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    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6461",
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  "thread": {
    "id": 6461,
    "subject": "Short Stories 54-57: The Dark of the June, The Death of Hyle,\n\tFrom the Notebook of Dr. Stein, and Thag",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2013-11-12T03:20:22+00:00",
    "last": "2013-11-12T03:20:22+00:00"
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    {
      "message_id": "<1384226422.99811.YahooMailNeo@web160704.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2013-11-12T03:20:22+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)  Short Stories 54-57: The Dark of the June, The Death of Hyle,\n\tFrom the Notebook of Dr. Stein, and Thag",
      "in_reply_to": null,
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          "text": "The Dark of the June,\nThe Death of Hyle, From the Notebook of Dr. Stein, Thag\nThis series of interlinked stories appeared in 1974 and 1975\nin Continuum 1-3 and 5. It is at this\npoint in Wolfe’s career that the Borgesian/metafictional play in the stories\nbecomes strongest, making the stories of the mid 1970s and 1980s a bit more\nobfuscating on the surface, though in these particular stories it is still\nclear “what happens”, it is less than clear if they are intended to be entirely\nartificial such as “The Last Thrilling Wonder Story.” \nBRIEF SUMMARY: In 1997, Harry Boyce Nailer, a one-eyed\nacademic, has long ago lost his wife, May, and his daughter June has decided to\ntake an exit to everyday life that has become available thanks to the psychic\nsensitivity of Laurel Baker (associated with a lantern lighting the way). This escape from nature classifies those who\ntake it as nin (not in nature) and seems to involve some “bounce” between\nreality and some other state of existence without a corporeal form, described\nas a gain in potential energy the longer one has lived, thus making the\n“bounce” from high to low energy more extreme. He tries to intervene by going to the office on a long automated\nwalkway, but he is too late. He manages\nto break past the security long enough to speak to the 3V image of his\ndaughter, who is at home. He beats up\nthe two policemen and escapes, to ask his daughter why she is leaving and to\nreveal his fear of her dying, and his own gladness over the fact that he will\nnever have to see her die. She winks\nout, her jewelry falling, after explaining that she doesn’t want to see him die\nand wants to flee his expectations.\n“In ?The Death of Hyle”,\nHarry becomes our first person narrator and speculates on the nature of the\nworld, his eyes tricked by illusion, though he denies that he is a religious\nperson. He has made himself young with\nimplants and surgery, and succeeds in going through with the discarnation, an\noperation involving drugs and a procedure which may exist purely to compel\nbelief. His body flashes off into the\nsky, passing through a tree, but does come back. He imagines himself walking into the sky and\nthrowing his own shark like face back at himself, from which he flees, before\nmeeting a woman tied to a lantern, Laurel Baker, who helps him find June in his\nown navel, being led by a creature in scarlet and gold. The three return to his house, where June\nappears to only cry and moan of her fear of incarceration before disappearing.\nIn “The Notebook of Dr. Stein”, an alienist interviews the\npossessed Donna W., who explains what has happened in the future with\ndisincarnation and the existence of the creature Thag, who is trying to use her\nas an energy base. When Dr. Stein uses\nelectroshock treatment on her, Donna dies. \nIn the fairy tale “Thag”, the boy Eric has a bear skull made\nby his great-grandfather “choking the bear with moonlight and filling his skull\nwith the cottony tales of rabbits, and the urine of shadows, and blck feathers\nsnached at great risk from the left foreleg of an eagle — The bear’s skull was\nthe home of Thag, as a beehive is the home of bees”. Thag returns to the skull and Eric uses him\nto take the kingdom of Charles the Wise and his dim wife. After 30 years of fairy tale time, eventually\nLaurel Baker, Harry Nailer, and June show up, and he mistakes them for Frigg,\nOdin, and Freya respectively. Thag\napproaches as a headless bear waiting to be killed by Nailer, but he decides to\npin him to the floor with his spear instead, and charges Eric to never let him\ngo. Eric lives happily ever after.\nANALYSIS OF VARIOUS DETAILS:\n? THE ROOM: The actual\nroom is described as if it jumped from the pages of a newspaper unchanged since\nMay’s planning. Those who are nin (Not in Nature) return to the flat pages of\nan ancient story, so it is perhaps not unusual to begin with this: real life\nspringing from the pages of a book, then jumping outside itself in a kind of\npotential/kinetic energy based on the amount of time the human in question has\nlived, ultimately returning to a low level energy state in a fairy tale.\nHowever, Wolfe’s sensibilities in the mid-1970s are flirting\nwith the postmodern just a bit more, and it seems that in the span of these\nfour stories we have a good range of fictional mimesis, from representational\nscience fiction rooted in psychological realism to a directly mythical piece.\nIs the entire series metafiction, aware of its own artificiality? We will address this soon.\nThe state of Harry Nailer’s room is “Untouched by any change\nof the last twenty five years, the Nailer living room continued to reflect\n(like a lost photograph unexpectedly found between the pages of a book) the\ntastes of Henry’s late wife, May Nailer — just such a room as May might have\nseen in a newspaper the day she ordered the furniture.”\nMETAFICTION: The story is set in 1997, and the room hasn’t\nchanged in 25 years, and that line might very well have been penned toward the\nend of 1972 or 1973, since the story was published in 1974, as the room really\ndoes become unchanging once its description is penned. \nAt the beginning of “The Dark of the June”, Henry Boyce\nNailer sits reading “An Incident at Krechetovka Station” by Solzhenitsyn. In ?Thag?, which is clearly intended to be a\n“fairy story”, Harry Nailer asks, “Do the characters in the books you have here\never read themselves” — In our world, you see, it would be quite possible for a\ncharacter in a book to sit peacefully before his fire reading the short stories\nof Alexander Solzhenitsyn.? (At this\npoint Thag appears in the form of a headless bear — more on the bear head\nsoon). I do believe that this is an\nimportant bit of detail: Harry Nailer has admitted through this detail that his\nactions at the start, reading a book, are entirely possible in a story (as they\nare in a story). The room at the start\ncould have jumped from still pages because, of course, it has. The story also plays with the relationships\nbetween symbolic and mythic characters and “real” characters, and I believe\nhigh and low energy states here simply resonate with the audience of fiction as\ntime passes, but when they are no longer read, their existence in the minds of\nothers “asymptotically approaches zero”.\nMore on this mysterious resonance is possible when we consider\nthe second story, “The Death of Hyle”:\n“There is something\nthat I think must be defined, and that is the curious relationship to Hyle and\nwood.\nHYLE: ?refers to matter or stuff. It can also be the\nmaterial cause underlying a change in Aristotelian philosophy. The Greeks\noriginally had no word for matter in general, as opposed to raw material\nsuitable for some specific purpose or other, so Aristotle adapted the word for\n\"wood\" to this purpose. The idea that everything physical is made of\nthe same basic substance holds up well under modern science, although it may be\nthought of more in terms of energy or matter/energy.”\nThis idea is philosophically important, especially in light\nof the strange resonance between change, matter, and wood. Also in this story, we get the rather strange\nability of wood to communicate, and trees also seem to be the transitional\nstate through which Nailer travels (though this is complicated by reference to\nMadagascar — hmmm).\nWood of course does ultimately make the paper that seems to\nbe the lowest energy level that these ideas can attain approaching immortality,\nso that the final words can come true, living “Happily, Ever, After.”\nCLOTHING: The clothing of the 1990s of the story, emphasized\nby June’s diaphanous gown and neon jewelry, is extremely exposed; even bare\nbreasts are not taboo. This style seems\nconsistent with the revealing, wild wardrobe of his other near future dystopias\nof the early 70s like “Remembrance to Come.”\nTHE CHARACTERS AND REFERENCES:\nHENRY BOYCE NAILER/WODEN: He makes himself artificially\nyoung to disincarnate with his daughter, but when he actually finds her, it is\ninside himself. There is an odd scene\nwhere his own cruel, sharklike face is thrown at him, from which he flees. He is left handed like Gene Wolfe, and\ndecides not to kill Thag, but nails him to the floor with his spear, trusting\nEric to keep him and use his powers to his own advantage. He becomes his name, a hairy nailer.\nJUNE NAILER/FREYJA: June claims that she is leaving so that\nshe would never see her father dead, and “All you expected of me, a little.\nAnd?”? She is cut off before giving her\nfinal reason, but her jewelry bounces to the ground — Nailer “saw the twinkle\nof her bracelet and earring under the willow; then the little lights winked out\none by one,” ending our first tale. In Norse mythology Freya cries tears of red\nand gold for her husband, Or. There is some conflation between Odin/Wotan and\nOr, and between Freya and Frigg, which is ultimately confusing. Both Freya and Frigg exchange sexual favors\nfor jewelry, perhaps echoing the fall of the jewelry and her unfinished “and”\nat the end of the first story. \n\nLAUREL BAKER/FRIGG: “The name Laurel is\nassociated with the laurel tree.” She is\nassociated with Frigg in the final story, with her dark hair and the white\nswath, and carries a lantern in the “between” world. Frigg is Odin’s wife, but oddly enough, it is\nunclear whether Freya and Frigg stem from a common goddess. She was a medium who was one of the first to\ncross over and disincarnate.\nDr. STEIN: He identifies Thag’s movements as those of a bat,\nbut there is a slight anachronism here. Cerletti and Bini will first use ECT on a human in 1938, and Dr. Stein\nhere insists that it is 1935. In\naddition, he mentions Dr. Huer of Buck Rogers, and this at least would be\npossible, as he was first published in 1928.\nERIC: In Nine Men’s Meadows, Eric uses Thag as his father\nbefore him did. Nine is a special number\nin Norse mythology, relating to the worlds across Yggdrasil and several other\nmysteries. Eric is a very common name in\nNorse stories.\nGNIP, ERIC’S RAVEN: it is possible that his name merely\nmeans to nip at something, but when Thag shows up again, Gnip proclaims\nmystery. It seems that in light of all\nthe other Norse references here, we should mention Gnipa, the cave that gives\nentrance to the underworld or world of the dead governed by Hel, where Garm\nhowls chained, waiting for Ragnarok.\nCHARLES THE WISE — the king with his “womanly” but vapid\nqueen and son Prince Robert, who seems to have little to do with either the\nHoly Roman Charles or the French one.\nTHAG: WHAT IS THAG?: Could he be Freyja’s red and golden\ntears at the loss of her desire? In light of the despair in the young of the\n1997 setting, who feel they must escape nature somehow, even though it means\nthat they are to all intents and purposes dead to those they leave behind, the\ncentral mystery is of the identity of Thag — who, when he appears as a man,\nwears scarlet and gold. In light of June’s\neventual association with Freya in the final story, we should consider this:\n“indeed I saw her over the woman’s shoulder, led by a tall, swaggering being of\nscarlet and gold — and then we three — but not the man in scarlet and gold —\nwere standing beside the furnace in the basement of our own house.” But June .. would only cry, and tell us that\nher father the king would allow no one to mock her, and scream for fear the old\nman in the picture above the mantel would imprison her in the Piombi with\nCasanova. — “She has broken; we all break to some extent, and you have brought\nthe wrong fragment.” (The man over the\nmantel is the Doge of Venice, Lorenzo Loredano, who lived more than a hundred\nyears before Casanova, who is famous for his escape from the Piombi as well as\nwomanizing.)\nLater (in 1935), the possessed Donna W. responds that there\nare “three unless you count the other one” inside her, to which our doctor\nformulates “you wish me to believe you have multiple personalities.” “In both of these scenarios Thag is present but\nthe count of individuals is still presented as three.\nThis telling scene resonates with not only Norse but\nChristian symbolism: ?Frigg whispered to Freya, ?There has to be a world that\ncorresponds to each of our fictions, dear, since what never was nor will be is\ninconceivable.” Still, I wonder what Thag\nreally is.? And the bear became a snake\npinned by the tail and struck an inch short of her heel.??? The serpent is of course the biblical\nserpent here, forever aiming at the feet of womankind, who will try to trample\nit, but it is indicative to of that original sin, and I think in some small\npart this Thag that leads June is a part of her, The Dark of the June, that\nstains her life and is the unfinished ?and ?? reason for her departure and\ndisincarnation from life, though later she mentions Casanova and the red and\ngold tears of Freya are for a lover who is always gone in Or. Thag wishes to be killed here so that he can\nescape elsewhere or elsewhen, but Nailer decides to trap him instead in this\nfairy tale. \nIn “From the Notebook of Dr. Stein”, it is speculated that\n“He may be a creature from a different sphere, or a spiritual survivor of a\nprehuman race” and he exhibits bat like movements, but he doesn’t seem large or\nmenacing enough to be the Midguard Serpent — the Christian one seems more\nappropriate, though something is still missing there.\nWhile in 1935 it is clear Dr. Stein believes that the\nproblem might be internal to Donna, it seems to me that this is a conceivable solution\nfor Thag’s presence — a girl’s shattered psyche — but not this girl’s. The\nproblem is in June’s grief: seeking to escape life, this thing leading her,\nechoing the scarlet and gold tears of Freya, might indeed be a part of her\ninstead of Donna. Why? has June latched onto this thing, that\nreaches into the past to feed off of agitated energy states?\nTHE DARK OF THE MOON: Astrology and the Moon are associated with the triple goddess, mother,\nmaiden, and crone. The relationship\nbetween Frigg and Freyja, Aesir and Vanir, is interesting in that they are\ncounterparts but it isn’t clear if they are one and the same or distinct deities,\nso they may make up a component of the triple goddess. The dark of the moon symbolizes its absence\nfrom the night sky, death before renewal. For though the text insists that escaping nature frees them from death\nand age, eventually they simply reach that “zero” energy level. \nMolly Hall’s essay “The Dark Moon” identifies this time as “Also\nknown as the \"dead\" Moon, this is the time when there is no solar\nreflection, leaving the lunar face in darkness. The dark lasts about three days\nbefore the new crescent appears.” \nShe also states, “The dark of the Moon is the most powerful\ntime psychically” and represents extreme introspection. This is also related to\nthe monthly cycle of a woman in menstruation, and it is no coincidence that the\nfemales in Harry Nailer’s life are named after successive months: May and June. \nGrief and death and cyclical renewal are implied in the dark\nmoon phase. —\nAs Hall writes, “In our own lives, there's a dark Moon phase\ntoward the end as we prepare to enter the mystery of death. . a separate plane\nwhere the dead and almost born are together ?The Moon is associated with women,\nand many Goddesses like Hecate, Kali, Lilith, represent her dark aspect. The\ndark Moon reminds us of nature's cycles of death and rebirth. The grave and the\nwomb become the same place, a transition when you're held in the mystery beyond\nphysical existence.”\nThe triple nature of Hecate and the presence of Freya and\nFrigg in our story summon up that moon imagery as well, but one female is\nmissing — maiden, mother, and crone — which one? June does seem to be the\nmaiden to some degree.\nMYTH, FICTION, AND HUMANITY:\nWhile these four interlocked stories do seem to take a\nslightly different approach to genre, with one being a sad memoir of loss, one\na physician’s journal, and the last a fairy tale, I think that the overall\ntheme is metafictional: that outside of nature, the immortality of men and\nwomen is found in memory and in stories, whether they be mythic or realistic,\nbut that in that form, identity becomes malleable, such that a character like\nHarry Nailer can be created with Odin like features, knowing that Odin might\nvery well be based on the features of a real man somewhere in history, such\nthat these stories echo. I do think that\nthe bounce referenced as potential vs. kinetic energy like a ball descending to\na lower energy state is “really” about relevance and obscurity in memory —\nstories that are read, that have greater presence, take longer to be forgotten\nand can impact the world of the living. Living things change, the written word is more or less immutable — thus\n“The Death of Hyle” — matter, change, and wood — when it is killed, that wood\nmight very well be used to print things, even to print the newspaper that\ninspired Harry Nailer’s immutable room.\nNailer describes his eyes as enchained by Maya, and\nspecifically gives a time frame of four thousand years for this illusory\nunderstanding of reality on the part of humanity. Maya at one time meant wisdom\nand extraordinary power, but “the word came to mean illusion, fraud, deception,\nwitchcraft, sorcery and magic.” I really\nwant to spend a fair amount of time on Nailer’s description of his world after\nhe leaves nature: “I am tempted by the rooted course of our language to say\nthat I had the feeling then that the room around me, tole box, pencil, the\nbrass inkstand with its devil face, desk chairs, books, walls, my bronze bust\nof Hogarth, had become unreal as the angel faces seen in the clouds. — I knew\nthat I had lived my life among the shadow of shadows, that I had worked for\nmoney as I might have labored for fernseed, and spent my gains for the\nwatermarks on paper, paper in a picture, the picture in a book seen lying open\nin a projection from a lens about to crack in an empty room of a vacant house.”\nHere we have representations of devils and angels that are\nultimately just as real (or false) as the world of Harry Nailer, and his entire\nworld here becomes overtly PAPER - and all his life written on that\ncanvas. This brings us back to the\ntitle: “The Death of Hyle” — all that matter, written on dead wood and\nartificial in nature. He claims that\nobjective reality is just a fiction, “the creature of the very radiation by\nwhich we gauge it”\nTHE TREES: There is something odd about the trees in this\none, too: “I ducked and ran, lost at once until I met a tall, self contained\npersonage who was a tree, though I did not realize it until I had been with him\nfor some time.” After his little\ndisincarnation, “When I was coming up my own front walk — the whole world began\nto rise, pivoting (I think) on Madagascr so that I fell off the surface and was\ncaught for a moment in the green arms of a neighbor’s tree, and then, falling\nthrough them like rain, but upward, tumbled sidewise into the sky.” I do feel like this mystical association\nbetween hyle, wood, and paper as the fabric of reality is the dominant motif of\nthe stories. In the fairy tale, Thag\nallowed Eric’s father to make “the trees to dance down the high road, and built\na great hall of glass on Nine Men’s Meadow through whose dome the stars could\nbe seen by daylight, and forced certain rich men in the town to disgorge a part\nof what they had won by law”.\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Is there something a bit — unnatural\nabout the relationship between Harry Nailer and his daughter June? There is the scene where he imagines the girl\non the beltway, “he imagined himself escorting a much younger woman into a restaurant\n— they would be father and daughter until the other diners saw their hands\nclasped beneath the table”. Is this the reason their relationship seems a bit\nstrained? What did he expect of her, and\nwhy is she so broken? Sexual abuse? \nWhy is Madagascar the pivot point? Does it have something to do with its large\npercentage of unique life, isolated from other natural creatures?\nIs there a relationship between the 30 years Thag spends in\nthe realm of Charles the Wise during which Eric doesn’t age and the 30 year age\nlimit on those subjected to the nin treatment??? Is there any importance to the statement “we, every one of us, feel\ncrushed beneath the dictum that one thousand less nine hundred thirty is\nseventy, and tortured by the implacable commandment to destroy the thing we\nlove, while the solid fact (as we call it) that Madagascar is off the eastern\ncoast of Africa affects us not at all.” 9 is important to the Norse mythology,\nand 30 the duration of time Thag stays in the past before he finds him, and the\narbitrary age limit of those who can discorporate — why subtract 930 from\n1000? Has he destroyed the thing he\nloves in June and May?\nWhat does Laurel mean when she says that June is broken and\nthat Harry has “brought the wrong fragment?” \nCONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS: Wolfe’s rather dystopian “close\nto realistic stories” of the early 70s resonate strongly with this one,\nespecially those that involve radical clothing styles with excessively exposed\nflesh such as “Remembrance to Come”. While I am less confident in ascribing this cycle of stories to the\ntimeline of “Blue Mouse”, “Silhouette”, “Remembrance to Come”, “Sonya, Crane\nWessleman, and Kitty”, “Paul’s Treehouse”, and “Operation Ares”, I still feel\nthat there is some relationship between many of these stories that is more than\nthematic (the phonetic voisriit technology mentioned in “Blue Mouse” and\n“Sillhouette”, for example, or the riots from “Paul’s Treehouse” possibly\nhaving a more overt description of who was actually rioting in Operation Ares). The need to become other than we are is\nreflected from the other side in “The Hero as Werwolf”.\nDespite the ambiguity in Fifth\nHead of Cerberus or the ending of “The HORRARS of War”, both of which I\nfound to be ultimately “scrutable” through the application of symbolic\nmeanings, this work seems to hang much more ambiguously between metafiction and\nrealistic science fiction, when the text seems to be saying that ALL reality is\ntext, that mythic characters are based on real ones, and real ones based on\nmythic ones, and that immortality might involve fleeing into a subjective text\nor tale — and that reality itself might be just one of those tales from a\nperception beyond our own."
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