This Week in Google Alerts: new _Peace_ edition & afterword?

By Marco Palmieri https://twitter.com/mxpalmieri

(@nailhimself is https://twitter.com/neilhimself or Neil Gaiman, of course. Who else would be writing a Wolfe afterword?)

Clarification: you typed "nailhimself", make sure you look for "neilhimself"!

I got the eBook edition a few weeks ago, so I'll have to see if the afterword is in it. I'll report back.

Must be that Autotheoanthropos you folks bring up at times.

It's not, or at least not in mine. Neil has always been extremely useful as a mouthpiece and trumpeter - I don't honestly expect much new from his afterward, but it will still probably prompt me to pick up the new physical copy sooner rather than later. --- On Wed, 11/21/12, Fred Kiesche <godelescherbach at gmail.com> wrote: From: Fred Kiesche <godelescherbach at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: new Peace edition & afterword? To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Wednesday, November 21, 2012, 4:40 AM I got the eBook edition a few weeks ago, so I'll have to see if the afterword is in it. I'll report back. On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 7:27 AM, Fred Kiesche <godelescherbach at gmail.com> wrote: Clarification: you typed "nailhimself", make sure you look for "neilhimself"! On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 10:17 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote: https://twitter.com/mxpalmieri/status/269198900693434368

By Marco Palmieri https://twitter.com/mxpalmieri

(@nailhimself is https://twitter.com/neilhimself or Neil Gaiman, of course. Who else would be writing a Wolfe afterword?)

My copy is beat up and old, I probably won't be able to resist a shiny new one.

My eBook is August 2011. However, it's possible that if I download it again in a few weeks, I'll get the afterword. I've found that sometimes this happens. Also sometimes you get a notice that an eBook you've bought has been updated (usually to fix something) and you can download the corrected/updated text. If not, I'll buy it again (in paper or electronic). On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com

Looking at the eBook on Amazon...it says "Afterword by Neil Gaiman". And it's the same image that was up when I buoght it (same artwork, etc.), so it appears the old file is up while the new image (date, afterword, art) is also up. I will download again in December to see if the file updates.

The Neil Gaiman thing annoys me. In my opinion he's a forgettable, mediocre genre writer & having him constantly endorse Wolfe is very tail-wagging-dog-ish. Whatever. I read PEACE again for the first time in many years a few weeks ago, after the Kindle version came out. I hadn't really gotten into it when I was a young'un - too many old people, too musty - but now, good lord, what a wonderful, mysterious book it is! The biggest mystery for me, right now: Why did Olivia marry Julius? He's short, deformed, half-educated, church-ish and not apparently wealthy at the time of the marriage. Why him? I think the wizard in the princess & her suitors story must be identified with Julius. The wizard is also deformed, and said to "live exclusively on tea", burlesquing Julius' teetotalism. Anyway, it would make a good story for the wizard to win the princess' hand in the end, perhaps shedding his skins and deformed guise to reveal a young prince, or something. But in the absence of any details about how he won her hand that doesn't shed much light on Olivia's decision. Weer's dream of the walled garden is surely a dream of Olivia's soul, in some sense, at the time of her death when he was about 25. It is a very poignant image - Olivia maintaining high walls against the outside world and ordering herself within them in beautiful, tranquil symmetry. The resonance with the princess in the tower is clear, and the three objects Weer sees - the bird, the troll and the paper lantern blowing in the wind - link to the suitors in the princess' story: the troll for the gnome prince; the merchant prince's bird; and the air prince's windiness. Olivia let little bits of Peacock, Macafee and Blaine through her wall - but just little bits, no more than litter really. There is nothing in the garden to suggest that Julius was ever let inside, and to some extent that's the answer, I think. Julius was a man she could marry (in a time and place where it would be far more conenient to be married than not) without emotional demands, without having to let him into her garden or leave her tower. He's in his basement laboratory, she's upsatirs in her bath or out enjoying assignations with her lovers, protected from any risk of serious entanglement by her married state. But still ... I also wonder if perhaps Julius used some kind of potion on her ...