{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4186", "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": 4186, "subject": "blood, clute, beckett", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "2003-08-26T07:10:42+00:00", "last": "2003-08-26T19:36:48+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "maa32", "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu" }, "date": "2003-08-26T07:10:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) blood, clute, beckett", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This message is going to seem random, but oh well. Hopefully the well-read \nliterary types will answer my question in the last paragraph.\n\nFirst comment - it seems to me that when Silk goes to the market to thank the \nOutsider for enlightenment, the suitable sacrifice he finds in not Oreb, but \nBlood. Oreb is the wrong one; Silk must expiate the sin of the augur he \nemulates, Patera Pike, by erasing Pike's old errors. Notice that he actually \ndoes cut Blood, as he intended to cut Oreb. Myabe that's been commented on \nbefore, but it struck me as quite obvious this time. It is also interesting \nthat from the very beginning we know that Patera Pike also received \nenlightenment. Some on the list may think that Silk was programmed to get \nthat big burst of prescience when he was frozen; I don't know. If so, that \nmight say something about Pike as well. So anyway, it became quite clear to \nme this time that Blood was Silk's sacrifice and he even met him at the market \nwhere he was looking for a suitable one.\n\nNow 180 degrees to Mr. Borski's assertion that John Clute was sharp - perhaps \nso. I never liked the part in his large encyclopedia when he said \"perhaps \nWolfe has never had an original science fiction idea, but that isn't where his \nimportance lays\". I don't understand how Clute came up with the idea that the \nAutarch was Severian's mother (I think that was Clute, wasn't it?!). \nOtherwise, I guess I agree.\n\nNow, speaking of absurd interpretations, this was the question I was hoping \nsomeone on the list could answer (I just don't know who else to talk to!). \nIt's kind of a Wolfe-like case of enlightenment, similar to the one I got in \nPeace when I first realized the narrator was dead. Has anyone read Beckett's \nTrilogy \"Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable\"? First, as I read The \nUnnameable, it made no sense. Then I realized that the narrator was a penis, \nperhaps Malone's penis, who mythologized his existence by claiming that he \nused to have limbs, but now only cries out of his one eye while he sits rigid \nuntil a terrible darkness descends on him, when he isn't covered by an awful \ntarp. I have looked online everywhere, but no one seems to agree that the \nnarrator (Mahood, or The Worm) is in fact a genital organ. Am I the only \nperson in the world who thinks so? I looked it up in the encyclopedia and \nthey had the biggest BS about it being a metaphysical comedy similar to \nDante's Divine Comedy blah blah blah. Bunk. They said \"Mahood\" was the name \nof a friend of Beckett, but I preferred the elided \"Ma[n]hood\". It's a wang. \nThe odd part about it is that everything that happens in the book then makes \nsense and serves a real purpose to the higher level being that the Unnameable \ndoesn't know about - and this makes me think that Beckett is not the negative \nwriter that I at first thought him to be, since it implies that the \nabsurdities of the first two volumes actually serve a purpose at a higher \nlevel of understanding. Just thought if anybody would have read it and \nreceived the same Wolfe-like revelation, they would be on this list.\n\nMarc Aramini" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-08-26T16:37:07+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) blood, clute, beckett", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Marc,\n\n1. Nice catch about the Blood sacrifice. It makes sense of a lot of things, \nincluding\nBlood's name ... names being quite as important in the Long/Short sun books \nas in\nthe New. (Has anyone pointed out that the name of the old Calde, Tussah, is \nnot\nonly the name of a kind of caterpillar but also that of the fabric made from \nits ... silk?\nRiffing from there: those interested in the idea that Silk is in some sense \na clone of\nthe original Typhon, might do well to consider Tussah's \"family\" in the \nlight of the\nfamily of Joseph in the New Testament...)\n\n2. No, you're not crazy about Ma(n)hood. That's the same impression I get \nfrom\n_The Unnameable_, though I also have the vague impression that Mahood and\nWorm are actually two different characters.\n\n--Dan'l" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at hotpop.com" }, "date": "2003-08-26T19:36:48+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) blood, clute, beckett", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Has anyone pointed out that the name of the old Calde, Tussah, is \nnot only the name of a kind of caterpillar but also that of the fabric\nmade from its ... silk?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "LOL I didn't know it was a caterpiller! Thanks Dan'l.\n\n-- Crush" } ] } ] }