{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6534",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 6534,
    "subject": "Short Story 58: The Rubber Bend",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2014-04-23T19:42:19+00:00",
    "last": "2014-04-23T19:42:19+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<1398282139.11127.YahooMailNeo@web121503.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2014-04-23T19:42:19+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)  Short Story 58: The Rubber Bend",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
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          "text": "The Rubber Bend\n“The Rubber Bend” first appeared in\n1974 in Universe 5 (according to the copyright page on Storeys\nfrom the Old Hotel, anyway ? ? ?).  This is a sequel to “Slaves\nof Silver” from 1971. Gene Wolfe’s mysteries are easy because\nthere is a detective there to solve them, so you don’t have to! \nThis one is not serious, but still has many allusions and even\npersonal references, but there are almost no elided details that\nrequire a super close reading. \nSUMMARY:\nDr. Westing is sent by his\nroommate, the Sherlock Holmes based March B Street, to assist the\nNero Wolfe derived robot Noel Wide in his capacity as bio-mechanic. \nUpon arriving, he meets the client of Wide, Alice Dodson, whose\n“father” has disappeared in the midst of his studies, but whose\nghostly figure haunts her at certain times in his laboratory when she\ngoes in to clean it.  After threatening the normally  housebound Wide\nwith litigation, they journey to the massive Groan building and\nDodson's laboratory.  March correlates the appearances of the ghost\nand its relative posture with dates and times, and determines Dodson\nhas created a device to change his perception of space and time such\nthat he now perceives time as a height.  Standing up and sitting down\nthus cast him forward and backwards in time.  After utilizing a\npowerful fan to pluck Dodson's notes into his time, Street stands on\nhis head so that the relative position of his own perceptions allows\nhim to communicate with Dodson.  Dodson returns to a lower level at\nthe end to give himself a call and thus stop the entire displacement\nbefore it ever occurs.\n\nComments on this as a sequel to “Slaves\nof Silver”\n\n\nIn “Slaves of Silver”, there was\nmuch more attention paid to the set up of declassed humans who\nactually had to work for a living or accept being euthanized after\neither a century of life or in the case of asexual reproduction, but\nthis one abandons that rather heavy social backdrop in favor of\nstraight pastiche and light humor.  “The Rubber Bend” is perhaps\none of Wolfe’s easiest and least serious stories in the 1970s, in the midst\nof his super dense novellas.  The social implication of upper and\nunder class which plays out so strongly in stories like “The Hero\nas Werwolf” is very far off-screen in “The Rubber Bend”.\n\nCULTURAL AND LITERARY REFERENCES:\nThe Wolfe Wiki has done a pretty good\njob on picking up on the references, but there are still a few more.\nMost are obvious. \nMILFORD, PEIRCE, DAMON KNIGHT, ALICE,\nAND PULP\nWesting is a member of the Peircian\nsociety which argues that Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is\nactually Damon Knight (1922-2002) due to the Milford, Pennsylvania\nand heavy beard association.  Peirce's logical\npragmatism/pragmaticism would without a doubt appeal to Wolfe: the\nidea that words, language, and thought do not at all serve to\nrepresent reality but must actually accomplish something in practice. \nThe backdrops of his position are that absolute truth can be\ndiscovered independent of opinion, and that argument and thought\nshould follow the scientific method.  (This is the same general\napproach I take to Wolfe's texts, for what it is worth.)  Knight was\nactually from Oregon, but the Milford Writer's Workshops of peer\ncritique operated there until moving to the UK in 1972.  In the\nstory, Milford and that portion of the United States are underwater\nafter a disastrous deluge.  This Peircian society does seem to echo\nmany of those ridiculous revisionist groups who will maintain that,\nfor example, the Queen wrote Shakespeare's plays rather than some man\nnamed William Shakespeare. (The wolfe-wiki notes that this is a\nparody of the Baconians in particular.) Of course Damon Knight was\nthe editor who re-worked Wolfe's story “Trip, Trap” and thus grew\nhim from a bean.  At the 2013 Nebulas, Wolfe commented that\noriginally his design for “Trip Trap” was about as asinine as\nanyone could imagine, with the two stories running next to each other\nin columns, and that Knight's redesign could not have been improved\nupon when he tried.\n\nThe scientific oddity that represents\nDodson's experiment is based on a quote by Damon Knight “If all\nfour space-time dimensions are equivalent, how is it that we perceive\none so differently than the rest?” Dodson's Peircian pragmatic view\nthat ideas which cannot be put into practice have no worth spurred\nhim to experiment with time as a measurable distance, switching in\nhis own perceptions vertical distance and duration.\n\nLewis C Dodson and Alice are, as is\nobvious, named after Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) and his Alice of\nWonderland fame. \n\nThis pastiche of the pulp magazines\nlike Amazing becomes almost cringeworthy at times, as this dialogue shows: “The\nculture medium [for Wide's mushrooms] is shredded paper pulp mixed\nwith sawdust and horse manure.” “Amazing.”  This fungi\nis said to be from points as exotic as David Lindsey's Arcturus or as\nhomely as Lovecraft's Yuggoth.\n\nTHE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEIGHT AND\nTIME: for whatever reason, the “temporal” sensing organ of the\nbrain and its relative height determine the time that Dr. Dodson will\nappear.  This flitting through the dimensions is perhaps a less\nconfusing examination of the displacement in his Thag stories.  The\ndenouement is simply to have Dr. Dodson descend far enough to call\nhimself in the past and avoid the experiment all together — which\ncauses neither paradox nor time anomaly in this nice cozy pastiche\nuniverse.  I feel that time's perception will play a central part in\nthe novel Peace which Gene might have been working on at the\nsame time as this shorter, less dense story. There is also the\nhotel scene in the novel in which a Weer's aunt seems to switch\nplaces temporally and temporarily with a future guest, disturbed by\nthe busy future traffic on the street while that guest calls to\ncomplain about the floating candle lights in the room.\nWhile it is science fiction, the bulk\nof the reference are to fantasy and fantasists or famous mystery\ncharacters, and at the end Street overtly admits he is in a story\nwritten by a man named Wolfe.\nTHE GROAN BUILDING: no doubt this\nmassive building with thousands of floors references Gormenghast and\nthe stronghold of Titus Groan, who, when he descends into the real\nworld at last, finds that he is not actually in a medieval setting,\nbut transposed into a modern one.\nNERO WOLFE STORIES AND RELATIVE TIMELESSNESS\nNoel Wide is quite clearly based on Rex\nStout's rather hefty Nero Wolfe, and the title of the short story\nadapted from the Stout novel The Rubber Band.  The reluctance\nof Wide to shake hands and his girth, as well as insistence on\nmaintaining a rigorous schedule, are directly from Nero Wolfe. \nArchie Goodwin becomes Arch St. Louis, the cook Fritz becomes the\nelevator/house cyberpersonality Fritz which responds to voice\ncommand, etc.  There seems little connection between the plot of that\nparticular novel and this story.\nBesides the name, there are several\nattractive things to Gene about Nero: \nWhile the novels of Nero Wolfe by Rex\nStout are contemporary with their writing, none of the characters\never age.  The brownstone house is a bastion of timelessness and\nunalterable habit, which Nero Wolfe lords over.  He solves all his\ncases through mental process completely removed from leaving his\ncenter of control.  I think this “in time but out of time”\napproach is attractive to Gene Wolfe.  Nero Wolfe's vocabulary is\nalso erudite and baroque.\nIn the Stout novels, Wolfe never leaves\nhis house unless something extraordinary prompts his egress.  Here is\nthe dialogue that prompts Wide to venture forth:\n?'Mr. Wide, I've been paying you for\na week now, and you haven't gone to look at the ghost yet  I want you\nto go I person.  Now. Tonight.'\n'Madame, under no circumstances will I\nundertake to leave my house on business.'\n'If you don't I'm going to fire you and\nhire a lawyer to sue for every dime I've paid you.'\n'However, it is only once in a lifetime\nthat a man is privileged to part the curtain that veils the\nsupernatural.' Wide rose from his huge chair.\nThe story does break the wall into a\nslight metafictional moment at the end: \n?'There was some correspondence on\nhis desk, and one of the envelopes was addressed to Wolfe.' \n'That was intended for the author of\nthis story ?. Don't worry, Wide will forward it to him.'?\nOverall a simple pastiche, the story\nbears little resemblance to the majority of Wolfe's heavier output at\nthis time.  The subjective/relative perception of time and the\nrelative ability to affect objects with which one interacts is\nslightly interesting, but there are really no enduring mysteries or\nunanswered questions in this particular text."
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