{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/456", "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": 456, "subject": "worn PEACE piece (warning: long)", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-03-29T22:47:16+00:00", "last": "1998-04-02T13:29:57+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Damien Broderick", "address": "damien at ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au" }, "date": "1998-03-29T22:47:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) worn PEACE piece (warning: long)", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Frolicking through the archives with my tongue hanging out, I find that the\nmatter of PEACE has cropped up several times. Once more, then:\n\nIn 1986, I published some thoughts on the novel in an Australian fanzine\ncalled THE NOTIONAL. Its international distribution was... well, notional.\n So I republished the piece in the March 1996 issue of The New York Review\nof Science Fiction, where it appeared alongside a tentative chronology of\nthe book by William M. Schuyler, Jr. Since it seems that not everyone here\nhas access to the NYRSF, I thought I'd dump it on you forthwith, even\nthough several of the points raised are now commonplaces. Apologies for\nthe length and its rambling ways:\n\n============================\n\n*Peace* appears to be the extended written meditation of Alden Dennis Weer,\nailing elderly Midwest gentleman and president of a fruit juice plant.\nGene Wolfe has gone on record as saying that Den Weer more closely\nresembles the author than most critics have realised. Wolfe for years\nwrote professionally for, and edited, a magazine called `Plant Engineering'\nwhich dealt not with genetic botany but with industrial mechanical\nengineering. Weer's juice plant synthesises orange juice out of potatoes,\nso successfully that Cassionsville and the Kanakessee Valley, its once rich\nand various farmland surrounds, are blighted by monocropping, as its Irish\nsettlers' homelands had been several centuries earlier. \n\nThe name of the narrator of Wolfe's *The Fifth Head of Cerberus*, never\ngiven in that text, can be determined to be Gene Wolfe. A famous story by\nWolfe is `The Hero as Werwolf'. This apparent spelling mistake is\npermitted by the dictionary, a volume Wolfe is not unacquainted with. It\nhas been suggested that the lost `e' from `werwolf' lives at the end of the\nauthor's name. I instantly assumed that Alden Dennis Weer is, as it were,\na weerwolfe.\n\nThe first line of the novel is this: `The elm tree planted by Eleanor Bold,\nthe judge's daughter, fell last night.' What does not fall until page 193,\nin my 246 page copy, is the other shoe. Miss Bold, now married to one\nPorter, `wants to plant a tree on my grave when I'm gone. That's her\nhobby: she plants trees of endangered American species on the graves of her\nfriends.' I had missed this absolutely fundamental revelation until Yvonne\nRousseau explained it, and I felt sick with shame. Even so, at least I\nknew from the first paragraph that Weer was *probably* dead: `I was afraid\nI was going to have an attack, and then, fuzzily, thought that perhaps the\nheart attack had wakened me, and then that I might be dead... it seemed to\nme that the whole house was melting like the candle, going soft and running\ndown into the lawn.' Yes indeed. The house is his skull, pierced by the\nroots of Eleanor Bold's now ancient, vast and fallen elm.\n\nWhat, then, of his claim to have built a mnemonic house, each room the\nreplica of one from his life? Alden does just this, in the chambered\ncavities of his skull. How do we know? On page 217, in a poignant\nquotation from the *Necronomicon*, that wicked book invented by Lovecraft\nand here re invented by Wolfe, a man is called back from death. `His eyes\nwere no more; their sockets seemed dark pits, save that there flickered\nbehind them a point of light... I knew this spark for the soul of the dead\nman, seeking now in all the chambers under the vault of the skull its old\nresting places.'\n\n*Peace*, then, is the peace of *requiescat in pace*. \n\nThe book is, to a quite unparalleled extent, a tissue of lies, or at least\nof substantial evasion. Lou Gold, Jewish refugee and `rare' book dealer,\nis, like one of Vonnegut's dubious saints, a fraud in search of deeper\ntruths than mere veracity. If *Peace* is enlivened by many quoted voices,\neach distinct and agreeable, many of them are thrown by Gold's\nventriloquist's throat. Does this invalidate them? We can't know. Gold\ntells Weer, and us, `The world shapes itself, I find, very fast, to what I\nwrite.' (And if to the writings of Gold the literary forger, so too, no\ndoubt, to those of Wolfe the sf speculator.) `Or I write more than I know\n perhaps all of us who do what I do.' It will surely occur to any\nsuspicious reader at this point to wonder if *Peace* itself is a concoction\nof Gold's. I do not think it is but perhaps, on the argument just given,\nit does not matter and could never be tested.\n\nCertainly Wolfe writes more than *we* know, at least until we have done a\nfair bit of digging. Alden does some digging, looking for gold, which does\nnot exist because his source is a fabrication of Gold's. I quickly\nspeculated that he then finds the gold and kills the middle aged librarian\nwho has led him to it (and become his lover). But is she dead? Does Weer\nbecome rich from this find? As well ask who killed Weer's aunt Olivia, run\ndown by a car while crossing the street in search of a little something\nfrom Dubarry's Bakery. Alden himself? Or one of aunt Vi's four suitors,\nProfessor Peacock, a man whose laces drag like a small boy's, though he's\nagile enough; there is a clue concerning his ownership of a car which I\nleave to you to hunt out for yourself. Certainly Alden, as a small boy,\ncauses the lingering death of another child, Eleanor Bold's nephew\n(conceivably the first of those planted under a tree), and the death by\nfreezing of a young workmate at the juice plant during a prank gone wrong. \n\nWolfe teases and provokes us, but only if we are on our toes. Gold's fraud\nuncovered, Weer's potential denunciation is averted when Sherry, Gold's\nsaucy 16 year old daughter, unprotected against pregnancy, takes him to\nbed. Some 200 pages earlier, a little while later, Sherry Gold visits the\ndoctor. `You seem to be putting on weight, Miss Gold,' Alden imagines the\ndoctor telling her. A hairy dogman from a travelling carney writes Weer a\nletter about the pitiful death of Doris, a new girl with the show, `a kid\nthat belonged to Mr. Mason,' Weer's informant tells him, `(whoever he was -\nI myself never laid eyes on him...).' Is Doris the bastard child of Weer\nand Sherry? There are reasons for doubting this (a mason is, of course, a\nworker in stone, of which more anon), but nothing is certain or self\nevident in this astonishing novel about identity and fabrication.\n\nThis theme of making, self-making and self-denying, is woven in a thousand\nthreads. Three weeks after going to live with his aunt Vi, Weer read a\nportion of a fairy tale in a storybook. Because he nodded off before the\nend, and felt it `a sort of desecration to begin an evening's reading in\nthe middle of a story,' he never finished it. A princess is wooed\nunsuccessfully by men of earth, sea and air; these are Vi's three principal\nsuitors, as it eventuates, and the lucky (?) fourth, so soon to be\nwidowered by the careless motorist who runs Vi down, is Julius Smart,\npharmacist, and founder of the juice factory Alden first works for and\nfinally owns. Julius tells an extraordinary Gothic tale of his patron, a\nparanoiac pharmacist whose concoctions turn people into freaks, including\nhimself. The carney dogman is perhaps one of his productions; its mother,\nwhose hands spring direct from her shoulders, seems to be a natural\nforerunner of those luckless victims of pharmacy, the Thalidomide babies.\nI suspect that the chemist's fatal disorder (though this is never explained\nin the book) is the fantastically rare genetic disease *myositis ossificans\nprogressiva*, which turns ordinary tissue into bone (or `stone') so the\nentire body grows rigid, rather as a corpse does, before it liquefies. In\nshort, natural and pharmacological causation is systematically and\nfiendishly confounded, to our confusion and delight. \n\nAs it chanced, I read and ferreted about in *Peace* at the same time I was\ngnawing on Omni's 1985 `world's hardest IQ test', which offered 48 nifty\nlittle nasties requiring expertise ranging from Greek mythology to the\ntheory of limits, etymology to the Periodic table of the elements. The two\nexperiences, at a simple-minded level (so to speak), were not dissimilar.\nBut I certainly don't wish to reduce this complex and glowing book to a\nseries of intellectual gags.\n\nIn 1985, I raised some of these points with Gene Wolfe, who confirmed my\nguess about `weerwolfe', which made me happy; agreed that Professor Peacock\nwas indeed Aunt Vi's motorised killer, which made me chuckle and rub my\nhands together maniacally; and drew back in distress from my suggestion\nthat Gold's invented `gold' actually came into existence as a result of his\nforged document, only to be retrieved by Alden. No, no, Wolfe said,\npained; *Peace* is, on that level, a work of realism. Alden is rich\nbecause he is Aunt Vi's heir, and therefore crabby old Julius Smart's.\n\nWe swapped gifts as we parted. I gave Wolfe a copy of my Aussie anthology\n*Strange Attractors* which is dedicated jointly to him and to Ursula Le\nGuin. He gave me, in return, a pleasing morsel. `What's the brand name of\nJulius's synthetic orange juice?' he asked. This hideous stuff is the\nfluid which flows like a phony alchemist's fake gold through the entire\nbook; its name, never mentioned, was proposed by Aunt Vi, orientalist and\nwag. In fact I'd spent some time brooding on this matter, but had to\nconfess myself beaten. `Why,' said evil Gene Wolfe, `Tang, of course.' \n\nMany strange little unanswered questions linger to tease the mind. There's\nthat mysterious evening spent alone in a hotel room and its adjacent\nhallway by Alden's aunt Bella, small town journalist. Bella `beheld a\nswimming and irregular glow' through the hotel's frosted windows, `as\nthough a thousand carriage lamps were moving to and fro in a mist...'\ntogether with `roaring, babbling sounds... punctuated... by the braying of\nsavage trumps and bombardons...' No one else heard, saw or reported this\nextravaganza except the lady in the room which proved to be Bella's own\nthough Bella was in the hallway at the time the report was made. A tiny,\nbeautiful enigma. I'd like to hear what other readers have made of its\nsignificance.\n\n===============================\n\nAnd still would...\n\nDamien Broderick" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "1998-04-02T13:29:57+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) worn PEACE piece (warning: long)", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks for the interesting article. When I first heard about Peace, I put\nit at the bottom of my list of Wolfe books to read because I'm more of a\nSF fan, but it turned out to be one of my favorites. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sun, 29 Mar 1998, Damien Broderick wrote:\nThe first line of the novel is this: `The elm tree planted by Eleanor Bold,\nthe judge's daughter, fell last night.' What does not fall until page 193,\nin my 246 page copy, is the other shoe. Miss Bold, now married to one\nPorter, `wants to plant a tree on my grave when I'm gone. That's her\nhobby: she plants trees of endangered American species on the graves of her\nfriends.' I had missed this absolutely fundamental revelation until Yvonne\nRousseau explained it, and I felt sick with shame. Even so, at least I\nknew from the first paragraph that Weer was *probably* dead: `I was afraid\nI was going to have an attack, and then, fuzzily, thought that perhaps the\nheart attack had wakened me, and then that I might be dead... it seemed to\nme that the whole house was melting like the candle, going soft and running\ndown into the lawn.' Yes indeed. The house is his skull, pierced by the\nroots of Eleanor Bold's now ancient, vast and fallen elm." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Weer's house also recalls the old (medieval?) technique of memory by\nconstructing a mental \"castle\" and, in the mind's eye, placing each thing\nor event you want to remember in a seperate room of your castle, using\nimages to represent what you want to remember. For instance, one's \"Bible\nRoom\" might have 14 shields for each of the Apostles (including St. Paul\nand St. Matthias) with pictures representing traditions about each one (an\nupside-down cross for St. Peter, a bag of silver coins for Judas, etc.) \n\nReference to this technique can also be found in the Soldier books. Is\nWolfe himself a practitioner? I knew a fellow in college who claimed to\nremember things way." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "*Peace*, then, is the peace of *requiescat in pace*. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A bit which I've mentioned before on this list but haven't seen anyone\nelse comment on is the very end (don't have a copy handy to quote) where\nthere is a reference made to the story of the ceramic pillow and a voice\ncalling the young Dennis (from sleep?), hinting at the possiblity that the\nwhole book is not the memories of a dead Weer, but young Dennis's dream of\nhis possible future. \n\nWhich throws more light on the original ceramic pillow story. Like the\nChinese man in the story, young Dennis dreams of a future where he is rich\nand successful, yet in Weer's story we see hints at what might have\nmotivated the Chinese man to wish his apparently successful life had been\ndifferent and, when he wakes from the dream, to choose a different path.\nWill young Dennis wake from the dream and choose a different path, one in\nwhich he doesn't kill his boyhood friend? \n\nI also love the story of the Sidhe at the end, enjoying it at face falue\neven though I suspect it must have some connection or echo from Weer's\nlife that I haven't noticed yet. Anyone else see a similarity between\nthe Sidhe and the dogs in Vernor Vinge's _A Fire Upon the Deep_? Does\nthat idea go back further than these two examples? (vagueness to avoid\nspoilage)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We swapped gifts as we parted. I gave Wolfe a copy of my Aussie anthology\n*Strange Attractors* which is dedicated jointly to him and to Ursula Le\nGuin. He gave me, in return, a pleasing morsel. `What's the brand name of\nJulius's synthetic orange juice?' he asked. This hideous stuff is the\nfluid which flows like a phony alchemist's fake gold through the entire\nbook; its name, never mentioned, was proposed by Aunt Vi, orientalist and\nwag. In fact I'd spent some time brooding on this matter, but had to\nconfess myself beaten. `Why,' said evil Gene Wolfe, `Tang, of course.' " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Great anectdote--I'd noted the similarity of Weer's prodcut to Tang, but\nnaming Aunt Vi as the source, that's great. Too bad Disclave was\ncancelled. I'd love to meet Wolfe.\n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }