not that the inhumi's 
"animal nature" overrides their humanity - it's that the "humanity" they're 
acquiring is not quite so humane as we'd hope for. Silkhorn says repeatedly 
that if we could get our *own* act together, we'd have nothing to fear from 
the inhumi. The clogged sewers of Green are merely the reflection of what 
people on Blue were doing to each other.

Without going too much into my personal interpretation of SS, it always 
seemed to me that Silkhorn's restraint w.r.t. his appetite was meant to 
be... well, I guess the best way to say it is "an example". And that he 
believed, at least, that it would result in one or more inhumi learning to 
control their own appetites. He may actually take this lesson a bit too far 
in a frenzy of guilt, but I think this is the principle he's trying to go 
by.

Civet

>can take no joy in eating, an activity he must condemn in the inhumi.

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 08:21:58 +0000

Again, thanks all for being so amusing and/or obsesssive! There's a waggish
term paper for someone in this somewhere I'm sure. I blush, Pippen
(shouldn't that be Pippin--but no, aren't you a guy?- you're not supposed to
be veggie), not to have immediately remembered the coffee and pastries an
the anteroom, for I have always thought that was a brilliant touch, well
beyond the imagination of most writers.

-alga

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