Subject: (urth) Father Inire

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 04:44:02 +0000

On first reading of the BotNS I thought Father Inire (suggesting INRI King 
of the Jews?) made only one cameo apperance as the cowled servitor who 
guides Severian to the Green Room.

Robert Borski convinced me that he also appears as the old, twisted, masked 
jungle guide (who looks like Isangoma).  This guy was rumored to be a shaman 
(therian) who could assume the form of a tiger (oops wrong animal). He 
carried a bent stick with a monkey head on it (hm. okay then).  Inire's 
apperance there makes a lot of plot sense. He can ensure that the old 
autarch and Severian both survive and perform the memory transfer. He can 
extract information from Agia, etc.  Okay, so he is Father Inire too.

Well, I can be content with the one standard cameo appearance by the 
director, but if there are two then it is time to start looking for more.  
Borkski does this by seeking out father figures and characters with hidden 
eyes and using cryptonyms and trying to make them fit.  He comes up with 
Ossipago, Palaemon, Paeon and Ceryx as versions of Inire. I think these are 
all very challengable and perhaps that can happen at a later time.

My own preference is to look first for physical clues.  Perhaps in hope that 
Wolfe is using the engineering side of his brain first, before the literary 
side.  The multiple physical descriptions of Inire mark him as old, short, 
bent, twisted, looking like a monkey, with no more nose than an alouatte 
(black howler monkey http://www.painetworks.com/photos/dv/dv0881.JPG).  With 
that as a starting guide, here is my list of Inire cameo appearances:

1. Uakari-  Back in a June 1999  post, Mitchell A. Bailey felt the uakari 
watching Severian from a tree as he was escaping the House Absolute grounds 
after the play performance was really Inire. An alouatte was mentioned 
earlier so why an uakari here? With its bald head the uakari really looks 
like an old man(http://www.brazilianfauna.com/images/reduakari.jpg) and I 
can't blame Mitchell at all for thinking that an old man who looks like a 
monkey might disguise himself as a monkey who looks like an old man.

2. Baboon- when Severian wakes in a lazaret after his avern battle, "An ape 
with the head of a dog ran down the aisle, paused at my bed to look at me, 
then ran on."  Baboons are large, ape-like monkeys often referred to as 
"dog-faced" (http://www.cwaf.org/images/main-image-baboon.jpg).

3. Isangoma- He is old though being short, bent or twisted is not mentioned. 
But Wolfe explicitly notes his resemblance to the shape-shifting jungle 
guide with the monkey head pole.  He is found in one of Father Inire's main 
haunts, The Botanic Gardens.  He isn't said to look like a monkey but he 
mentions monkeys in a story and invokes baby uakaris in his cant.  When we 
meet him, Marie is reading a Bibilcal passage to him- God's curse on Moses, 
the shepherd of the Chosen People, to never see the Promised Land himself. 
This could suggest Inire's role in BotNS.

4. Rudesind-  He is old and bent. We don't know how tall he is because he is 
usually on a ladder. He inhabits Father Inire's portion of the House 
Absolute and is familiar enough with the Secret House
to trick Severian into falling into it and to move easily from The Citadel 
to the House Absolute.  He carries the letter of Father Inire to Severian. 
We are told he is Inire's servant which should explain all the above.

But, we have also been told that the old Autarch, Appian, is himself several 
of the minor officials of his court.  I think Father Inire uses the same 
ploy.  The most telling clue is when Rudesind first comes down from the 
ladder "like an aged monkey, seeming all arms and legs and wrinkled neck; 
his hands were as long as my feet, the crooked fingers lined with blue 
veins".  Why would Wolfe use almost all the physical descriptions of Father 
Inire for Rudesind unless he really was him?  He also notes that Rudesind's 
nose and chin almost touch (proboscis monkey? 
http://www.mikekaplan.com/nss-folder/pictures/proboscis%20monkey.JPG).

Rudesind tells Severian, at different times, two interesting things: that 
his wife died and that he is the advocate for the dead, giving a speech 
about doing right by them.  These two facts tie Rudesind to our next Inire 
cameo.

5. Dorcas' husband-  this guy is never named, though he and Dorcas are given 
ample opportunity to do it.  He also spends lots of time in the Botanic 
Gardens poling his skiff, has a dead wife and seems like an advocate for the 
dead.  Severian describes him as "bowed and shrunken by age (he appeared 
older even than Master Palaemon) until he could hardly have weighed more 
than a boy of ten".

This man tells Severian, "Father Inire had the gardeners plant the averns.  
I was here and saw it.  Just a little man he is, with a wry neck and bow 
legs".  If the man IS Father Inire, no false statements there.  And no 
thought or comment from Severian on how this man himself fits Inire's 
description.  And Severian is ALWAYS making comparisons.

How could Dorcas be married to Father Inire?, you might ask.  Two bits of 
circumstantial evidence:  Dorcas seems to have been a young teen when she 
wed.  Through Lewis Carroll allusions and the Domnina scene we are informed 
that Father Inire has an attraction to girls of this age.  Moreover, if his 
beloved wife Dorcas had died years ago, wouldn't Father Inire manipulate the 
ONE person in the universe who could reanimate her, into doing so?  Severian 
accidentally finds his own dead grandmother in a lake with ten thousand 
other dead bodies?  Please.

Now, it might be noted that Rudesind also mentions his wife dying soon after 
having two daughters.  If his wife is really Dorcas, how could this be?  I 
think it suggests that Severian's accepted family tree needs some serious 
restructuring.  The Dorcas -> Ouen-> Severian scheme always seemed too easy 
and spoon-fed to me, given the difficulty of the other puzzles in this book.

An even more serious objection might be noting that, leaving the Samru, 
Severian sees Dorcas with her dead husband and then later sees Rudesind in 
the Citadel.  Well, there are some very strange things about that Dorcas 
scene.  Severian goes to shore because he sees a flower in a  little boat, 
newly built, at an ancient pier.  He finds her kneeling "the body of the old 
man who had poled the skiff there lay on a bier before her, his back so 
straight, his face, in death, so  youthful, that I hardly knew him".

Can we be sure it IS the old man from the skiff? Why would he look so much 
younger in death?  Could Severian be once again mistaken about who a family 
member really is?  Again, I think Severian's family tree may need major 
revamping.

Final note, the flower on the boat from this scene is a wilted white poppy 
and Severian sees Dorcas has replaced it in her hair with a fresh arum.  
There was a great post in here  a while back on the meanings of flowers.  
White poppy means "dormant affection".  Arum means "ardor".   There are many 
previous hints in the text that Dorcas has some deeper issues.  But these 
are all part of a new puzzle.

-bsharp

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 06:03:55 +0000

Hrmmph. I ain't buyin' all of it, and some of it has been said before, but
it's easily your most cogent post to date. Well done!

What about Becan on the Rudesind/Fechin angle? And you do know that Dorcas'
husband was present when Severian was saved from drowning at the beginning
of SHADOW? I never did trust that girl.

Am I helping, or giving you more rope? <g>

-Roy

---

From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com <thalassocrat at nym.hush.com>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 06:33:28 +0000

On Thu, 25 May 2006 14:44:02 +1000 b sharp 
<bsharporflat at hotmail.com> wrote:
>of the Jews?) made only one cameo apperance as the cowled servitor 

>who 

I've wondered whether the "cynocephalous ape" Sev sees in the 
barracks when he awakes after the avern combat mightn't also be 
Inire, come to check out the new guy.

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 06:59:04 +0000

--- b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com> wrote:

  I 
> other puzzles in this book.
  Could Severian be once again
> mistaken about who a family 

Thank you for this, I agree 110 percent. My ideas and
yours about Sev's family tree aren't the same, but we
both agree the accepted version just doesn't seem to
work thematically. By the way, thanks for your
interesting posts, I don't agree with them all, but
they're definitely well thought out and argued, and
the list hasn't seen this much life in a while. I
remember when I first found this list. It was a relief
just to be able to express the thoughts bouncing
around in my head. One thing everyone on this list
seems to agree on (maybe the only thing) is that
there's something special about Wolfe's major works
that make them worth talking about. over. and. over.
and again. : )

Don

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 07:07:14 +0000

--- "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:

And
> you do know that Dorcas'

Don, reverting to his southern vernacular: "Do what?"
(say again?)
I don't have my books, Roy (never never never loan out
your books) so can you do me a kindness and quote or
paraphrase that one? This is the first I've heard of it.

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 08:40:08 +0000

>paraphrase that one? This is the first I've heard of it.

I thought 'most everyone knew that. The last page of chapter II.
__________________________________
  I said, "I saw Malrubius."
  An old man, a boatman from his tar-stained clothes, took Roche by the
shoulder. "Who's that?"
  "Used to be Master of Apprentices. He's dead."
  "Not a woman?" The old man was holding Roche but looking at me.
  "No, no," Roche told him. "There are no women in our guild."
________________________________

-Roy

---

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 11:37:55 +0000

Roy says:

>it's easily your most >cogent post to date.

Roy you are so parsimonious! Care to elaborate on which parts of my post are 
wrong, which are old hat and which are cogent?

Roy also says:
>What about Becan on the Rudesind/Fechin angle?

At some later date I'll post on my ideas about Severian's family tree.  And 
Casdoe's family will surely play a part in that post.  As the new guy, I 
will admit it is still a work in progress.

More Roy:
>And you do know that Dorcas' husband was present when Severian was saved 
>from drowning at >the beginning of SHADOW? I never did trust that girl.
  > "An old man, a boatman from his tar-stained clothes, took Roche by the 
shoulder. "Who's that?"
  >"Not a woman?" The old man was holding Roche but looking at me."

Are you sure the old man is Dorcas' husband? The tar marks him as a sailor 
and the "not a woman" comment as someone familiar with undines.  These clues 
call first to my mind Maxellindis' uncle who sails up and down the Gyoll 
where the scene takes place.  Dorcas' husband has a very small boat on a 
lake but no mention of him being a sailor.  Only of him previously being a 
shopkeeper and hauling artwork and currently living in the loft of a 
friend's House.  He does mention manatees.  Now, Maxellindis' uncle is also 
unnamed, he hangs out with a young teenage girl.........Which girl don't you 
trust Roy? ;-).

Was Father Inire ever a sailor?  Probably, but not that kind, on urth's 
water.  Of course we know that water and space sailors share similar skills 
and mannerisms. That's what the cap'n said watching the Popeye on Pluto 
show.  Sindbad on Saturn? oh never mind.

-bsharp

---

From: mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 19:16:32 +0000

Plunking on the honkytonk of his brain, bsharp improvises the following 
cadenza about the pansimianess of Father Inire:

<The most telling clue is when Rudesind first comes down from the ladder 
"like an aged monkey, seeming all arms and legs and wrinkled neck; his hands 
were as long as my feet, the crooked fingers lined with blue veins". Why 
would Wolfe use almost all the physical descriptions of Father Inire for 
Rudesind unless he really was him?>

In his essay on the onomastics of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe writes, "In this 
piece I'd like to go into names a bit more deeply, beginning with the rule 
of naming I used: Everything is just what it says it is."

Rudesind, of course, is a saint's name, a convention used over and over 
again by the author to differentiate humans from Other -- a rule however 
bsharp violates in favor of ape's blood and gerontica. Moreover, there is in 
Rudesind an exquisite pun, because it derives from the Latin word, 'rudis,' 
which comes about as close as you can say in that antiquated language, to 
"paint by numbers." This is because Rudesind is one of those failed artist 
types who is perhaps best exemplified by the Shawian dictate, "Those who 
can, do; those who can't, curate." Hence his endless starf*cking prattle 
about Fechin, as well as his own artistic ambitions as a youth. This is not 
extensive deep cover by an alien operative; it's gall by someone who's never 
fully accepted his own mediocrity. (Interestingly, as Rudesind conducts 
Severian through a narrower corridor of the House Absolute's gallery, the 
torturer-critic opines of the pictures there, "From what I could see of 
them, they appeared very bad--more daubs." This may well be because he's in 
Rudesind's personal wing.)

This does not, however, mean that Rudesind hasn't been used by Father Inire 
as a factotum. As Severian tells the curator at the end of _Citadel_, "We 
know your master is what the people call a cacogen, and that for whatever 
reason, he is one of those few who have chosen to cast their lots entirely 
with humanity, remaining on Urth as a human being. The Cumaean is another 
such, though perhaps you did not know that. We even know that your master 
was with us in the jungles of the north, where he tried until it was too 
late to rescue my predecessor."

So let me attempt a summation: Rudesind, as the root of his name suggests, 
is "unskilled, not improved by art." He's a dripper and spitter manqué-- not 
an eater of fleas in the Hierodule zoo.

MsGhee

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 19:39:03 +0000

>to the House Absolute.  He carries the letter of Father Inire to Severian.

I could object that Inire said in the letter that he would not reach the
Citadel for two more days, but you could counter by asking how the letter
reached the Citadel in  the first place.

>scene.

I've said so myself. See, iirc, "Dear Dorcas" in the older archive.

> Severian goes to shore because he sees a flower in a  little boat,
>younger in death?

Severian thought people asleep looked younger than when awake -- Jonas being
an exception.

>Could Severian be once again mistaken about who a family

If the body was not that of the dead Boatman, whose body was it? Surely not
Inire, who remained with Severian all ten years of his autarchy. Severian
saw both the dead Boatman and Rudesind just days apart. How could he look on
them both and not see any resemblance, if there was one? Masks? And he
couldn't tell there were masks involved, even after ten years of being
around both Inire and the three Hierodules?

-Roy

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 20:50:07 +0000

b sharp wrote:
>and the "not a woman" comment as someone familiar with undines.

Mantis, afaik, was the first to suggest that old man to be Dorcas' husband.
Her husband was familiar with manatees and delivered the avern lecture. The
basic idea is: The Boatman (her husband) went almost daily for forty years
to look for her body. It wasn't where it was supposed to be. He said "Don't
you heed what they say. They put them where the figure shows, but they don't
stay there. Some has been see'd in the river, even."

He had to live near the Botanic Gardens and have a place to keep his boat.
The friend's loft is presumed to be among the tenements below the Citadel,
which is just downstream from the Gardens. That's why he was at the swimming
area. His concern about someone possibly seeing the body of a woman under
the water was because he thought his wife's body might have been washed
downstream. Maxellindis' uncle said he had never confused a manatee for a
woman, in CITADEL. In any event, he had no particular reason to be concerned
about whether the person Severian had seen underwater was a man or a woman.
Dorcas' husband did. That's the theory, anyway.

-Roy

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 22:11:58 +0000

--- mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> bsharp violates in favor of ape's blood and
> gerontica. 

This does not necessarily negate bsharp's argument -
that Inire is possibly  disguised as the human
Rudesind. It would be natural for him to take a human
rather than a Hierodule name. To disguise oneself
successfully is to "become" the other in a sense. I
realize that the naming conventions are a device of
the author to convey metatextual clues to the reader,
but they also represent true differences in naming
conventions between cacogens and humans. I think
bsharp's idea still has legs.

Don

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 22:14:24 +0000

> around both Inire and the three Hierodules?

I believe the argument is that Inire is a kind of
shapeshifter. No masks involved

Don

---

From: mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 23:18:02 +0000

>Rudesind.

Except that there's no reason for Inire to disguise himself as a would-be 
painter. It serves neither function nor purpose. So why do it, and to what 
end? Rudesind is not like jungle-shaman-Inire who must disguise himself from 
Vodalus and Agia in order to make sure the autarchy is passed on from Appian 
to Severian; nor is he like the nameless cowled servitor in the House 
Absolute who may not even be trying to disguise himself, but is simply more 
or less dismissed by an unobservant Severian half-lost in the fugue of 
thought. Rudesind encounters Severian only three times, and each time we get 
elaborate backstory, rich with unnecessary details; but why "pretend" to be 
human so you can give directions to the library, lecture Severian about the 
green room, or pass on a letter written to the new autarch by Father Inire 
-- who is yourself? In the latter regard, now that Severian has legitimately 
claimed the Phoenix Throne, why doesn't Rudesind simply unmask himself and 
say, "Hey, it's me, monkeyface -- jokes on you."? Because there's no reason 
for him to continue the disguise, nor for that matter ever to have donned it 
in the first place.

Furthermore, dismissing the naming conventions of saint, myth, and monster, 
and then claiming that a shape-shifting, mask-wearing, alien could be 
anyone, even including a shadow child from St. Anne, you wind up with a 
farrago of chaos --not a novel by Gene Wolfe.

z q x (alphamorph)

---

From: Adam Thornton <adam at io.com>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 23:43:49 +0000

On May 25, 2006, at 6:18 PM, mournings glory wrote:

> you wind up with a

Yeah, I think "Farrago of Chaos" was one half of an Ace Double.   
Maybe one of the more forgettable Murray Leinster books?

Adam

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 02:09:17 +0000

Totally off topic, but ...

On 5/25/06, mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Plunking on the honkytonk of his brain, bsharp

Is there any particular reason why you believe b to be a he? I
had tentatively decided "she," but would not presume to address
b as either "he" or "she" pending confirmation from hir own
keybird.

--Dan'l
-- 
I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
                        -- St Teresa of Avila
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer

---

From: mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 02:55:30 +0000

>b as either "he" or "she" pending confirmation from hir own

The Y chromosome seems especially dominant here and I cannot remember the 
last time that someone clearly identified as XX ventured to enter the 
domain.

Unfortunately, the Gender Genie (http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.html) is 
down today, so we can't test a chunk of his/her/its prose; at least with me, 
last time I did so, I'm still coming up "female".

Of course, b# could always tell us -- and regardless of gender and how often 
I may disagree, a big shout-out to you, sir or mam, whichever you may be! 
There have not been this many posts in a single month since I joined the 
list three years ago, and if your posts about the rest of Wolfe's work are 
as provocative and interesting, it should make for much intesting reading 
and debate to come.

XmX

---

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 03:38:33 +0000

Well, Mournings glory takes me to task for violating Mantis' saints and 
myths naming rule (I don't violate Wolfe's "everything is what it says it 
is" rule.  We don't even get a name in the BotNS for the old Autarch who 
plays so many roles, from autarch to third bursar to pimp-daddy.  Is he 
Appian in all those roles? We don't know.

Why can't Rudesind really be the guy's name in his human role and Father 
Inire really be his name when he is performing his hierodule role?   Be that 
as it may, I am quite open to argments that Rudesind is not Inire though I'd 
like those arguments to explain why Rudesind resembles Inire so closely in 
description as does Dorcas' husband and all the parallels between Rudesind 
and Dorcas' husband.

Natuarlly Fechin must be included, since he is connected to Rudesind and to 
Casdoe's family. And we can't forget that cloisonne might connect Dorcas to 
Thecla and to Cyriaca and to Fechin. and...  Sheesh. fine! never mind. Let's 
read some Asimov.

-bsharp

---

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 04:41:42 +0000

Mourning, I'm seeing a pattern. You are absolutely an anti-Rudesindite.  You 
hate his painting, you hate his appreciation of Fechin, you hate his drivel 
and his working class vernacular, you hate the way he throws his feces 
through the bars when he gets mad...okay...sorry..

Anyway, consider your own arguments.  Why DOES Wolfe give this vacuous 
babbler so much story time, strategically placed at the beginning, middle 
and end of BotNS?  We are really supposed to just dismiss him, as you do?

I take issue with your contention that the role I assign him is worthless to 
the story.  To me the parallel to Appian serving as his own servants is 
reinforcing.  Understand that I don't think Dorcas' unnamed husband is 
Charon or Caronus or whatever but....Rudesind. Rudesind the widower, 
Rudesind the advocate of the dead.  I think Wolfe wants us to find the names 
of his unnamed characters, not make them up.

Bonus question- Aside from Lewis Carroll, Father Inire has been compared to 
Daedalus because of all the labyrinths he constructs.  Who then serves as 
his son Icarus who is killed by flying too close to the Sun?

-bsharp

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 04:50:00 +0000

--- b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Inire really be his name when he is performing his
> hierodule role?  

Exactly my point. One clear theme in many of Wolfe's
works is that the role ends up making the "man".

 Be that 
> parallels between Rudesind 

This is great stuff, and while it may yet be shown
incorrect, I for one would hate for it to get snuffed
out prematurely.

Don

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 20:04:44 +0000

>that Inire is possibly  disguised as the human
[snip]
and then claiming that a shape-shifting, mask-wearing, alien could be
anyone, even including a shadow child from St. Anne, you wind up with a
farrago of chaos --not a novel by Gene Wolfe.<<

I have trouble with the idea that a member of an alien species could
successfully interbreed with a human. ( The product of the Severian-Apheta
union was *not* biological.) That is, I can't see Inire fathering a child
(or children) on Dorcas. If Dorcas did have another child, as the text
implies, and that child had offspring, that would make Ouen, Severian's
daddy, something of a monkey's uncle. <g>

Actually, Severian looked very much like his father, and neither resembled
Inire -- or a monkey -- or any other of Inire's alleged human disguises. I
see no evidence of shape-shifting in NEW SUN, but even if Inire had that
ability, such a non-human characteristic further weighs against the
likelihood of viable progeny, in my opinion.

As for the Boatman being a grieving Inire (though I suppose the story of the
forty-year search for Dorcas was all a lie, given the stated assumption that
a man who hadn't even been born when the search began was needed to call her
back from the dead), there was no need for any such rigmarole. All that was
needed was another Hierodule-made eidolon. If it can be done for a damn dog,
it can surely be done for the Conciliator's grandmother and Inire's lost
love. A few weeks of eating and breathing would be all that was needed to
make her as "real" as Severian.

-Roy

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sat, 27 May 2006 01:13:13 +0000

I wrote:
>I see no evidence of shape-shifting in NEW SUN, 

I take that back; Tzadkiel could do it.

-Roy

---

From: mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 27 May 2006 01:24:01 +0000

>I take that back; Tzadkiel could do it.

So, too, I believe, could his son, Venant -- unless you're going to argue he 
naturally looks like the very human, if false, Epitome of Urth.

mg

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 20:52:04 +0000

> This could suggest Inire's role in BotNS.

However, Isangoma is butt naked; nothing to hide Inire's nonhuman nature 
or his ultratech gadgets.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

---

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 15:25:02 +0000

In response to the possibility of Isangoma and later the jungle guide being 
Father Inire
Jeff Wilson notes:

>However, Isangoma is butt naked; nothing to hide Inire's nonhuman nature or 
>his ultratech gadgets.

True, he is, and so is the jungle guide (except for a mask, hiding eyes?) 
and his young twin assistants.  All four of these guys have dark 
metallic-looking skin.  Sounds a bit alien to me. This might be Father 
Inire's true form.

Just curious about people's opinions.  Father Inire never makes an official, 
announced appearance in BotNS. Are there some who think he is forever an 
absent character like Norm's wife in Cheers or Niles' wife in Frazier?

-bsharp

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 21:57:24 +0000

> metallic-looking skin.  Sounds a bit alien to me. This might be Father 

No more alien than Doc Savage, or any number of other melanin-rich 
characters of literature.  But Inire should have some obvious nonhuman 
feature to be considered a "cacogen," particularly in a metropolis where 
visible bionic limbs are commonplace and people with animal heads are 
merely unusual.

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 06:03:45 +0000

I've found that I have no hate in my heart for any
SF/fantasy writers (though there's plenty I have no
desire to read). It's all reserved for "literary"
fiction writers who pretend to something that SF is
fortunately not burdened with- SIGNIFICANCE (note the
caps). It's pretence that sickens me, not bad writing.
But, back to Wolfe:

> absent character like Norm's wife in Cheers or

That's an excellent question. Up until your posts I
suppose I was of the bent that Inire was mostly an
offstage character. I feel certain that he his the
medicine man who guides Sev and the ascians and I also
believe he is the "naked one" in the tale of fish and
frog. Hidden once, hidden twice, hidden x times, okay,
but you still haven't quite sold me. I'm listening
though.

Don

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 06:48:52 +0000

On 6/11/06, don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com> wrote:
> desire to read).

I'll go you one better: I don't hate any writer of any sort, at
least as a writer. Nor any musician, painter, or any other
sort of artist. I hold with Kurt Vonnegut that hating a work
of art is like jousting with an ice cream sundae. It just
isn't worth it.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant

-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
"One o'th'flay-rods gone out o'skew on th'treadle."

---

From: Daniel D Jones <ddjones at riddlemaster.org>
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 11:07:05 +0000

> caps). It's pretence that sickens me, not bad writing.

Interestingly enough, pretentiousness is one of the charges that is frequently 
leveled at both Donaldson and Wolfe.

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 02:16:31 +0000

> leveled at both Donaldson and Wolfe.

I don't find Wolfe's style pretentious at all, mainly
because it serves his story. Too many writers are (in
my biased opinion, of course) in love with the Word
for its own sake and I feel they are either mistaking
the finger for the moon or covering for their lack of
anything relevant to say. Wolfe, at his simplest, is
saying THINK, which in this day and age is as
worthwhile as anything.

Don

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 02:26:19 +0000

> of art is like jousting with an ice cream sundae. It

Oh, I don't know about that, some art is well
deserving of hate, if for no other reason than to spur
dialogue and make people think. Some artists actively
court dislike for that reason, while others (nazi
propagandists, to name an easy one) use art to convey
a message that should in good conscience be answered
and rejected, and rightfully despised. Note, I did not
say banned. That's a different can of worms
altogether. But I'm way OT here.

Don

---

From: Daniel D Jones <ddjones at riddlemaster.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:19:05 +0000

On Monday 12 June 2006 22:16, don doggett wrote:
> because it serves his story. 

I don't think the charge is that his _style_ is pretentious, but that his work 
itself is.

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 19:21:02 +0000

> pretentious, but that his work 

I think that's a frivolous charge at best, and a lazy
one. I assume those who say this think that Wolfe's
work tries to rise "above its station" as SF?
Pretending to significance in a genre that's by it's
nature trite? Or am I way off the mark?

regards
Don

---

From: Daniel D Jones <ddjones at riddlemaster.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 21:48:37 +0000

> nature trite? Or am I way off the mark?

It's not like there's a coherent, monolithic movement, and I've read similar 
arguments to those.  But there are those who dismiss the BoTNS as torture 
fetishism and The Wizard/Knight as simple wish fulfillment.

---

From: Bob Miller <bob_bageera at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:12:52 +0000

There are, unfortunately, many people out there who refuse to see.  This is 
the reason why the injunction was, "...don't worry about that splinter in 
your neighbor's eye, worry about the log in your own."

From: Daniel D Jones <ddjones at riddlemaster.org>
Reply-To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Father Inire and SF loathing
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:48:37 -0400

It's not like there's a coherent, monolithic movement, and I've read similar
arguments to those.  But there are those who dismiss the BoTNS as torture
fetishism and The Wizard/Knight as simple wish fulfillment.
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