Subject: (urth) PEACE: the source story

From: Christopher Keiser <slowalrus at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:45:57 +0000

Hello there?Urth.net, long time lurker, first time poster.

I am suffering, at the moment, a specific mental ailment, Eireneomania.

During my third consecutive read, an allusion that had been nibbling
away in my brain finally chewed its way free.

"An Inhabitant of Carcosa", by Ambrose Bierce, is the the source story
for _PEACE_.

http://www.ambrosebierce.org/carcosa.html

In interviews, Gene Wolfe always points to one or another story as the
root source of his story, the seed of the idea.

Never would I say anything is 100% with Wolfe, but, I will say it now:
this story is the seed of  _PEACE_.

I believe this will also support the theory that Weer is dead, though
I am not sure anyone at this point believed otherwise.  My favorite
interpretation of _PEACE_  places Weer's ghost in the far future,
after the fall of our civilization. "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" would
support that hypotheses.

I hope this is not a repeat of something previously posted to Urth. I
did a search on Urth, and the Internet in general, and found nothing
similar.

Have a read, any feedback would be appreciated.  Please tell me I am not crazy.

Thanks,
Chris Keiser

---

From: Adam Thornton <adam at io.com>
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:49:39 +0000

> "An Inhabitant of Carcosa", by Ambrose Bierce, is the the source story

My head asplode.

I need to reread the Bierce, but I don't think I disagree.

Adam

---

From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:11:52 +0000

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 7:45 PM, Christopher Keiser  wrote:
> Hello there Urth.net, long time lurker, first time poster.
>

The first time through that story, my head asploded as well, until I
looked up the dates and realized that _The King in Yellow_ had
borrowed the names like Hyades and Carcosa from this story, rather
than some other avenue of influence.

The second time, I don't really see any smoking gun. There must surely
have been other stories where the narrator is a ghost who finally
realizes his spectral nature; just off the top of my head, I'm sure
there was a _Twilight Zones_ episode like that. Do we have any
connection beside the generic ghostly narrator?

- --
gwern

---

From: Christopher Keiser <slowalrus at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:21:47 +0000

- --
gwern

That is certainly an honest request, considering Gene Wolfe.

1. Hoseib Alar Robardin finds his grave entangled in the roots of a tree.

2. The narrator does not know that he is dead.

3. Obviously, The inclusion of the _Morryster's Marvells of Science_
shows that Wolfe is familar with Bierce (of course, is there anything
with which he isn't familiar?).  The inclusion of the three mythos
tomes, (Bierce, Lovecraft and Bloch), another substrata of the novel,
displays more than a passing fancy regarding authors borrowing
fictional books from each other, and thereby strengthening their
'reality'.

4. The motif  "all are dead, all is gone, I am alone" is repeated many
times in _PEACE_.

5. Savages now inhabit the world  ... Iroquois inherit Cassionsville
after Blaine dies

6.  "I continued, 'I am ill and lost. Direct me, I beseech you, to
Carcosa.' ... very similar to Weer's conversations with many
characters.

7. And the smoking gun ...

"A chorus of howling wolves saluted the dawn. I saw them sitting on
their haunches, singly and in groups, on the summits of irregular
mounds and tumuli filling a half of my desert prospect and extending
to the horizon. And then I knew that these were ruins of the ancient
and famous city of Carcosa."

Gene Wolfe is obviously his own grandfather, and has traveled back in
time, influencing Ambrose to include the image of Wolf in his short
story, so that a young Wolf may appropriate it for his first novel.
;-)

Seriously, I think I will reread _PEACE_ again, find perhaps some textual proof.

Thanks,

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:38:45 +0000

Chris, you're definitely crazy.

But only because you have laid eyes on things Man was not meant to see, 
and uncovered secrets Man was not meant to know.

So you should just go with it!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 19:45:57 -0400
From: Christopher Keiser <slowalrus at gmail.com>
Subject: (urth) PEACE: the source story
To: urth at lists.urth.net
Message-ID:
	<d1bb7a150906011645t1b354cb5l7fea0d70d9a224d8 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Have a read, any feedback would be appreciated.  Please tell me I am not 
crazy.

Thanks,
Chris Keiser

------------------------------

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From: Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:02:04 +0000

>>From the first paragraph:

"In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been
known to do while yet the body was in vigor for many years. Sometimes,
as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season
is raised up again in that place where the body did decay."

Silk died the first kind, Horn the second?

---

From: Christopher Keiser <slowalrus at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:05:35 +0000

Actually, I was speaking specifically about the Novel _PEACE_, but, it
may apply there also.

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Matthew King<automatthew at gmail.com> wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>

---

From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:32:41 +0000

These metaphysical ideas were around long before Bierce.

Not to talk him down: Ambrose Bierce is excellent. His descriptions of
combat and war particularly. I don't doubt that Wolfe has read him.

.

---

From: Christopher Keiser <slowalrus at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:00:46 +0000

I can't disagree with you.  Those were not novel ideas from Bierce.

What I was suggesting was that this short story was the seed of the
idea for Wolfe.  He always seems to mention "Oh, I got that story from
[this or that story]."

---

From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:07:24 +0000

That is possible. Someone should ask him at some point, and we will know.

I wouldn't be surprised if Wolfe's descriptions of war and combat owed
something to Bierce.

.

>>>> On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 6:45 PM, Christopher
>>>> Keiser<slowalrus at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote: