Subject: (urth) Wolves

From: Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 13:50:09 +0000

Neil Gaiman, I think, proposed the theory that in each of Wolfe's
stories there is a wolf. I've been thinking about how this works out.
In some cases, of course, the wolves are quite open, while in others
they are hidden.

_Cerberus_ has an open Wolf (the name of the Shadow Child when just
one is left) and, by general agreement, a hidden Wolfe.

_New Sun_ has the story of the boy called Frog, brought up by wolves.

_Soldier_ has a known werewolf, and possibly hidden ones as well.

_The Sorcerer's House_ also has a known werewolf.

_The Wizard Knight _ has nothing explicit so far as I can see. Could
Able's miraculous dog really be a wolf?

In _Long Sun_ I think I may have found one. Captain Serval (Hyacinth's
ex-lover/estranged husband, depending who you believe) is named, I
think, only once in the main text - we know his name mostly from the
glossaries - and is generally called just 'the captain'. Now, the
serval is actually a feline animal, but its name derives from 'lobo
cerval', meaning 'deer-like wolf'. Strikingly, he has a round chin and
a moustache.

I have not found any in Short Sun, but I will keep on looking.

Has anyone found any others?

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From: Piotr Szczęsny <neternalz at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 14:14:30 +0000

Also in The Land across we have open wolves - a pack in the forest if I
remember correctly.
11 kwi 2014 15:50 "Andrew Mason" <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com> napisa?(a):

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From: Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 14:20:00 +0000

Let's see ...

Rex von Madadh in *Castleview *is a werewolf.  There is also a werewolf
(Lupine) in *The Sorcerer's House. *Those are the two I can think of off
the top of my head.

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 9:50 AM, Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com
> wrote:

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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 14:49:21 +0000

Well "each" is such a all inclusive term.  Sometimes they are there, sometimes they aren't.  I think a more apt rationale for this is he is obsessed with names, representations, symbols... There is an essay in castle of days where he goes on about what several famous writers' names mean.  With such an obvious authorial symbol and a symbolist writer they creep in, but they aren't in everything. 

I think the first time I noticed it in my survey of the short fiction was the howling in the background of "the mountains like mice" but as I said it isn't in every story. 

The long sun naming scheme is certainly influenced by the fact that he is named after an animal and his wife Rosemary a plant/seasoning

Sent from my iPhone

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at clueland.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 15:43:30 +0000

> stories there is a wolf. I've been thinking about how this works out.

IIRC, he stated more strongly in the old GEnie days, that his first step
in solving the mysteries of a Wolfe story is to find the figurative if not
literal Gene Wolfe *in* the story. This certainly worked for 5HC, though I
didn't particularly think the alzabo passed muster as a "gene wolf" in the
sense Neil nominated it (it eats the family member by member) but as
genetically tampered furry pack predator  (its pack is on the inside),
sure.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >
A&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab
< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >

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From: Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 20:28:02 +0000

Continuing this discussion from a while ago: I have just been reading _An
Evil Guest_, and that contains one explicit werewolf, perhaps with
suggestions that there are also hidden ones.

Also - I thought I had posted this before, but I can't find it in the
archive, so will repeat it: Marc's recent post on _Peace_ showed that there
are wolves in that, in 'The Stag at Bay'.

So, we have wolves in:
Cerberus
Peace
New Sun
Castleview
Soldier
Long Sun (perhaps)
The Wizard Knight (perhaps)
An Evil Guest
The Sorcerer's House
The Land Across.

I think it's likely that they are indeed everywhere, though I'm still
worried about where they can be in _Short Sun_. They do seem to be becoming
more obvious in recent works, though. Is Wolfe putting them in  to fulfil
Gaiman's prediction? Or is he making them more blatant to save us the time
and trouble spent in searching for the hidden wolf?
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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 21:57:16 +0000

I mean this really depends how tangential and desparate you want to get.
 Like Silhouette, which I am almost finished writing up, clearly has no
wolves, as there are no animals on the space ship, but johann, our
protagonist, is called "betrothed of fortune" by another character (and the
name Faust means fortunate or lucky) ... So the wolf in that story is
johann Wolfgang goethe ... But really ... ... No wolves for all reasonable
intents and purposes

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