{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/585", "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": 585, "subject": "Suzanne Delage", "messages": 9, "voices": 6, "first": "1998-05-10T13:17:57+00:00", "last": "1998-05-14T11:27:12+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "adam louis stephanides", "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu" }, "date": "1998-05-10T13:17:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Fri, 8 May 1998 Craig Christensen wrote:\nI read Suzanne Delange again last night and when nothing unmistakable \njumped out at me I reread it with the story's opening statement in mind. \n That is, the narrator was struck by the passage he had read which stated \nthat every person has probably had at least one event so momentous and so \ninassimilable (somebody's making good use of his thesarus, huh?) that he \nhas wiped it from his memory. I took that to mean that the narrator had \nnot only met Suzanne in his past, but that she was very important to him. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I was lying in bed this morning and came to the conclusion that this was \ncorrect. Based on it, I developed a reading of the story. It explains \nthe text; it is consistent with Wolfe's method in other works such as \n_Peace_ and _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_; and on this reading the story is\nworthy of Wolfe. My explanation will be a bit lengthy, but bear with me.\n\nAs in other works by Wolfe, the narrative seems ordinary on the surface, \nbut when you study it carefully anomalies appear. First of all, why is \nthe narrator so obsessed with the \"certain remark\" he reads, to the point \nof lying awake trying to remember something extraordinary that happened to \nhim that he has forgotten(!)? And what he comes up with--never having met\nSuzanne--is not, despite his claim, all that \"strange--I might almost\nsay...incredible.\" (362; page references to the Tor hardcover, in which\nthe story runs from 361 to 367). By implication, the town's population is\nclose to 100,000 (362), and the high school is a large one (364). Later\nin the story he states that if he had ever danced with Suzanne \"the years\nhave so effectively sponged the event from my memory that no slightest\ntrace remains.\" (366) Together, these suggest that something has indeed\nhappened to the narrator which he has not merely forgotten but repressed,\nand that his non-meeting of Suzanne is what psychoanalysts call a \"screen\nmemory\": a false memory covering up a repressed event.\n\nWhat might the narrator have repressed, and why? There are two clues in\nthe narrator's retelling of \"the idea that so forcibly struck\" him.\nThe first is that the \"extraordinary experience he refers to is not\nnecessarily supernatural, merely a \"dislocation of all we expect from\nnature and probability.\" The second is that the person undergoing such an\nexperience forgets it because \"he has ... been so conditioned to consider\nhimself the most mundane of creatures.\" (361) This is significant because\nthe narrator does indeed \"consider himself the most mundane of creatures.\"\nHe calls his life \"dull\" and is \"afraid [he] bored\" both his wives (362).\nThe latter is no surprise, for he is a boring narrator; compare him with\nWeer in _Peace_. The information that the narrator's life is \"perhaps a\nlonely\" one, that he was briefly married twice (362), and that he now\nlives alone (366) is also significant.\n\nIf the narrator is indeed repressing something, there should be traces of\nit in the narration. And there are. He tells us that if he had met\nSuzanne as a child, \"I would no doubt have soon come to both love and\nhate\" her. (366) This is certainly possible, but why does he say there is\n\"no doubt\"? Then, it's odd that he thinks he might have danced with a\ngirl as beautiful as Suzanne apparently was and casually forgotten about\nit. But it is the description of Suzanne's daughter that is the real\ngiveaway. I won't quote it all, but read it over. Firstly, we have this\nsudden outburst of poesy in a narrative that has up till now been\ncompletely prosaic. Secondly, he claims to have observed in her \"an air,\nat once insouciant and shy, of vivacity coupled with an innocence and\nintelligence that were hers alone.\" But he only saw her for a few seconds\nas she \"walked quickly past\" him! How could he have possibly perceived\nall that? This passage is in reality not a description of the daughter,\nbut a repressed memory of Suzanne herself bubbling up, triggered by seeing\nher daughter.\n\nConfirmation comes with his friend's wife's reply: \"'But of course you\nknow who she is, don't you?'\" (367) If he really did not know Suzanne,\nwhy should his friend's wife assume he will recognize her daughter? He\ndid know Suzanne well enough for the friend's wife, an acquaintance but\nnot a friend herself, to remember it, although he--consciously--does not.\n\nTo sum up: the narrator did know Suzanne, who may well have been as\nextraordinary as he describes her daughter as being, and did \"love and\nhate\" her. He later \"sponged the event fron his memory\": either because he\n\"considered himself so mundane,\" or because the end of the affair was too\ntraumatic, and he made himself \"mundane\" as a reaction. Since then he has\nled the \"dull\" life he describes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " I read the \"Unable to be photographed\" to mean that Suzanne was pregnant \nthen and that the young lady he saw was his own daughter." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The girl he sees isn't his own daughter--I can't see the narrator as being\nin his early thirties--but it's possible that Suzanne was unable to be\nphotographed because she was pregnant. Also, the narrator may have torn\nthe pages out of the sophomore yearbooks himself, either to get the\nindividual pictures of himself and Suzanne as he says or in the wake of\nthe break-up.\n\nWell, that's my theory. Do you agree? (Even if you don't, I've learned a\nlot about the story from this discussion, and I'd like to thank everyone\nwho's participated.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The vampire angle never occurred to me. Neither have many other aspects \nof Mr. Wolfe's writings revealed to me in the urth.list archives." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have to admit, when I first read Mr. Westlake's post I thought he was\nsaying Suzanne was not a vampire but a fairy or something of the sort. In\nthat case, I have some other objections. \"Her complexion [was] as pure as\nmilk\" (367) does not, to my mind, describe a vampire's pallor; and the\nentire description does not feel vampiric to me. And the vampire theory\ndoesn't explain why the narrator never met Suzanne, or forgot meeting her,\nsince his wife's friend did not forget.\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Westlake", "address": "peter at harlequin.co.uk" }, "date": "1998-05-10T23:58:42+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "At 13:17 1998/05/10 -0500, Adam wrote:\n.." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, that's my theory. Do you agree? (Even if you don't, I've learned a\nlot about the story from this discussion, and I'd like to thank everyone\nwho's participated.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Seconded. I do like your theory, even though I don't believe it's the\none the author intended. It does fit the text pretty well, but I think\nit isn't quite strongly enough implied. At least, I *think* I think that." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "The vampire angle never occurred to me. Neither have many other aspects \nof Mr. Wolfe's writings revealed to me in the urth.list archives." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I have to admit, when I first read Mr. Westlake's post I thought he was\nsaying Suzanne was not a vampire but a fairy or something of the sort. In\nthat case, I have some other objections. \"Her complexion [was] as pure as\nmilk\" (367) does not, to my mind, describe a vampire's pallor; and the\nentire description does not feel vampiric to me." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "True enough, and I would prefer her not to be a vampire.\nIt just seemed to fit, and to be reasonably Wolfeish." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And the vampire theory\ndoesn't explain why the narrator never met Suzanne, or forgot meeting her,\nsince his wife's friend did not forget." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not meeting her would just be a coincidence, as it is in Proust; it\nstarts the narrator looking through his yearbooks, and reveals the\nsubtext to the (possibly over-imaginative :-) reader, though not to\nthe narrator.\n\nOf the theories I've heard so far, I like Alice's the best. It makes\nmost sense of the structure of the story - with Suzanne's daughter\nappearing at the end, a very conspicuous part of the story. I do\nwonder how many other readings there are, though - we haven't had\nthe one yet in which the Pie Club is really the Pudding Club and\nthey're all off ill having babies at exactly the same time, like\nthe women of Midwich. I'll spare you that one, I think.\n\nPeter." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Stephenson", "address": "pws at ifh.de" }, "date": "1998-05-11T08:02:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "adam louis stephanides wrote:\nBut it is the description of Suzanne's daughter that is the real\ngiveaway.\n...\nThis passage is in reality not a description of the daughter,\nbut a repressed memory of Suzanne herself bubbling up, triggered by seeing\nher daughter." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You're right that this is a key moment, and seems to be asking for a\npsychological rather than a fantasy explanation. Actually, it recalls\nanother part of Proust, towards the end, when he meets Gilberte Swann's\ndaughter and recognises in her all the things he once saw in Gilberte.\nSorry I don't have it around, but maybe there's a really telling\nquotation in Le Temps Retrouve' (Time Regained) somewhere.\n\npws" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "adam louis stephanides", "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu" }, "date": "1998-05-11T13:02:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mon, 11 May 1998 Peter Westlake wrote:\nSeconded. I do like your theory, even though I don't believe it's the\none the author intended. It does fit the text pretty well, but I think\nit isn't quite strongly enough implied. At least, I *think* I think that." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This might be true for another author, but not for Wolfe. I think my\ntheory is at least as strongly implied by the text as is Weer's ghostly\nstate in _Peace_, which we know Wolfe intended." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Of the theories I've heard so far, I like Alice's the best." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The main problem I now have with Alice's theory is that it doesn't account\nfor the strong indications that the narrator has indeed forgotten\nsomething. (I don't think you can say he has \"forgotten\" not having met\nSuzanne.)\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Craig Christensen", "address": "2644 at mn3.lawson.lawson.com" }, "date": "1998-05-12T08:40:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "William," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Anyway, my point is that the narrator mentions Hamlet *after* he talks\nabout the \"extraordinary experience\" but *before* he says anything about\nforgetting it. So \"Hamlet's hackneyed precept\" is about the unusual, not\nabout memory, making the Horatio quote most probably the one intended by\nfar." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good points, but how about this well-known quote from Hamlet?\n\"Neither a borrower nor a lender be\"\nMaybe the narrator owed her money and has conveniently forgotten it. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I was originally going to post a message saying \"enough with the\nSuzanne Delage already\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "OK, here's my last Suzanne Delage post. I'm obviously out of ideas, \nanyway.\n\nCraig" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Damien Broderick", "address": "damien at ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au" }, "date": "1998-05-13T22:23:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As I was reading this morning - reading the URTH list's digest on my\ncomputer screen, I should explain - I was struck by the deluge of posts,\ndeliberately left unread until now, concerning the story `Suzanne Delage'.\nIt occurred to me to wonder about this thread. Living all my life, as I\nhave, in a genre comprising less than a hundred thousand stories, I had not\neven been dimly aware of this particular tale. And yet it had plainly\nexcited the witty and astute vulpine readers here. I went as soon as it\nwas convenient to my local library and found the copy of ENDANGERED SPECIES\nthat, hardly opened except to read `The Cat', I had returned only a month\nbefore, and there belatedly met for the first time the enigmatic absence of\nSuzanne Delage. Or so it seemed, until, with a strange frisson, my first\nfor the day, I noticed that this story had originally appeared in a\ncollection entitled EDGES (Pocket Books, 1980), edited by Mr Wolfe's agent,\nVirgina Kidd, and her other most notable client, Ursula Le Guin. This was\nstriking enough as a coincidence, for at that time I too was a client of Ms\nKidd. Stranger yet was the fact that this volume, in which I had never\npreviously encounted Mr Wolfe's story, opens with a novella that I believe\nMr Wolfe might enjoy, entitled `The Ballad of Bowspit Bear's Stead'. As it\nchanced, I had writtten that story.\n\nI turned for clues to Ms Kidd's introduction to the story. It proved\nimmediately unreliable in a small way, not perhaps a startling discovery in\na paperback original which had printed the closing sentences of my own\nstory not on its last page but at the head of the italicized introduction\nto the next, Carol Emshwiller's `Omens'. We are misinformed that Mr Wolfe\nhad been `working extensively on his tetralogy (*The Rock of the New\nSun*)'. Nevertheless, it is worth attending to Ms Kidd's insiderly comment:\n\n`His short story hereunder is a den of iniquities; no one else could have\nwritten it.'\n\nI think this is likely. It is less a madeleine than a reverse veronica, a\nkind of Turin test. Here are some incidental, glancing reflections:\n\nSuzanne is not a vampire, I think, nor is she her own daughter and mother,\nnot quite. I do think she might have no use for men. Is it implausible\nthat those exhausting trips taken by Madame Delage and Mother, so eagerly\nrepeated, were spent as often under the quilt as on it? Was it Mother who\nlater scissored out the photos of the young woman who (perhaps) - like\ndaughter, like mother, like grandmother, faithful mirror of the flesh - so\nresembled her lost lover? Why did the bitter old neighbor widow so detest\nMrs Delage? Had she been displaced in the beautiful friend's affections\n(or those of someone looking quite similar - wait, wait for it) by other,\nyounger women, Mother being merely the latest?\n\nWhy should this be the occasion of retrograde amnesia? The conjecture\nabove might be the root of a complex Oedipal agony of (as it were) biblical\nproportions. As Adam noted of this confessedly (or avowedly) dull\nsmall-town dog:\n\n< \"extraordinary experience he refers to is not\nnecessarily supernatural, merely a \"dislocation of all we expect from\nnature and probability.\" The second is that the person undergoing such an\nexperience forgets it because \"he has ... been so conditioned to consider\nhimself the most mundane of creatures.\" (361) This is significant because\nthe narrator does indeed \"consider himself the most mundane of creatures.\"\nHe calls his life \"dull\" and is \"afraid [he] bored\" both his wives (362). >\n\nThe provenance of the luscious 15 year old daughter of the absent Suzanne?\nMantis provided the key allusion to Proust, a writer for whom sexual\nevasions and masks were not unknown. But here's another possible layering\n(if we are prepared to accept that Gene Wolfe is vatic as well as gnomic,\nthe necessary premise for many of this list's entertainingly\nover-interpretative hi-jinks). You all know, of course, that Ives Delage\n(1854-1920) was the French zoologist who (as the EB tells us) `developed a\nmethod for culturing sea urchins following artificial fertilization of the\neggs with chemicals'. This might be irrelevant in the work of anyone with\nless interest in cloning and reduplication than Mr Wolfe.\n\nHaving mused on this matter for a time, I let it slip my mind and opened my\nmail from the Taxation Department of the Australian Commonwealth. It is a\ntruth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good\nIQ, is quite often as thick as a brick when faced by normal tasks routinely\nhandled with dispatch by the village halfwit. Horrified by what I found\nthere, I pedalled at once to gladiolus-rich Moonee Ponds [sic], Melbourne\nseat of the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation, suburb apostophised so\nlovingly by our laureate Dame Edna Everage for its lower-middle class\n*niceness*, in order to set right, if I could, a lamentable lapse of\nmemory. In a fit of near-Alzheimerish muddle I had written not long ago to\nthe Deputy Commissioner or his lackey a brief message deploring his request\nfor a certain penalty that I believed wrongly had been forgiven following\nan earlier round of correspondence. Or rather, that amount having indeed\nbeen remitted,demurring at the more substantial amount now requested with\nmenaces, which proved to relate to another year entirely. How time flies\nand so on. \n\nSince I could find no method of electronic payment, and no other that did\nnot involve a hefty excess for the service, I bicycled, as I say, to cloudy\nautumn Moonee Ponds and there withdrew from the local bank branch - after\nfirst admitting my inability to drive a car and producing what I regarded\nas an excessive number of documents showing my face and my signature - an\namount of folding cash equal to 68 times the sum paid me by Deakin\nUniversity Press for my book about deconstructive theory. \n\nSoon I entered the vast building in nearby Gladstone Street and was\ndirected to a bullet-proof glass-fronted cashiers' counter where a small\nfrisson greeted me, my second or third for the day. Waiting to take and\ncount my bank notes were two burly chaps, apparently there from central\ncasting in the role of smash-and-grab men or perhaps undercover drug cops\nworking a dangerous biker detail, in louche wrinkled garments revealing\nrather an expanse of beefy forearm. The thug who took my money and spent a\nsurprisingly long time counting it, putting it into small piles and moving\nthese back and forth, was shaven-skulled in a stubbled 5 o'clock shadow\nway, with a long plaited queue rising from the back of his head in the\nplace where my male pattern tonsure, sadly, meets the equally bald portions\nat the front. I found this entire scene extremely gratifying, at once a\nmetonymy of the process and evidence of a new and refreshing relaxation of\nout-moded shibboleths. If the rules had been as sensible when I was a\nyoung lout, who knows but that I might now be approaching the close of a\nwell-remunerated working life in the Public Service.\n\nDamien Broderick" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jack Lyons", "address": "revjack at saltmine.radix.net" }, "date": "1998-05-13T10:45:17+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On Wed, 13 May 1998, Damien Broderick wrote:\n\n:As I was reading this morning - reading the URTH list's\n:digest on my computer screen, I should explain - I was\n:struck by the deluge of posts,\n\n[snip]\n\nFinally, somebody is starting to make sense.\n\nPatera Jack" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "adam louis stephanides", "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu" }, "date": "1998-05-13T11:08:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mon, 11 May 1998 Craig Christensen wrote:\nAfter reading Suzanne Delange I looked for Spanish Influenza information, \nto date when the characters were in high school. Of course I was \nsurprised to learn that the Spanish Influenza occurred in 1918 during the \nfirst World War. This certainly doesn't seem to be the correct period \nfor the characters' high school years." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think it could be. According to Krug's _The Shaping of the American\nHigh School, 1880-1920_, extracurricular activities of the type the\nnarrator describes were found in that period; and I don't see any other\ndetails which are inconsistent with it. (The reference to a\n\"fundamentalist church\" might be a problem, since the term may not have\nbeen in use then, though I haven't looked it up; but this could be the\nnarrator himself using anachronistic terminology.) This would mean, of\ncourse, that the \"present\" of the story was itself in the past when it was\npublished, but I see no problem with that. In fact, the initial reference\nto \"those somewhat political, somewhat phiosophical, somewhat historical\nbooks which can now be bought by the pound each month\" doesn't seem to\nreally apply to the late-1970s publishing scene." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Hamlet? And second, why the long rambling description of quilt \ncollecting? In such a compact story it must have significance." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good question. I took it as furthering the characterization of the\nnarrator as boring, as well as indicating a possible source for this trait\nin his mother's conventionality; but it may well have some more specific\nsignificance which escapes me at present.\n\nIn response to some posts of William H. Ansley's which I had deleted:\nthe \"many decades ago\" bit (363 in ES) is indeed hard to explain. To\nme \"many\" is certainly more than three, and even more than five--I\nwouldn't say that Wolfe had written many novels with Severian as\nprotagonist--and as William points out, for Suzanne to be 65 now is\nalready pushing the outer limits of probability (although Damien's theory\nwould account for that). Of course, I use this to support my own\ntheory: not only has the narrator repressed the events to the extent of\nsuppressing that it was he that tore out the pages, but he pushes the\ntearing-out back in time to an impossible extent.\n\nAs for the italics in the recounting of the \"idea,\" they're that way in\nthe hardcover. I don't think it's a typo. The narrator immediately\nforgets about the forgetting, so to speak: his explanation of why the idea\nis correct ignores that part of it, and he also ignores it when trying to\nrecall an extraordinary event in his own life. I can tie this in with my\ntheory too, but I won't belabor the point.\n\nDamien Broderick's post, which is in the archives but not yet in my\nmailbox was fascinating. Assuming that the comment about the \"den of\niniquity\" reflected inside information and not just the editor having\nnothing else to say, it confirms that there is *something* under the\nsurface. While the Ivan Delage cross-reference is indeed suggestive,\nthough, I don't think I can buy the theory as yet; now if you could tie it\nin with those quilts...\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Westlake", "address": "peter at harlequin.co.uk" }, "date": "1998-05-14T11:27:12+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 22:23 1998-05-13 +0000, Damien Broderick wrote:\nAs I was reading this morning - reading the URTH list's digest on my\ncomputer screen, I should explain - I was struck by the deluge of posts,\ndeliberately left unread until now, concerning the story `Suzanne Delage'.\nIt occurred to me to wonder about this thread. Living all my life, as I\nhave, in a genre comprising less than a hundred thousand stories, I had not\neven been dimly aware of this particular tale." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Masterful! :-)\n\n Nevertheless, it is worth attending to Ms Kidd's insiderly comment:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "`His short story hereunder is a den of iniquities; no one else could have\nwritten it.'\n\nI think this is likely. It is less a madeleine than a reverse veronica, a\nkind of Turin test. Here are some incidental, glancing reflections:\n\nSuzanne is not a vampire, I think, nor is she her own daughter and mother,\nnot quite. I do think she might have no use for men. Is it implausible\nthat those exhausting trips taken by Madame Delage and Mother, so eagerly\nrepeated, were spent as often under the quilt as on it? Was it Mother who\nlater scissored out the photos of the young woman who (perhaps) - like\ndaughter, like mother, like grandmother, faithful mirror of the flesh - so\nresembled her lost lover? Why did the bitter old neighbor widow so detest\nMrs Delage? Had she been displaced in the beautiful friend's affections\n(or those of someone looking quite similar - wait, wait for it) by other,\nyounger women, Mother being merely the latest?\n\nWhy should this be the occasion of retrograde amnesia? The conjecture\nabove might be the root of a complex Oedipal agony of (as it were) biblical\nproportions. As Adam noted of this confessedly (or avowedly) dull\nsmall-town dog:\n\n< \"extraordinary experience he refers to is not\nnecessarily supernatural, merely a \"dislocation of all we expect from\nnature and probability.\" The second is that the person undergoing such an\nexperience forgets it because \"he has ... been so conditioned to consider\nhimself the most mundane of creatures.\" (361) This is significant because\nthe narrator does indeed \"consider himself the most mundane of creatures.\"\nHe calls his life \"dull\" and is \"afraid [he] bored\" both his wives (362). >\n\nThe provenance of the luscious 15 year old daughter of the absent Suzanne?\nMantis provided the key allusion to Proust, a writer for whom sexual\nevasions and masks were not unknown. But here's another possible layering\n(if we are prepared to accept that Gene Wolfe is vatic as well as gnomic,\nthe necessary premise for many of this list's entertainingly\nover-interpretative hi-jinks). You all know, of course, that Ives Delage\n(1854-1920) was the French zoologist who (as the EB tells us) `developed a\nmethod for culturing sea urchins following artificial fertilization of the\neggs with chemicals'. This might be irrelevant in the work of anyone with\nless interest in cloning and reduplication than Mr Wolfe." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Astounding!\n\nI don't know which boggles the mind more - that this is a coincidence,\nor that it isn't. A bit like life on other worlds.\n\nI see that Ives Delage died soon after the height of the Spanish Flu\nepidemic; but that way madness lies, I fear.\n\nPeter." } ] } ] }