{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/465", "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": 465, "subject": "Gene/Jeannine/#5", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "1998-04-02T03:42:41+00:00", "last": "1998-04-03T22:28:09+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Robert Borski", "address": "rborski at coredcs.com" }, "date": "1998-04-02T03:42:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Gene/Jeannine/#5", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Tony Ellis wrote about Fifth Head's narrator:\n\n\"Very astute of you to have spotted this. (Either that, or very \nstupid of me to have missed it.) I suppose if Wolfe is a typical\nAmerican-Irish name then it's reinforced slightly by the photograph\nof his mother Number Five sees, where he declares her to be of Celtic\norigin.\"\n\n\"All the same, I think I would say \"can be theorised to be\" rather\nthan \"can be determined to be\"... We can't be sure his name isn't\nWitherspoon. :-) And where are you getting Gene from? The\nGene-geneticist pun is the sort of thing Wolfe loves, of course...\"\n\nTony, et al:\n\nOn pg. 22 of the Scribner's edition of FIFTH HEAD, Number Five's aunt tells\nhim, \"Call me Aunt Jeannine.\" And since later we learn that Aunt Jeannine\nis a female variant of Number Five's father (and since Number Five himself\nis cloned from the same source), inferentially we may assume Number Five's\nname to be the male equivalent of Jeannine or Jean/Gene.\n\nAs for the \"Wolfe\" moiety, besides the library reference, Number Five\nremarks that his house is sometimes referred to as Maison du Chien and that\nthis \"may have been a reference to our surname as well.\" [ibid. pg 14].\nChien meaning dog in French, it's not that big of a stretch to assume\nWolf/e (dogs being evolutionarily the domesticated versions of wolves) is\nthe name in question.\n\nRobert Borski" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "1998-04-02T13:43:02+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Gene/Jeannine/#5", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 2 Apr 1998, Robert Borski wrote:\nOn pg. 22 of the Scribner's edition of FIFTH HEAD, Number Five's aunt tells\nhim, \"Call me Aunt Jeannine.\" And since later we learn that Aunt Jeannine\nis a female variant of Number Five's father (and since Number Five himself\nis cloned from the same source), inferentially we may assume Number Five's\nname to be the male equivalent of Jeannine or Jean/Gene." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nJeannine = \"Gene #9\"?\n\n-Rostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Charles Dye", "address": "raster at highfiber.com" }, "date": "1998-04-03T10:53:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Gene/Jeannine/#5", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Robert Borski\" elucidates:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As for the \"Wolfe\" moiety, besides the library reference, Number Five\nremarks that his house is sometimes referred to as Maison du Chien and that\nthis \"may have been a reference to our surname as well.\" [ibid. pg 14].\nChien meaning dog in French, it's not that big of a stretch to assume\nWolf/e (dogs being evolutionarily the domesticated versions of wolves) is\nthe name in question." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ah, and I though \"Maison du Chien\" was just more polyglot punnery like\n\"Cave Canem\" (\"Beware of Dog,\" referring to the statue, but reinterpreted\nas \"Dog Cave.\") 666 Saltimbanque is of course a cat house, among other\nthings ....\n\nraster at highfiber.com" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jim Jordan", "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net" }, "date": "1998-04-03T22:28:09+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Gene/Jeannine/#5", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A coupla notes:\n\n\t1. The brother of No. 5 in \"5th Head\" is indeed a \"control,\" a child of\nman and woman. The differences between him and No. 5 are important since,\nas the father says, \"we don't make progress.\" The Cerberus line is stuck;\nthough \"someday they'll want us,\" which I've always taken as an allusion to\na future antichrist, especially given that their home is a WhoreofBabylon\nHouse.\n\n\t2. Note how this them is carried through in the third story, as the humans\ntry to wipe out the shapeshifters, thus eliminating diversity and the kind\nof marriage-to-the-other that could make for a dynamic future. VRT is, of\ncourse, a shapeshifter.\n\n\t3. On Thecla and the alzabo: It seems to me rather clear that since\neverything that comes in contact with Severian is brought back to life,\nThecla comes back to life and live within him. Some of Severian's memories\nseem more likely to be Thecla's. I think of his comment after visiting the\nwhorehouse that he never went there again because it was painful. Men don't\nexperience pain in their initiation into sex, but women do, of course. I'll\nbet that was Thecla's memory.\n\n\tThen again, maybe I'm wrong.\n\nNutria (if that's still who I am)\n(Well, I'll always be the Rat to Alga!)" } ] } ] }