{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5011", "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": 5011, "subject": "Seven American Nights Forgery", "messages": 4, "voices": 2, "first": "2008-05-08T19:59:55+00:00", "last": "2008-05-11T09:51:25+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "<1bf4dd40805081259k29760797m9133c8bca84a761@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dave Tallman", "address": "davetallman at msn.com" }, "date": "2008-05-08T19:59:55+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Seven American Nights Forgery", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I found more evidence for the forgery theory in SAN:\n\n\"I carried with me the bottle we had bought, still nearly half full;\nand before she pinched out the candle I persuaded her to pour out a\nfinal drink for us to share...\"\n\nThere's a strong implication that Nadan drank some of that\nbottle. Ardis would be very suspicious if he didn't. But Wolfe has\nestablished that Nadan doesn't drink (p. 362, Orb IODDAOSAOS). Nadan\ncan't change character without explanation. He wouldn't break his\nprinciples just for a chance to see her. There were simpler ways; he\ncould have had an extra candle and matches in his pocket and left his\npants in easy reach of the bed.\n\nThe story is melodramatic and absurd. It has to be a lie. That's why\nit has perplexed so many of us. Before, we were left with\nimpossibilities:\n\n1) Ardis had some ugly deformity that couldn't be detected by feel,\nsuch as discolored blotches on her skin. The violence of his reaction\nmakes this impossible. He might be disgusted and break up with her,\nbut that would be all.\n\n2) Ardis herself was the werewolf he tried to kill. The Osman Aga\nstory gives a scientific origin for the beasts. There's no way that a\nnon-supernatural mutant woman could morph her skull into the inhuman\nshape Nadan saw (blunt muzzle, low brow like an macaque) and then back\nto her beautiful self the next day. Wolfe can't be asking us to\nbelieve this; it would destroy the story.\n\n4) Ardis was not the werewolf, but had some hidden deformity that\ninstantly identified her as the same sort of creature. Nobody has been\nable to figure out what this could be.\n\nNadan would have no reason to fabricate this incident. From at least\nthat point on, a forger is writing for him. I'm still suspicious of the\nGood Friday parade description, but it could be genuine. Nadan seems to\nbe allegorical here -- the \"dead leader lifted up\" is the lost greatness\nof America.\n\nHere is my reconstruction of what really happened.\n\n1) Saturday, Nadan arrives in Washington.\n\n2) Sunday, Nadan heads north to see the buildings. He visits the\nNational Art Gallery. (Why would he bypass the place his mentor visited\nand see the old ruins first? The gallery was on his way there.) That night\nhe writes of his fears.\n\n3) Monday, he goes back and visits the ruined buildings. The beggar\nwith no lower jaw shows him the Smithsonian room. The beggar boasts\n\"Sunday we will be great again,\" knowing that he will be misunderstood\nas saying \"Someday we will be great again.\"\n\nNadan's visit is noticed by F.E.D. informers among the beggars. The\npolice tail him to the theater. The \"curator\" goes in, sits in his\nrow, and draws him into conversation. Nadan escorts the curator\nhome. He doses the eggs.\n\n4) Tuesday, visits the park during the day. Attends the theater again\nand sees \"Mary Rose.\" Eats egg one. Goes out to try to find\nArdis. Kills the werebeast.\n\n5) Wednesday, buys gift for Ardis at the Washington Monument\nfair. Eats egg two. Attends first part of \"Mary Rose.\" Bobby attempts\nto pickpocket him, gets arrested. Ardis cones to his room to intercede\nfor Bobby.\n\n6) Thursday, spends most of the day trying to get Bobby out of jail.\nWhile he is occupied, the secret police search his room. They are\nexperts and leave no trace. They make a copy of his journal and get it\ntranslated. Nadan returns home, eats egg three, then goes out to the\nplay, where he ends up performing. Goes to Ardis' apartment.\n\nThe police return while he is absent. They found the mention of the\neggs in the journal. It won't do for Nadan to destroy his mind or\npossibly die before they are ready with a cover-up. They bring a\nsniffing dog or some other detector and find the bad egg. They cannot\nsimply replace it with a harmless copy -- the eggs are speckled and he\nmight have noticed the patterns. Instead, they take the bad egg and\nmove the journal, hoping he will attribute it to a thieving maid.\n\nWhen Nadan returns, he finds the journal disturbed. He tears out the\nincriminating section about the Art Museum visit (shortening the\nrecord for Sunday).\n\n7) Friday, eats the next-to-last egg. Picnic and boating with\nArdis. Hears her proposal to go treasure-hunting. Sees the Good\nFriday parade (whether or not the account of it was forged).\n\nSometime during the evening, Nadan and Ardis are captured by the\nsecret police. It could be before or after the costume party.\nArdis is taken to her apartment and killed with Nadan's gun. Nadan\nwill never be seen again.\n\nHis journal entries are given to the story-writing and forging\ncomputers, which come up with the twist ending in which Ardis was a\nwerewolf and Nadan ran off to the interior of America after killing\nher.\n\nBy this time, his family is worried. All his letters to them have been\nintercepted by the police (p. 382-383). They send a detective, who\nwill eventually find the doctored journal as a false clue.\n\nOn Easter Sunday, the American government will pull some kind of stunt\nwith a forged document. It may start a war (as Kreton wanted to do in\n\"Visit to a Small Planet\"). The intent will be to bring America back\nto more power in world. (\"Sunday we will be great again\").\n\nThe death of the \"hero\" on Good Friday and the potential\n\"resurrection\" of America's power on Sunday form a nice Christian\nanalogy, of course." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1bf4dd40805091119n16276442i5b1fad0eb1eb268e@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dave Tallman", "address": "davetallman at msn.com" }, "date": "2008-05-09T18:19:28+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Seven American Nights Forgery", "in_reply_to": "<1bf4dd40805081259k29760797m9133c8bca84a761@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Matthew King wrote:\nDave, I've been reading your arguments with great interest. Please\ndon't let our collective lack of response dissuade you from continuing." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks for the encouragement, Matthew.\n\nRereading with the forgery plot in mind, here are some new thoughts.\n\n1) The woman who helped Nadan get the curator into bed supplied him with the\nchemical with which he dosed the egg. It becomes highly likely that this was\npoison. He was expected to take it and die that night, with any letters he\nwrote that day still unmailed. His game with the eggs was real Russian\nRoulette.\n\nIt threw the police off, too. Is he smarter than he appeared to be? What has\nhe done with the bottle? If he dies some other way and the poison is found\nit may expose the plot. Therefore they must protect him until they can\nfigure out what is going on. They saved him from the werewolf, and also from\na dog-pack attack in the park. The hotel manager warned him that one man\nwith a pistol would not be safe. When Nadan heard the howling of dogs behind\nhim, he assumed they were \"mourning their fallen leader.\" More likely, the\npolice were killing more of the dogs.\n\n2) The curator's idea of scent as the primal form of communication is\ninteresting. He smokes a pipe in the theater, possibly to mask his own scent\nof excitement. He example of the scented letter falsely declaring passion is\nexactly paralleled when Ardis leaves a scented note in Nadan's hotel room.\nDid the curator suggest this idea to her?\n\n3) The curator had two documents to show Nadan. One was the machine-written\nforgery, an example of a \"closed curve\" in which all original meaning was\nlost. The second was a blank piece of paper. I suggest this was the simplest\npossible example of an \"open curve.\" No matter to what level of abstraction\nyou go, a blank paper's information is not lost, because there is nothing to\nlose. Mathemeticians like these zero cases. I think this was a line of\nbaloney intended to make Nadan think the curator was a harmless academic.\nIt's also a nice little joke by Wolfe. To him, a story which conceals\nnothing is no story at all.\n\n4) Now that we have mapped Nadan's week to Holy Week, here are some more\nparallels:\n\na) The ruined city suggests Jerusalem. One part is described as \"occupied.\"\n(As in 'Jesus Christ Superstar' -- \"We are occupied. Have you forgotten how\nput down we are?\"} The police act like the Roman soldiers.\n\nb) The first real entry into the city is on Palm Sunday. Nadan describes\ncrowds and music.\n\nc) The authorities plot against Nadan and try to kill him.\n\nd) Nadan is followed by beggars and people needing healing.\n\ne) A sacred place (the Washington Monument) has been converted into a den of\nthieves, selling stolen rings.\n\nf) Ardis becomes Judas, the disciple who betrays him and dies herself. (She\nis certainly in on the police plot. She knew Terry would be absent, for\nexample). \"I asked her if she loved me, and she stopped my mouth with a\nkiss.\"\n\ng) The meal of sandwiches (bread) and fruit-flavored beverage (wine) recalls\nthe Last Supper.\n\nh) Red and purple garments in the city. Scarlet and purple robes were put on\nJesus.\n\n5) With so many parallels, it's time to move the arrest to where it really\nbelongs: late Thursday night. All of Friday needs to go into the forgery.\nThis is where the exposition gets really obvious, as Ardis lays out the\nstory of treasures in the interior and the creatures there. It lays the\nfoundation for the false ending. Nadan becomes much more love-sick and his\ndetermination to see her is stated several times, again telegraphing the\nending.\n\nThe real ending of what Nadan wrote is on p. 377. His last two words are\n\"the end.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nIf the F.E.D., for reasons unexplained, wanted Nadan dead, and in fact\nkilled him, they would have to have gone to extraordinary lengths in\nforging\nan account no one else had reason to believe even existed, and in so doing\ndo something pointless and stupid. If Nadan had been killed by the U.S.\ngovernment, the government would have no reason to suppose that a private\ninvestigator would eventually be hired by his family to investigate his\ndisappearance, so there would be no need to \"plant\" a false account. Nadan\nwould simply have disappeared without a trace, or been the victim of a\nrandom \"crime\" or \"accident\" in a rough and violent land." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, it does seem extraordinary to go to such lengths, but the stakes were\nvery high and Nadan seems to be related to royalty (Uncle Mirza, where Mirza\nmeans \"prince\"). My theory includes an initial simple plan to kill him that\nwent wrong because of his strange game with the eggs.\n\nAs for the idea that nobody at home knew of his journal, we can't be sure of\nthat. He bought it at a bazaar at home, so he may have showed it to his\nfamily and promised them he would bring it back full of tales of adventure.\nHe contemplates giving them an expurgated version, never just chucking the\nwhole idea. The police could know this if one of the letters they\nintercepted included something like \"As I told you before I left, I am\nkeeping a journal...\"" } ] }, { "message_id": "<002d01c8b332$595d90e0$4cce4a0c@rclackey.stic.net>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2008-05-11T06:43:36+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Seven American Nights Forgery", "in_reply_to": "<1bf4dd40805091119n16276442i5b1fad0eb1eb268e@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As the first two sentences of the story make absolutely clear, the private\ninvestigator hired by Nadan's family had already unearthed sufficient\nevidence to lead him to believe that Nadan had left D.C. to travel northward\nto the region of the Bay of Delaware *before* the notebook had even been\n\"discovered\" in said region. In other words, no matter what happened to\nNadan after the concluding events related in the notebook, whether forged or\nnot, the notebook had no bearing on the investigator's previous sleuthing.\nThe discovery of the notebook only served to lend a certain amount of\ncredence to his previously communicated conjecture that Nadan had left D.C.\nfor points north.\n\nIf Nadan killed Ardis and, as you suggest, he was being intensely monitored\nby the U.S. government, they would have known of the killing and had a\nperfectly legitimate excuse to arrest him openly for murder. There is no\nindication that any such thing happened, and if it had, there would have\nbeen no need to fabricate a diary in order to insinuate that he left the\ncity voluntarily to adventure in the interior of the country, much less\nplant that diary so far away from D.C. If the government killed Ardis and\nattempted to frame Nadan for the murder, as you contend, the result is the\nsame.\n\nFurther, with Ardis dead and without the information contained in the\nnotebook, how was the investigator able to conclude that Nadan had left the\ncity and traveled northward?\n\nNadan had no real desire to go adventuring or treasure hunting, but he felt\ntoo defiled to go home. It is possible that he made some sort of plans to\ntravel northward on his own initiative, or he may have been blackmailed by\nBobby. Either way -- or by some other way altogether -- a trail of evidence\nwas left that allowed the investigator to conclude that Nadan left the city\n*alive*, and the evidence had nothing to do with the notebook.\n\nAs for the American government pulling \"some kind of stunt\" on Easter Sunday\nthat would have significant international repercussions, it must have been a\nbig dud. The note that the investigator sent to the family back in Iran\nalong with the notebook was obviously written in the autumn, a good six\nmonths after Nadan's stay in D.C. There is no indication that anything of\nimport happened in the world since Easter.\n\n*If* any or all of the notebook was forged, the most obvious suspect is the\nperson who stood to benefit from it the most -- the investigator. So long as\nhe could keep up the family's hope that Nadan was alive, he could keep\nmilking them for money. And he almost certainly spoke Farsi.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4826C19D.5080501@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dave Tallman", "address": "davetallman at msn.com" }, "date": "2008-05-11T09:51:25+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Seven American Nights Forgery", "in_reply_to": "<002d01c8b332$595d90e0$4cce4a0c@rclackey.stic.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy. C. Lackey wrote:\nAs the first two sentences of the story make absolutely clear, the private\ninvestigator hired by Nadan's family had already unearthed sufficient\nevidence to lead him to believe that Nadan had left D.C. to travel northward\nto the region of the Bay of Delaware *before* the notebook had even been\n\"discovered\" in said region. In other words, no matter what happened to\nNadan after the concluding events related in the notebook, whether forged or\nnot, the notebook had no bearing on the investigator's previous sleuthing.\nThe discovery of the notebook only served to lend a certain amount of\ncredence to his previously communicated conjecture that Nadan had left D.C.\nfor points north." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, there has to be evidence beyond the notebook that Nadan has gone to \nthe Bay of Delaware. But if the ending of the journal account has been \nfaked, then so could that evidence. In my view, the notebook is just one \npiece of a false trail." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If Nadan killed Ardis and, as you suggest, he was being intensely monitored\nby the U.S. government, they would have known of the killing and had a\nperfectly legitimate excuse to arrest him openly for murder. There is no\nindication that any such thing happened, and if it had, there would have\nbeen no need to fabricate a diary in order to insinuate that he left the\ncity voluntarily to adventure in the interior of the country, much less\nplant that diary so far away from D.C. If the government killed Ardis and\nattempted to frame Nadan for the murder, as you contend, the result is the\nsame.\n " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't see that the \"result is the same\" if the government killed Ardis \nand framed Nadan for murder. Openly arresting him on false charges \nwouldn't have served their purposes. The family and their lawyers would \nvisit him in jail and details of the plot might be revealed. The \nauthorities wanted him silenced, so they framed him as a fugitive wanted \nfor murder. That way the family would be afraid to demand the full \nco-operation of the police in finding him." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Further, with Ardis dead and without the information contained in the\nnotebook, how was the investigator able to conclude that Nadan had left the\ncity and traveled northward?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "So your contention is that Ardis isn't dead? The account we have, if it \nwere genuine, seems to imply very strongly that Nadan killed her. We \nhave him, gun in hand, faced with what has been revealed to him as an \n\"it.\" In his hallucination he refers to her as \"my dead Ardis.\" He \nimagines the word \"police\" spoken loudly, probably because he fears they \nwill be after him soon.\n\nA possible start for the investigator would be the hotel manager saying \nthat Nadan checked out, porters who put his luggage in a wagon, etc. \nSuch witnesses could be lying, of course. The police could also tell the \ndetective that they wanted to arrest Nadan and that their investigations \nshowed he fled north." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As for the American government pulling \"some kind of stunt\" on Easter Sunday\nthat would have significant international repercussions, it must have been a\nbig dud. The note that the investigator sent to the family back in Iran\nalong with the notebook was obviously written in the autumn, a good six\nmonths after Nadan's stay in D.C. There is no indication that anything of\nimport happened in the world since Easter.\n " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The frame tale is narrowly focussed on the hunt for Nadan. You can argue \nthat nothing happened on the international scene, but an argument from \nlack of evidence is a weak one. It would have been nice for my theory if \nWolfe had made some sort of mention of troubled times. He does hint that \nsomething is slowing down the mail between the investigator and the family.\n\nYou make some good arguments, but I'm convinced I have found the \n\"gestalt\" of this story. When I read what I think is the last page Nadan \nreally wrote, the dramatic irony jumps out at me.\n\n\"You will see me tomorrow. You're going to take me boating, and we'll \npicnic by the water, under the cherry trees. Tomorrow night the theater \nwill be closed for Easter, and you can take me to a party. But now you \nare going home, and I am going to sleep.\" When I was dressed and \nstanding in the doorway, I asked her if she loved me, but she stopped my \nmouth with a kiss.\n\nThe parallels to Holy Week have been extensive up to this point. Judas \nbetrayed Jesus \"with a kiss\" right before his arrest. I believe that the \nparade described the next day is a \"stations of the cross\" parade for \nGood Friday. If the parallel continues, what follows Thursday night for \nNadan should not be a happy day in the park." } ] } ] }