{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6598", "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": 6598, "subject": "Short Story 81: Suzanne Delage", "messages": 8, "voices": 4, "first": "2014-08-05T17:02:26+00:00", "last": "2014-08-07T13:58:07+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-08-05T17:02:26+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 81: Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "“Suzanne Delage” was first published in Edges in 1980 and is reprinted\nin *Endangered\nSpecies*.\n\nSUMMARY: As the narrator is reading a book, he is struck by the idea ?*that\nevery man has had in the course of his life some extraordinary experience,\nsome dislocation of all we expect from nature and probability, of such\nmagnitude that he might in his own person serve as a living proof of\nHamlet’s hackneyed precept* — but that he has, nearly always, been so\nconditioned to consider himself the most mundane of creatures, that,\nfinding no relationship to the remainder of his life in this extraordinary\nexperience, he has forgotten it.\n\nHe then ponders how boring his life is and comes to the conclusion that his\nextraordinary event is simply that living all his life in a small town he\nhas been dimly aware of a woman his age's existence but claims to have\nnever met her. After reviewing his basic history, that he was married twice\nand bored both his ex-wives as they bored him, that he was a second string\nfootball player in highschool, and that he then searches his yearbooks to\nfind that either she was not pictured or the pictures were cut out for\ncollages or to attain the individual pictures. In others she is not\npictured because of an epidemic of some kind which the narrator thinks is\nSpanish Influenza took place.\n\nHe reveals that their parents were great friends and searched for quilts\ntogether, which were then displayed at the discoverers house for everyone\nto come look at. Despite these parties, he believes Mrs. Delage was never\nwelcome because of a bitter old woman across the street who would despise\nthem if Mrs. Delage came over. There are several other creepy ruminations\nabout coming to love and hate Suzanne if he had met her, and the story\nculminates with him recollecting that a few days ago he ran into someone\nwho had known him all his life, the wife of a friend, in the town. They see\na beautiful 15 year old girl, and his reaction to her is very strong,\nnoting her pale skin and dark hair and imagining his hands encircling her\nthin waist. The friend says the girl is the very image of her mother,\nSuzanne Delage.\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nIf someone were to attempt to create an infinite speculation device, they\nmight very well begin with the premise of “Suzanne Delage”: extraordinary\nand special events, removed from everyday existence, are forgotten. Given\nthe vast breadth of ideas which have been put forth around Suzanne Delage,\nI think there are a few guidelines which are provided through thematic\nanalysis and through blatant metatextual instruction to the reader. For\nthis reason, I will not present every possible analysis of Suzanne Delage\nin its entirely, which, given the elided nature of the central event, could\nbe almost anything if we do not adhere to certain rigid patterns created\nthroughout the story.\n\nI believe that “Suzanne Delage” is perhaps the most protean of Wolfe’s\nrealistic stories — it is not an almost inscrutable literary myth in the\nmanner of, say, “The God and his Man”, “To the Dark Tower Came”, or ?Cues?\n? we have low mimesis characters in a fairly believable American setting\nhere with fairly straightforward action (or inaction, as the case may be).\nHere, a sound conclusion must be based on *theme *analysis, and the theme\nof the details mentioned in the story seems to indicate that extraordinary\nrepression of unwanted or painful memories is not only possible but has\nhappened over and over throughout history. Occasionally these repressed\nmemories will come back involuntarily, sometimes to cause great upheaval,\nbut occasionally just to make us re-evaluate who we are, or even show that\nwe are incapable of that re-evaluation.\n\nI accept several principals at face value from the narrator as general\nguidelines:\n\n1) That an extraordinary event actually could be forgotten, so that he\ncan’t be trusted to reliably remember it. If he could remember it, then the\npremise of the story is invalid. If we do not accept this premise, the\nanalysis can stop right here — the extraordinary event in his life is that\nhe never met Suzanne Delage.\n\n2) When he says, “there has, in fact, been one thread of the strange — I\nmight almost say the incredible, though not the supernatural — in my own\nhistory,” I take him at face value. To be honest, never meeting a girl is\nnot that incredible. I see this as the metafictional statement that must\ncontrol our interpretation — incredible things are possible candidates for\nelision because they have suffered oblivion, but supernatural things are\nnot. In other words, elves, demigods, and aliens probably don't play a part\nin the best analysis of the story.\n\n3) The narrator will only lie or be inaccurate in the suppression of a very\nparticular memory, and this must be a repetitive or discernible pattern or\nrelated to the suppressed event — so that he is only unreliable regarding\nthe remembrance of that event.\n\nIt is conceivable that “Hamlet's hackneyed precept” might be “To be, or not\nto be”, but I think it is more likely that the narrator speaks of the\nobservation, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are\ndreamt of in your philosophy.” This quote would tie in slightly better with\nthe theme of many historical forces at work subjectively ignored by the\nobserver. In particular, forgotten or unknown things might exist in the\nworld and have consequences, but been rather remarkable relagated to\noblivion.\n\nINACCURATE OR CONTRADICTORY DETAILS:\n\nIf the story were completely unreliable and our narrator a thorough liar,\nthen nothing could be ascertained. However, if he is conclusively\nunreliable on one or two related topics and it is possible to establish\nthat, then we can assume he is only, but still utterly, unreliable on that\ntopic. In this case, every claim he makes about Suzane Delage falls under\nsuspicion for the following reasons.\n\nThe story begins “last night”, when the narrator starts to think about\nextraordinary events, and after pondering for what seems like forever, he\nsays, “I have been dimly aware of the existence of a certain woman without\never meeting her or gaining any sure idea of her appearance.” At the end of\nthe story, we get a graphic, strange, and obsessive depiction of the young\ngirl on the street, which took place “a few days ago”:\n\nHer hair was of lustrous black, and her complexion as pure as milk; but it\nwas not these that for a moment enchanted me, nor the virginal breasts ..\nnor the little waist I might have circled with two hands — to the woman\nbeside me I said, “What a charming child. Who is she?”\n\n?Her name? ? I can't think of it. But of course you know whose she is,\ndon't you? She's the very image of her mother at that age — Suzanne\nDelage.\n\nThe meeting had this eerie impact, and even after this almost ephebophiliac\ndescription, he *still* forgets about the oddity of it until he ponders and\nponders for hours over his book. He knew exactly what she looked like\nbefore the text even started, according to his own description, but did not\nthink his reaction to the 15 year old girl was at all extraordinary, and\ndid not even mention it until the long, discursive review of his life, then\nclaims he has no idea at all what she looks like.\n\nThere are further inconsistencies, claiming that ?(though I fear most of us\nhere have always pronounced it 'Susan')? (note the parentheses there) and\nthat he has no idea which groups she associated with, though he states of\nthe year book pictures, “I seem to recall that these were torn out and cut\nup to obtain the individual photographs many decades ago. My own face is\namong those missing, as well as Suzanne Delage's; but in another section,\none devoted to social activities, a girl's club (it was called, I think,\nthe Pie Club) is shown, and one of the names given in the caption is\nSuzanne's.” Notice the vague verbiage here: he *seems* to think they were\nobtained for individual photos (why would he or his mother cut out the\npicture of a girl they never met?) and that he *thinks* it was the Pie\nClub, again in parentheses, though he has the yearbook right in front of\nhim. He later claims “whether Suzanne Delage had entry to one of more of\n[these little coteries] I do not know,” despite the fact he knows of her\ninvolvement with the Pie Club. This haze concerning Suzanne seems like an\nextreme inability to retain memories concerned with her.\n\nHe even says only a few of the girls, the “really promiscuous ones and the\ndazzlingly beautiful ones whom we, in those na ve times, called 'queens' ?\nwere known to everyone,” but he seems to think that the young girl is\ndazzlingly beautiful, and the lifelong friend also just assumes that of\ncourse he knows exactly who the girl is, for he must have known Suzanne\nDelage. Why would she make that assumption?\n\nThis particular narrator seems especially faulty when saying “I think” and\n?seem? - and when he thinks about why she was unable to be photographed, he\nsays, “there was an epidemic of some kind (I think Spanish influenza)? just\nat the time the pictures for the annual were to be taken. Suzanne is listed\nas one of those ?unable to be photographed.” Like everything else that he\nassociates with Suzanne Delage, the memory is hazy. However, anyone who\nactually lived through the Spanish Influenza would not be likely to\nidentify it as “an epidemic of some kind” which is incredibly only recalled\nto our narrator when “on one of the closing pages a woebegone roll of names\nreminded me of something I had forgotten for many years” - (see the theme\nsection below for more details on its destructive and terrible effects, but\nsince World War I was about to escalate, it was somehow historically less\nknown that other destructive pandemics in history like the Bubonic Plague\nor the Black Death). How could he have forgotten this, if it devastated the\nschool and community during his adolescence? He isn't even certain that it\nis Spanish Influenza.\n\nThe mothers even seem to be close friends who leave town together all the\ntime. The primary impediment to the mother's sharing the sheets is the old\nwoman across the street, a widow who would have become enemies for life if\nMrs. Delage was invited over, and the narrator states, “I believe my\nmother's friend died while I was at college.” However, it is unclear if the\nfriend referenced is the widow, who was never referred to as a friend, or\nMrs. Delage, who was so identified earlier: “Mrs. Delage, who became my\nmother's friend.” This seems like a rather nebulous excuse as well.\n\nAlmost every claim he makes about Suzanne consciously is subject to\nquestion, but a few of the speculative ones are almost suggestive: “It\nwould therefore have been entirely logical for Mrs. Delage to have been our\nfrequent guest, at least for tea; and for her to have brought,\noccasionally, her little daughter Suzanne, whom I would no doubt have soon\ncome to both love and hate.” This is a strong statement about someone whom\none has never met — assuming that love and hate would simply occur\nnaturally based on the concept of simply knowing her. Here there seems to\nbe some subconscious truth — the narrator loved, and hated, Suzanne Delage,\nbut repressed it, as the excised yearbook pictures (do we cut out pictures\nof people we never met?) and the vague memory of everything associated with\nher indicates. The fantasy meeting even involves a dance: “It is even\npossible I danced with her — but I do not really believe that, and if,\nindeed, it happened the years have so effectively sponged the events from\nmy mind that no slightest trace remains,” which is probably exactly what\nhappened.\n\nThere is one more odd disjunction that occurs at the start of the story,\nwhere our narrator claims, “I have never made an effort to meet [Suzanne\nDelage], and I doubt that she has ever attempted to meet me, if, indeed,\nshe is aware that I exist. On the other hand we are neither of us invalids,\nnor are we blind. This woman — lives, or at least so I have always vaguely\nsupposed, on the eastern edge of our little city I live on the western.”\nThe mention of being blind is very odd indeed. Why mention this at all? We\ndo know that an epidemic which prevented people from being photographed hit\nthe city, though the narrator is not certain which it was. One disease that\ndoes leave people blind is Small Pox, and there is an interesting\nconnection with the disease and quilts of just such types as the mothers\ncollect that is discussed below — specifically, in an attempt to eradicate\nNative American populations, quilts infected with small pox were\ndistributed. Assuming that our narrator has suppressed the memory of a\nterrible event, one in which he comes to love and hate Suzanne Delage and\nthen represses everything about their relationship, it is not unreasonable\nto assume that they were lovers and that something disastrous happened.\n\nWe have details in the text of a denial of blindness, of her living on the\nwestern edge of town, of his complete lack of knowledge of her appearance,\nand his claim that his life is completely boring, but underneath these\ndetails, especially parenthetically, there at least seems to be some strong\nemotional certainty involving Suzanne Delage and her image, through the\ndaughter, has a profound affect on him at the end. If they indeed made love\non the quilts collected by their parents and spread the disease through the\ntown as a result, destroying families and perhaps one of them even going\nblind, then a reason for the repression materializes.\n\nWhile this involves a huge speculative scene (Suzanne and the narrator\npossibly consummating their juvenile relationship on an infected quilt and\nthen devastating the town before completely suppressing the memory), the\ndetails of epidemic, the denial of blindness, and the strange conviction\nthat he would come to love and hate Suzanne otherwise make very little\nsense — why are they present, especially the denial of their mutual\nblindness? Our narrator is metaphorically blind, but perhaps the smallpox\nhas made Suzanne literally so.\n\n\n\n THEME AND LITERARY ALLUSIONS:\n\n\n In this case, the primary literary allusion at work is also the one which\nmust control the theme: Proust's *Remembrance of Things Past* or *In Search\nof Lost Time*. We must decide if it is a simply situational reference or if\nthe entire idea behind Proust's giant work is being invoked. The start of\nthe novel involves the narrator awakening involuntary memories of his\nchildhood which were forgotten through the same taste he experienced as a\nchild, changing his perception of his current life through all those\nmemories coming back. This would fit with the theme of repression of the\nincredible or painful — things we cannot deal with or understand are simply\nshoved to the bottom of our minds forever and we go about our lives, but\nsometimes they can pop up again. The alternative, single scene reference is\nas follows.\n\nThe title character is named after a scene from Proust’s *Remembrance of\nThings Past*, probably first noted by Michael Andre-Driussi.\n\nShe spoke to me of myself, my family, my social background. She said: \"Oh,\nI know your parents know some very nice people. You're a friend of Robert\nForestier and Suzanne Delage.\" For a moment these names conveyed absolutely\nnothing to me. But suddenly I remembered that I had indeed played as a\nchild in the Champs-Elysees with Robert Forestier, whom I had never seen\nsince. As for Suzanne Delage, she was the great-niece of Mme Blandais, and\nI had once been due to go to a dancing lesson, and even to take a small\npart in a play at her parents' house. But the fear of getting a fit of\ngiggles and a nose-bleed had at the last moment prevented me, so that I had\nnever set eyes on her. I had at the most a vague idea that I had once heard\nthat the Swanns' feather-hatted governess had at one time been with the\nDelages, but perhaps it was only a sister of this governess, or a friend. I\nprotested to Albertine that Robert Forestier and Suzanne Delage occupied a\nvery small place in my life.\n\n\"That may be; but your mothers are friends, I can place you by that. I\noften pass Suzanne Delage in the Avenue de Messine. I admire her style.\"\nOur mothers were acquainted only in the imagination of Mme Bontemps, who\nhaving heard that I had at one time played with Robert Forestier, to whom,\nit appeared, I used to recite poetry, had concluded from that that we were\nbound by family ties. She could never, I gathered, hear my mother's name\nmentioned without observing: \"Oh yes, she belongs to the Delage-Forestier\nset,\"giving my parents a good mark which they had done nothing to deserve.\n(from Proust’s The Guermantes Way, Chapter 2).\n\nThat relationship is straightforward enough, but there are other “forgotten\nthings” at least hinted at in the text. In our narrator's world, the\nmothers actually are acquainted, and nonsensically seek for quilts together\nand then proudly display them at parties (why would they display them in\nour narrator's house if Suzanne's mother were not permitted to come over?)\nIf the text only refers to this portion of Proust's work rather than the\nentirety, then the analysis in the section above loses some of its thematic\nvalidity.\n\nSpanish Flu: considering the manner in which the Spanish influenza, the\n1918 flu pandemic, is treated by the narrator, as an epidemic of some kind\nwhich he thinks was Spanish influenza, it seems like something one would\nremember: it infected 500 million across the world and killed perhaps\nalmost 100 million of them “three to five percent of the world's population\n— making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history” (?1918\nFlu Pandemic?). It was unusual in that it killed previously healthy young\nadults because of their strong immune response:\n\nIn the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, despite the\nrelatively high morbidity and mortality rates that resulted from the\nepidemic in 1918?1919, the Spanish flu began to fade from public awareness\nover the decades until the arrival of news about bird flue and other\npandemics in the 1990s and 2000s. This has led some historians to label the\nSpanish flu a \"forgotten pandemic\".\n\nThe infestation of small pox in quilts seems another fact that for many\nyears would be forgotten by the general populace — it is shameful and\nprobably evil, and the disregard for human life from the civilized portion\nof American society paints a fairly vile picture that is uncomfortable to\nlook at and might be repressed. Perhaps forgetting this past sin comes back\nto haunt the community, and the ghostly presence of Suzanne at the end\nserves as a symbol of this theme for our narrator's life.\n\nPROBLEMS WITH THE SMALL POX THEORY:\n\nThe quilts take up a fair amount of time, but the women desire 18th century\nquilts, though usually find ones of the earlier part of the 19th century.\nThe quilt which belonged to “the wife of a major in a fencible Zouave\nregiment” is mentioned in particular, and is spread over the sofa. While\nthe name Zouave is usually associated with French forces in Africa, but\nthere are non-French Zouave regiments, even American units during the Civil\nWar and until the 1880s when they transformed into something like the\nNational Guard. The dating of the quilts they attained seems off, but note\nthe use of parentheses and “I think” this quote: ?(it was their enduring\nhope, I think never well satisfied, to find a piece from what they called\n'American revolution times' - by which they meant the eighteenth, even such\ndates as 1790 or 1799)? Our narrator is notoriously bad at thinking,\nespecially in parentheses, which always seem to contain some pertinent\ndetail. If they did attain their desire, then it might have led to\nsomething disastrous, as we can see from the history of 18th century\nAmerican quilts:\n\nOn June 29, 1763, ... Bouquet was preparing to lead an expedition to\nrelieve Fort Pitt when he received a letter from Amherst making the\nfollowing proposal: \"Could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among\nthose Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every\nStratagem in our power to Reduce them.\"\n\nBouquet agreed, writing back to Amherst on July 13, 1763: \"I will try to\ninocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands,\ntaking care however not to get the disease myself.\" Amherst responded\nfavorably on July 16, 1763: \"You will Do well to try to Innoculate the\nIndians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that\ncan serve to Extirpate this Execreble Race.\"\n\nAs it turned out, however, officers at the besieged Fort Pitt had already\nexposed the Indians in just the manner Amherst and Bouquet were discussing.\nDuring a parley at Fort Pitt on June 24, 1763, Captain Simeon Ecuyer gave\nrepresentatives of the besieging Delawares two blankets and a handkerchief\nfrom the smallpox ward \"out of regard to them\" after the Delawares pledged\nto renew their friendship. While the exact meaning of his phrase was\nunclear, a later invoice appears to clearly establish the purpose was\ntransmittal of smallpox.\n\nIndians in the area did indeed contract smallpox. Some historians have\nnoted that it is impossible to verify how many people (if any) contracted\nthe disease as a result of the Fort Pitt incident; the disease was already\nin the area and had reached the Indians through other vectors. ... The\nsmallpox epidemic that had occurred during Pontiac's War ... killing as\nmany as 400,000-500,000 Native Americans during and years after Pontiac's\nRebellion. (“Seige of Fort Pitt”)\n\nHis claim that the sheets were never used is also in parentheses — they\ncould have been used by a teenage couple quite easily.\n\nThe strange old widow across the street is another oddity in the text, but\nI think that the narrator's claim that the Delages lived across town is\nanother one of his mis-remembrances — maybe she lives right across the\nstreet.\n\nThe age of the narrator is a problem if we assume the girl is his daughter,\neven though he retired “much sooner than most men” - for him to be the\nfather, he would have to probably be in his early or mid 30s, unless the\nrelationship with Suzanne lingered longer than in high school, and if it\ndid, that would certainly have prompted his lifelong friend to say\nsomething more damning than that. Retiring “much sooner” is an\nunderstatement there. Perhaps the girl is not his child, but the\nrelationship of her mother and the narrator probably goes much deeper than\nhe can remember.\n\nIt seems that his claim of Spanish Influenza hitting the town is wrong, but\nit is difficult to determine if his childhood is set in 1918 or even the\n1950s, as its depiction of small town groups seems fairly generically rural\nor suburban America.\n\nOTHER INTERPRETATIONS:\n\nIn light of the eerie description of the young girl and the difficulty in\ngetting a handle on the time line of the work if the girl at the end of the\nstory is his daughter from a high school relationship (is our narrator\nreally only in his early 30s?) there are several other explanations which\nfit a few details but not all. One is vampirism: the lack of pictures of\nSuzanne and her milky complexion as well as agelessness creates a kind of\nimmortal mind fog lurking over the town. Yet she is in some of the pictures\nwhich were cut out and excised, and this does not explain many of the other\nstrange details of the text.\n\nBorski asserts in *The Long and Short of It *that Suzanne is another name\nfor “Lily” and draws the parallel with the mention of queens with the\nbitter old woman across the street as the villain of *Snow White *and the\napple of the story with Suzanne's presence in the Pie Club. Thus the girl\nat the end is in some way still the original Suzanne, but our narrator\nproved to fail as the prince to awake her from her slumber.\n\nGwern.net has several other reactions to the story, referenced below.\n\nBoth of these seem to fail in holistic explanations of why all these\ninconsistencies occur in the narrator's memory and why he has cut out the\nyearbook pictures, if not in a kind of deliberate but forgotten\nsuppression. They don't serve the theme of forgotten things returning quite\nsuddenly and unexpectedly, occasionally with disastrous consequences. The\nsuppressed relationship, making love on the quilts, and the spread of\nsmallpox through the town makes use of the majority of the details in the\ntext if we accept the premise: extraordinary things sufficiently removed\nfrom every day life can be repressed and forgotten, even if they were a\nhuge important part of history (such as the disastrous but forgotten\nSpanish Influenza, which devastated the world but was relatively forgotten,\nor the spread of disease infested quilts in an attempt at genocide).\n\nCONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\nSince I favor a “realistic” interpretation of this story (part of the\ndetails show that extraordinary suppression of unwanted memories happens,\neven if, for example, 1 in 20 people in the world die or are affected by\nit), the strain of realism in Wolfe is actually relatively select. There\nare *possibilities *of realism under science fiction or fantasy (*The\nSorcerer's House* or “The Ziggurat”, for example). “Beech Hill”, “The\nRecording”, perhaps “The Flag”, “Pauls Treehouse”, and “The Island of\nDoctor Death and Other Stories” are all perhaps realistic fiction, but just\nas in those stories and others close to our reality, the strangeness lurks\nbeneath the surface — if not in the supernatural or spiritual, then in the\nextreme unlikeliness of the situation.\n\nThis story is important for its almost sublime ordering as a palimpsest —\nalmost any interpretation can fit the premise, but in cases such as this in\nWolfe's fiction, his modernist, engineering mindset should lead us to look\nfor patterns of theme and in the unreliability, or we will be lost amid\ninfinite speculation. The published criticism on Wolfe has shown that this\nis a very real possibility.\n\nThe most important feature of this story is the use of the parenthetical\nasides, ostensibly extra information, revealing everything that our\nnarrator treats as extra irrelevant information to his story of himself.\nUltimately, he will never understand his life until he reincorporates the\nrelevant but separated and isolated information into his life.\n\n\n\n For the purposes of this write up, only a general assessment of the\nhistorical references was necessary, and thus the following sources:\n ?1918 Flu Pandemic.\" Wikipedia, Th Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia\nFoundation, Inc. 5 Aug. 2004. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.\nBorski, Robert. *The Long and the Short of It: More Essays on the Fiction\nof Gene Wolfe*. Lincoln: iUniverse, Inc. 2006.\n\n“Seige of Fort Pitt.” *Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia*. Wikimedia\nFoundation, Inc. 11 May 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.\n\n“Suzanne Delage.” *Gwern.net*. 22 June 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.\nhttp://www.gwern.net/Suzanne%20Delage" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Greg Bates", "address": "gregory.a.bates at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-08-06T00:45:25+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 81: Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have never been able to make hide or hair of this story! Someone needs to\nhold Wolfe down and force him to explain what he was going for with it,\nbeyond an extended riff on Proust." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\n\n“Suzanne Delage” was first published in Edges in 1980 and is reprinted in *Endangered\nSpecies*.\n\nSUMMARY: As the narrator is reading a book, he is struck by the idea ?*that\nevery man has had in the course of his life some extraordinary experience,\nsome dislocation of all we expect from nature and probability, of such\nmagnitude that he might in his own person serve as a living proof of\nHamlet’s hackneyed precept* — but that he has, nearly always, been so\nconditioned to consider himself the most mundane of creatures, that,\nfinding no relationship to the remainder of his life in this extraordinary\nexperience, he has forgotten it.\n\nHe then ponders how boring his life is and comes to the conclusion that\nhis extraordinary event is simply that living all his life in a small town\nhe has been dimly aware of a woman his age's existence but claims to have\nnever met her. After reviewing his basic history, that he was married twice\nand bored both his ex-wives as they bored him, that he was a second string\nfootball player in highschool, and that he then searches his yearbooks to\nfind that either she was not pictured or the pictures were cut out for\ncollages or to attain the individual pictures. In others she is not\npictured because of an epidemic of some kind which the narrator thinks is\nSpanish Influenza took place.\n\nHe reveals that their parents were great friends and searched for quilts\ntogether, which were then displayed at the discoverers house for everyone\nto come look at. Despite these parties, he believes Mrs. Delage was never\nwelcome because of a bitter old woman across the street who would despise\nthem if Mrs. Delage came over. There are several other creepy ruminations\nabout coming to love and hate Suzanne if he had met her, and the story\nculminates with him recollecting that a few days ago he ran into someone\nwho had known him all his life, the wife of a friend, in the town. They see\na beautiful 15 year old girl, and his reaction to her is very strong,\nnoting her pale skin and dark hair and imagining his hands encircling her\nthin waist. The friend says the girl is the very image of her mother,\nSuzanne Delage.\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nIf someone were to attempt to create an infinite speculation device, they\nmight very well begin with the premise of “Suzanne Delage”: extraordinary\nand special events, removed from everyday existence, are forgotten. Given\nthe vast breadth of ideas which have been put forth around Suzanne Delage,\nI think there are a few guidelines which are provided through thematic\nanalysis and through blatant metatextual instruction to the reader. For\nthis reason, I will not present every possible analysis of Suzanne Delage\nin its entirely, which, given the elided nature of the central event, could\nbe almost anything if we do not adhere to certain rigid patterns created\nthroughout the story.\n\nI believe that “Suzanne Delage” is perhaps the most protean of Wolfe’s\nrealistic stories — it is not an almost inscrutable literary myth in the\nmanner of, say, “The God and his Man”, “To the Dark Tower Came”, or ?Cues?\n? we have low mimesis characters in a fairly believable American setting\nhere with fairly straightforward action (or inaction, as the case may be).\nHere, a sound conclusion must be based on *theme *analysis, and the theme\nof the details mentioned in the story seems to indicate that extraordinary\nrepression of unwanted or painful memories is not only possible but has\nhappened over and over throughout history. Occasionally these repressed\nmemories will come back involuntarily, sometimes to cause great upheaval,\nbut occasionally just to make us re-evaluate who we are, or even show that\nwe are incapable of that re-evaluation.\n\nI accept several principals at face value from the narrator as general\nguidelines:\n\n1) That an extraordinary event actually could be forgotten, so that he\ncan’t be trusted to reliably remember it. If he could remember it, then the\npremise of the story is invalid. If we do not accept this premise, the\nanalysis can stop right here — the extraordinary event in his life is that\nhe never met Suzanne Delage.\n\n2) When he says, “there has, in fact, been one thread of the strange — I\nmight almost say the incredible, though not the supernatural — in my own\nhistory,” I take him at face value. To be honest, never meeting a girl is\nnot that incredible. I see this as the metafictional statement that must\ncontrol our interpretation — incredible things are possible candidates for\nelision because they have suffered oblivion, but supernatural things are\nnot. In other words, elves, demigods, and aliens probably don't play a part\nin the best analysis of the story.\n\n3) The narrator will only lie or be inaccurate in the suppression of a\nvery particular memory, and this must be a repetitive or discernible\npattern or related to the suppressed event — so that he is only unreliable\nregarding the remembrance of that event.\n\nIt is conceivable that “Hamlet's hackneyed precept” might be “To be, or\nnot to be”, but I think it is more likely that the narrator speaks of the\nobservation, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are\ndreamt of in your philosophy.” This quote would tie in slightly better with\nthe theme of many historical forces at work subjectively ignored by the\nobserver. In particular, forgotten or unknown things might exist in the\nworld and have consequences, but been rather remarkable relagated to\noblivion.\n\nINACCURATE OR CONTRADICTORY DETAILS:\n\nIf the story were completely unreliable and our narrator a thorough liar,\nthen nothing could be ascertained. However, if he is conclusively\nunreliable on one or two related topics and it is possible to establish\nthat, then we can assume he is only, but still utterly, unreliable on that\ntopic. In this case, every claim he makes about Suzane Delage falls under\nsuspicion for the following reasons.\n\nThe story begins “last night”, when the narrator starts to think about\nextraordinary events, and after pondering for what seems like forever, he\nsays, “I have been dimly aware of the existence of a certain woman without\never meeting her or gaining any sure idea of her appearance.” At the end of\nthe story, we get a graphic, strange, and obsessive depiction of the young\ngirl on the street, which took place “a few days ago”:\n\nHer hair was of lustrous black, and her complexion as pure as milk; but it\nwas not these that for a moment enchanted me, nor the virginal breasts ..\nnor the little waist I might have circled with two hands — to the woman\nbeside me I said, “What a charming child. Who is she?”\n\n“Her name” — I can't think of it. But of course you know whose she is,\ndon't you? She's the very image of her mother at that age — Suzanne\nDelage.\n\nThe meeting had this eerie impact, and even after this almost\nephebophiliac description, he *still* forgets about the oddity of it\nuntil he ponders and ponders for hours over his book. He knew exactly what\nshe looked like before the text even started, according to his own\ndescription, but did not think his reaction to the 15 year old girl was at\nall extraordinary, and did not even mention it until the long, discursive\nreview of his life, then claims he has no idea at all what she looks like.\n\nThere are further inconsistencies, claiming that ?(though I fear most of\nus here have always pronounced it 'Susan')? (note the parentheses there)\nand that he has no idea which groups she associated with, though he states\nof the year book pictures, “I seem to recall that these were torn out and\ncut up to obtain the individual photographs many decades ago. My own face\nis among those missing, as well as Suzanne Delage's; but in another\nsection, one devoted to social activities, a girl's club (it was called, I\nthink, the Pie Club) is shown, and one of the names given in the caption is\nSuzanne's.” Notice the vague verbiage here: he *seems* to think they were\nobtained for individual photos (why would he or his mother cut out the\npicture of a girl they never met?) and that he *thinks* it was the Pie\nClub, again in parentheses, though he has the yearbook right in front of\nhim. He later claims “whether Suzanne Delage had entry to one of more of\n[these little coteries] I do not know,” despite the fact he knows of her\ninvolvement with the Pie Club. This haze concerning Suzanne seems like an\nextreme inability to retain memories concerned with her.\n\nHe even says only a few of the girls, the “really promiscuous ones and the\ndazzlingly beautiful ones whom we, in those na ve times, called 'queens' ?\nwere known to everyone,” but he seems to think that the young girl is\ndazzlingly beautiful, and the lifelong friend also just assumes that of\ncourse he knows exactly who the girl is, for he must have known Suzanne\nDelage. Why would she make that assumption?\n\nThis particular narrator seems especially faulty when saying “I think” and\n“seem” - and when he thinks about why she was unable to be photographed, he\nsays, “there was an epidemic of some kind (I think Spanish influenza)? just\nat the time the pictures for the annual were to be taken. Suzanne is listed\nas one of those ?unable to be photographed.” Like everything else that he\nassociates with Suzanne Delage, the memory is hazy. However, anyone who\nactually lived through the Spanish Influenza would not be likely to\nidentify it as “an epidemic of some kind” which is incredibly only recalled\nto our narrator when “on one of the closing pages a woebegone roll of names\nreminded me of something I had forgotten for many years” - (see the theme\nsection below for more details on its destructive and terrible effects, but\nsince World War I was about to escalate, it was somehow historically less\nknown that other destructive pandemics in history like the Bubonic Plague\nor the Black Death). How could he have forgotten this, if it devastated the\nschool and community during his adolescence? He isn't even certain that it\nis Spanish Influenza.\n\nThe mothers even seem to be close friends who leave town together all the\ntime. The primary impediment to the mother's sharing the sheets is the old\nwoman across the street, a widow who would have become enemies for life if\nMrs. Delage was invited over, and the narrator states, “I believe my\nmother's friend died while I was at college.” However, it is unclear if the\nfriend referenced is the widow, who was never referred to as a friend, or\nMrs. Delage, who was so identified earlier: “Mrs. Delage, who became my\nmother's friend.” This seems like a rather nebulous excuse as well.\n\nAlmost every claim he makes about Suzanne consciously is subject to\nquestion, but a few of the speculative ones are almost suggestive: “It\nwould therefore have been entirely logical for Mrs. Delage to have been our\nfrequent guest, at least for tea; and for her to have brought,\noccasionally, her little daughter Suzanne, whom I would no doubt have soon\ncome to both love and hate.” This is a strong statement about someone whom\none has never met — assuming that love and hate would simply occur\nnaturally based on the concept of simply knowing her. Here there seems to\nbe some subconscious truth — the narrator loved, and hated, Suzanne Delage,\nbut repressed it, as the excised yearbook pictures (do we cut out pictures\nof people we never met?) and the vague memory of everything associated with\nher indicates. The fantasy meeting even involves a dance: “It is even\npossible I danced with her — but I do not really believe that, and if,\nindeed, it happened the years have so effectively sponged the events from\nmy mind that no slightest trace remains,” which is probably exactly what\nhappened.\n\nThere is one more odd disjunction that occurs at the start of the story,\nwhere our narrator claims, “I have never made an effort to meet [Suzanne\nDelage], and I doubt that she has ever attempted to meet me, if, indeed,\nshe is aware that I exist. On the other hand we are neither of us invalids,\nnor are we blind. This woman — lives, or at least so I have always vaguely\nsupposed, on the eastern edge of our little city I live on the western.”\nThe mention of being blind is very odd indeed. Why mention this at all? We\ndo know that an epidemic which prevented people from being photographed hit\nthe city, though the narrator is not certain which it was. One disease that\ndoes leave people blind is Small Pox, and there is an interesting\nconnection with the disease and quilts of just such types as the mothers\ncollect that is discussed below — specifically, in an attempt to eradicate\nNative American populations, quilts infected with small pox were\ndistributed. Assuming that our narrator has suppressed the memory of a\nterrible event, one in which he comes to love and hate Suzanne Delage and\nthen represses everything about their relationship, it is not unreasonable\nto assume that they were lovers and that something disastrous happened.\n\nWe have details in the text of a denial of blindness, of her living on the\nwestern edge of town, of his complete lack of knowledge of her appearance,\nand his claim that his life is completely boring, but underneath these\ndetails, especially parenthetically, there at least seems to be some strong\nemotional certainty involving Suzanne Delage and her image, through the\ndaughter, has a profound affect on him at the end. If they indeed made love\non the quilts collected by their parents and spread the disease through the\ntown as a result, destroying families and perhaps one of them even going\nblind, then a reason for the repression materializes.\n\nWhile this involves a huge speculative scene (Suzanne and the narrator\npossibly consummating their juvenile relationship on an infected quilt and\nthen devastating the town before completely suppressing the memory), the\ndetails of epidemic, the denial of blindness, and the strange conviction\nthat he would come to love and hate Suzanne otherwise make very little\nsense — why are they present, especially the denial of their mutual\nblindness? Our narrator is metaphorically blind, but perhaps the smallpox\nhas made Suzanne literally so.\n\n\n\n THEME AND LITERARY ALLUSIONS:\n\n\n In this case, the primary literary allusion at work is also the one\nwhich must control the theme: Proust's *Remembrance of Things Past* or *In\nSearch of Lost Time*. We must decide if it is a simply situational\nreference or if the entire idea behind Proust's giant work is being\ninvoked. The start of the novel involves the narrator awakening involuntary\nmemories of his childhood which were forgotten through the same taste he\nexperienced as a child, changing his perception of his current life through\nall those memories coming back. This would fit with the theme of repression\nof the incredible or painful — things we cannot deal with or understand are\nsimply shoved to the bottom of our minds forever and we go about our lives,\nbut sometimes they can pop up again. The alternative, single scene\nreference is as follows.\n\nThe title character is named after a scene from Proust’s *Remembrance of\nThings Past*, probably first noted by Michael Andre-Driussi.\n\nShe spoke to me of myself, my family, my social background. She said: \"Oh,\nI know your parents know some very nice people. You're a friend of Robert\nForestier and Suzanne Delage.\" For a moment these names conveyed absolutely\nnothing to me. But suddenly I remembered that I had indeed played as a\nchild in the Champs-Elysees with Robert Forestier, whom I had never seen\nsince. As for Suzanne Delage, she was the great-niece of Mme Blandais, and\nI had once been due to go to a dancing lesson, and even to take a small\npart in a play at her parents' house. But the fear of getting a fit of\ngiggles and a nose-bleed had at the last moment prevented me, so that I had\nnever set eyes on her. I had at the most a vague idea that I had once heard\nthat the Swanns' feather-hatted governess had at one time been with the\nDelages, but perhaps it was only a sister of this governess, or a friend. I\nprotested to Albertine that Robert Forestier and Suzanne Delage occupied a\nvery small place in my life.\n\n\"That may be; but your mothers are friends, I can place you by that. I\noften pass Suzanne Delage in the Avenue de Messine. I admire her style.\"\nOur mothers were acquainted only in the imagination of Mme Bontemps, who\nhaving heard that I had at one time played with Robert Forestier, to whom,\nit appeared, I used to recite poetry, had concluded from that that we were\nbound by family ties. She could never, I gathered, hear my mother's name\nmentioned without observing: \"Oh yes, she belongs to the Delage-Forestier\nset,\"giving my parents a good mark which they had done nothing to deserve.\n(from Proust’s The Guermantes Way, Chapter 2).\n\nThat relationship is straightforward enough, but there are other\n“forgotten things” at least hinted at in the text. In our narrator's world,\nthe mothers actually are acquainted, and nonsensically seek for quilts\ntogether and then proudly display them at parties (why would they display\nthem in our narrator's house if Suzanne's mother were not permitted to come\nover?) If the text only refers to this portion of Proust's work rather than\nthe entirety, then the analysis in the section above loses some of its\nthematic validity.\n\nSpanish Flu: considering the manner in which the Spanish influenza, the\n1918 flu pandemic, is treated by the narrator, as an epidemic of some kind\nwhich he thinks was Spanish influenza, it seems like something one would\nremember: it infected 500 million across the world and killed perhaps\nalmost 100 million of them “three to five percent of the world's population\n? making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history” (?1918\nFlu Pandemic?). It was unusual in that it killed previously healthy young\nadults because of their strong immune response:\n\nIn the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, despite the\nrelatively high morbidity and mortality rates that resulted from the\nepidemic in 1918?1919, the Spanish flu began to fade from public awareness\nover the decades until the arrival of news about bird flue and other\npandemics in the 1990s and 2000s. This has led some historians to label the\nSpanish flu a \"forgotten pandemic\".\n\nThe infestation of small pox in quilts seems another fact that for many\nyears would be forgotten by the general populace — it is shameful and\nprobably evil, and the disregard for human life from the civilized portion\nof American society paints a fairly vile picture that is uncomfortable to\nlook at and might be repressed. Perhaps forgetting this past sin comes back\nto haunt the community, and the ghostly presence of Suzanne at the end\nserves as a symbol of this theme for our narrator's life.\n\nPROBLEMS WITH THE SMALL POX THEORY:\n\nThe quilts take up a fair amount of time, but the women desire 18th\ncentury quilts, though usually find ones of the earlier part of the 19th\ncentury. The quilt which belonged to “the wife of a major in a fencible\nZouave regiment” is mentioned in particular, and is spread over the sofa.\nWhile the name Zouave is usually associated with French forces in Africa,\nbut there are non-French Zouave regiments, even American units during the\nCivil War and until the 1880s when they transformed into something like the\nNational Guard. The dating of the quilts they attained seems off, but note\nthe use of parentheses and “I think” this quote: ?(it was their enduring\nhope, I think never well satisfied, to find a piece from what they called\n'American revolution times' - by which they meant the eighteenth, even such\ndates as 1790 or 1799)? Our narrator is notoriously bad at thinking,\nespecially in parentheses, which always seem to contain some pertinent\ndetail. If they did attain their desire, then it might have led to\nsomething disastrous, as we can see from the history of 18th century\nAmerican quilts:\n\nOn June 29, 1763, ... Bouquet was preparing to lead an expedition to\nrelieve Fort Pitt when he received a letter from Amherst making the\nfollowing proposal: \"Could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among\nthose Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every\nStratagem in our power to Reduce them.\"\n\nBouquet agreed, writing back to Amherst on July 13, 1763: \"I will try to\ninocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands,\ntaking care however not to get the disease myself.\" Amherst responded\nfavorably on July 16, 1763: \"You will Do well to try to Innoculate the\nIndians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that\ncan serve to Extirpate this Execreble Race.\"\n\nAs it turned out, however, officers at the besieged Fort Pitt had already\nexposed the Indians in just the manner Amherst and Bouquet were discussing.\nDuring a parley at Fort Pitt on June 24, 1763, Captain Simeon Ecuyer gave\nrepresentatives of the besieging Delawares two blankets and a handkerchief\nfrom the smallpox ward \"out of regard to them\" after the Delawares pledged\nto renew their friendship. While the exact meaning of his phrase was\nunclear, a later invoice appears to clearly establish the purpose was\ntransmittal of smallpox.\n\nIndians in the area did indeed contract smallpox. Some historians have\nnoted that it is impossible to verify how many people (if any) contracted\nthe disease as a result of the Fort Pitt incident; the disease was already\nin the area and had reached the Indians through other vectors. ... The\nsmallpox epidemic that had occurred during Pontiac's War ... killing as\nmany as 400,000-500,000 Native Americans during and years after Pontiac's\nRebellion. (“Seige of Fort Pitt”)\n\nHis claim that the sheets were never used is also in parentheses — they\ncould have been used by a teenage couple quite easily.\n\nThe strange old widow across the street is another oddity in the text, but\nI think that the narrator's claim that the Delages lived across town is\nanother one of his mis-remembrances — maybe she lives right across the\nstreet.\n\nThe age of the narrator is a problem if we assume the girl is his\ndaughter, even though he retired “much sooner than most men” - for him to\nbe the father, he would have to probably be in his early or mid 30s, unless\nthe relationship with Suzanne lingered longer than in high school, and if\nit did, that would certainly have prompted his lifelong friend to say\nsomething more damning than that. Retiring “much sooner” is an\nunderstatement there. Perhaps the girl is not his child, but the\nrelationship of her mother and the narrator probably goes much deeper than\nhe can remember.\n\nIt seems that his claim of Spanish Influenza hitting the town is wrong,\nbut it is difficult to determine if his childhood is set in 1918 or even\nthe 1950s, as its depiction of small town groups seems fairly generically\nrural or suburban America.\n\nOTHER INTERPRETATIONS:\n\nIn light of the eerie description of the young girl and the difficulty in\ngetting a handle on the time line of the work if the girl at the end of the\nstory is his daughter from a high school relationship (is our narrator\nreally only in his early 30s?) there are several other explanations which\nfit a few details but not all. One is vampirism: the lack of pictures of\nSuzanne and her milky complexion as well as agelessness creates a kind of\nimmortal mind fog lurking over the town. Yet she is in some of the pictures\nwhich were cut out and excised, and this does not explain many of the other\nstrange details of the text.\n\nBorski asserts in *The Long and Short of It *that Suzanne is another name\nfor “Lily” and draws the parallel with the mention of queens with the\nbitter old woman across the street as the villain of *Snow White *and the\napple of the story with Suzanne's presence in the Pie Club. Thus the girl\nat the end is in some way still the original Suzanne, but our narrator\nproved to fail as the prince to awake her from her slumber.\n\nGwern.net has several other reactions to the story, referenced below.\n\nBoth of these seem to fail in holistic explanations of why all these\ninconsistencies occur in the narrator's memory and why he has cut out the\nyearbook pictures, if not in a kind of deliberate but forgotten\nsuppression. They don't serve the theme of forgotten things returning quite\nsuddenly and unexpectedly, occasionally with disastrous consequences. The\nsuppressed relationship, making love on the quilts, and the spread of\nsmallpox through the town makes use of the majority of the details in the\ntext if we accept the premise: extraordinary things sufficiently removed\nfrom every day life can be repressed and forgotten, even if they were a\nhuge important part of history (such as the disastrous but forgotten\nSpanish Influenza, which devastated the world but was relatively forgotten,\nor the spread of disease infested quilts in an attempt at genocide).\n\nCONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\nSince I favor a “realistic” interpretation of this story (part of the\ndetails show that extraordinary suppression of unwanted memories happens,\neven if, for example, 1 in 20 people in the world die or are affected by\nit), the strain of realism in Wolfe is actually relatively select. There\nare *possibilities *of realism under science fiction or fantasy (*The\nSorcerer's House* or “The Ziggurat”, for example). “Beech Hill”, “The\nRecording”, perhaps “The Flag”, “Pauls Treehouse”, and “The Island of\nDoctor Death and Other Stories” are all perhaps realistic fiction, but just\nas in those stories and others close to our reality, the strangeness lurks\nbeneath the surface — if not in the supernatural or spiritual, then in the\nextreme unlikeliness of the situation.\n\nThis story is important for its almost sublime ordering as a palimpsest ?\nalmost any interpretation can fit the premise, but in cases such as this in\nWolfe's fiction, his modernist, engineering mindset should lead us to look\nfor patterns of theme and in the unreliability, or we will be lost amid\ninfinite speculation. The published criticism on Wolfe has shown that this\nis a very real possibility.\n\nThe most important feature of this story is the use of the parenthetical\nasides, ostensibly extra information, revealing everything that our\nnarrator treats as extra irrelevant information to his story of himself.\nUltimately, he will never understand his life until he reincorporates the\nrelevant but separated and isolated information into his life.\n\n\n\n For the purposes of this write up, only a general assessment of the\nhistorical references was necessary, and thus the following sources:\n ?1918 Flu Pandemic.\" Wikipedia, Th Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia\nFoundation, Inc. 5 Aug. 2004. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.\nBorski, Robert. *The Long and the Short of It: More Essays on the Fiction\nof Gene Wolfe*. Lincoln: iUniverse, Inc. 2006.\n\n“Seige of Fort Pitt.” *Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia*. Wikimedia\nFoundation, Inc. 11 May 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.\n\n“Suzanne Delage.” *Gwern.net*. 22 June 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.\nhttp://www.gwern.net/Suzanne%20Delage\n\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-08-06T00:48:05+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 81: Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As I said, I think the theme is that the sins of the past come back to bite\nyou, but that the ability of humanity to repress things is infinite and\nextraordinary." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 5:45 PM, Greg Bates \nwrote:\nI have never been able to make hide or hair of this story! Someone needs\nto hold Wolfe down and force him to explain what he was going for with it,\nbeyond an extended riff on Proust.\n\n\nOn Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Marc Aramini \nwrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "“Suzanne Delage” was first published in Edges in 1980 and is reprinted\nin *Endangered Species*.\n\nSUMMARY: As the narrator is reading a book, he is struck by the idea ?*that\nevery man has had in the course of his life some extraordinary experience,\nsome dislocation of all we expect from nature and probability, of such\nmagnitude that he might in his own person serve as a living proof of\nHamlet’s hackneyed precept* — but that he has, nearly always, been so\nconditioned to consider himself the most mundane of creatures, that,\nfinding no relationship to the remainder of his life in this extraordinary\nexperience, he has forgotten it.\n\nHe then ponders how boring his life is and comes to the conclusion that\nhis extraordinary event is simply that living all his life in a small town\nhe has been dimly aware of a woman his age's existence but claims to have\nnever met her. After reviewing his basic history, that he was married twice\nand bored both his ex-wives as they bored him, that he was a second string\nfootball player in highschool, and that he then searches his yearbooks to\nfind that either she was not pictured or the pictures were cut out for\ncollages or to attain the individual pictures. In others she is not\npictured because of an epidemic of some kind which the narrator thinks is\nSpanish Influenza took place.\n\nHe reveals that their parents were great friends and searched for quilts\ntogether, which were then displayed at the discoverers house for everyone\nto come look at. Despite these parties, he believes Mrs. Delage was never\nwelcome because of a bitter old woman across the street who would despise\nthem if Mrs. Delage came over. There are several other creepy ruminations\nabout coming to love and hate Suzanne if he had met her, and the story\nculminates with him recollecting that a few days ago he ran into someone\nwho had known him all his life, the wife of a friend, in the town. They see\na beautiful 15 year old girl, and his reaction to her is very strong,\nnoting her pale skin and dark hair and imagining his hands encircling her\nthin waist. The friend says the girl is the very image of her mother,\nSuzanne Delage.\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nIf someone were to attempt to create an infinite speculation device, they\nmight very well begin with the premise of “Suzanne Delage”: extraordinary\nand special events, removed from everyday existence, are forgotten. Given\nthe vast breadth of ideas which have been put forth around Suzanne Delage,\nI think there are a few guidelines which are provided through thematic\nanalysis and through blatant metatextual instruction to the reader. For\nthis reason, I will not present every possible analysis of Suzanne Delage\nin its entirely, which, given the elided nature of the central event, could\nbe almost anything if we do not adhere to certain rigid patterns created\nthroughout the story.\n\nI believe that “Suzanne Delage” is perhaps the most protean of Wolfe’s\nrealistic stories — it is not an almost inscrutable literary myth in the\nmanner of, say, “The God and his Man”, “To the Dark Tower Came”, or ?Cues?\n? we have low mimesis characters in a fairly believable American setting\nhere with fairly straightforward action (or inaction, as the case may be).\nHere, a sound conclusion must be based on *theme *analysis, and the\ntheme of the details mentioned in the story seems to indicate that\nextraordinary repression of unwanted or painful memories is not only\npossible but has happened over and over throughout history. Occasionally\nthese repressed memories will come back involuntarily, sometimes to cause\ngreat upheaval, but occasionally just to make us re-evaluate who we are, or\neven show that we are incapable of that re-evaluation.\n\nI accept several principals at face value from the narrator as general\nguidelines:\n\n1) That an extraordinary event actually could be forgotten, so that he\ncan’t be trusted to reliably remember it. If he could remember it, then the\npremise of the story is invalid. If we do not accept this premise, the\nanalysis can stop right here — the extraordinary event in his life is that\nhe never met Suzanne Delage.\n\n2) When he says, “there has, in fact, been one thread of the strange — I\nmight almost say the incredible, though not the supernatural — in my own\nhistory,” I take him at face value. To be honest, never meeting a girl is\nnot that incredible. I see this as the metafictional statement that must\ncontrol our interpretation — incredible things are possible candidates for\nelision because they have suffered oblivion, but supernatural things are\nnot. In other words, elves, demigods, and aliens probably don't play a part\nin the best analysis of the story.\n\n3) The narrator will only lie or be inaccurate in the suppression of a\nvery particular memory, and this must be a repetitive or discernible\npattern or related to the suppressed event — so that he is only unreliable\nregarding the remembrance of that event.\n\nIt is conceivable that “Hamlet's hackneyed precept” might be “To be, or\nnot to be”, but I think it is more likely that the narrator speaks of the\nobservation, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are\ndreamt of in your philosophy.” This quote would tie in slightly better with\nthe theme of many historical forces at work subjectively ignored by the\nobserver. In particular, forgotten or unknown things might exist in the\nworld and have consequences, but been rather remarkable relagated to\noblivion.\n\nINACCURATE OR CONTRADICTORY DETAILS:\n\nIf the story were completely unreliable and our narrator a thorough liar,\nthen nothing could be ascertained. However, if he is conclusively\nunreliable on one or two related topics and it is possible to establish\nthat, then we can assume he is only, but still utterly, unreliable on that\ntopic. In this case, every claim he makes about Suzane Delage falls under\nsuspicion for the following reasons.\n\nThe story begins “last night”, when the narrator starts to think about\nextraordinary events, and after pondering for what seems like forever, he\nsays, “I have been dimly aware of the existence of a certain woman without\never meeting her or gaining any sure idea of her appearance.” At the end of\nthe story, we get a graphic, strange, and obsessive depiction of the young\ngirl on the street, which took place “a few days ago”:\n\nHer hair was of lustrous black, and her complexion as pure as milk; but\nit was not these that for a moment enchanted me, nor the virginal breasts\n.. nor the little waist I might have circled with two hands — to the woman\nbeside me I said, “What a charming child. Who is she?”\n\n“Her name” — I can't think of it. But of course you know whose she is,\ndon't you? She's the very image of her mother at that age — Suzanne\nDelage.\n\nThe meeting had this eerie impact, and even after this almost\nephebophiliac description, he *still* forgets about the oddity of it\nuntil he ponders and ponders for hours over his book. He knew exactly what\nshe looked like before the text even started, according to his own\ndescription, but did not think his reaction to the 15 year old girl was at\nall extraordinary, and did not even mention it until the long, discursive\nreview of his life, then claims he has no idea at all what she looks like.\n\nThere are further inconsistencies, claiming that ?(though I fear most of\nus here have always pronounced it 'Susan')? (note the parentheses there)\nand that he has no idea which groups she associated with, though he states\nof the year book pictures, “I seem to recall that these were torn out and\ncut up to obtain the individual photographs many decades ago. My own face\nis among those missing, as well as Suzanne Delage's; but in another\nsection, one devoted to social activities, a girl's club (it was called, I\nthink, the Pie Club) is shown, and one of the names given in the caption is\nSuzanne's.” Notice the vague verbiage here: he *seems* to think they\nwere obtained for individual photos (why would he or his mother cut out the\npicture of a girl they never met?) and that he *thinks* it was the Pie\nClub, again in parentheses, though he has the yearbook right in front of\nhim. He later claims “whether Suzanne Delage had entry to one of more of\n[these little coteries] I do not know,” despite the fact he knows of her\ninvolvement with the Pie Club. This haze concerning Suzanne seems like an\nextreme inability to retain memories concerned with her.\n\nHe even says only a few of the girls, the “really promiscuous ones and\nthe dazzlingly beautiful ones whom we, in those na ve times, called\n'queens' ? were known to everyone,” but he seems to think that the young\ngirl is dazzlingly beautiful, and the lifelong friend also just assumes\nthat of course he knows exactly who the girl is, for he must have known\nSuzanne Delage. Why would she make that assumption?\n\nThis particular narrator seems especially faulty when saying “I think”\nand “seem” - and when he thinks about why she was unable to be\nphotographed, he says, “there was an epidemic of some kind (I think Spanish\ninfluenza)? just at the time the pictures for the annual were to be taken.\nSuzanne is listed as one of those ?unable to be photographed.” Like\neverything else that he associates with Suzanne Delage, the memory is hazy.\nHowever, anyone who actually lived through the Spanish Influenza would not\nbe likely to identify it as “an epidemic of some kind” which is incredibly\nonly recalled to our narrator when “on one of the closing pages a woebegone\nroll of names reminded me of something I had forgotten for many years” -\n(see the theme section below for more details on its destructive and\nterrible effects, but since World War I was about to escalate, it was\nsomehow historically less known that other destructive pandemics in history\nlike the Bubonic Plague or the Black Death). How could he have forgotten\nthis, if it devastated the school and community during his adolescence? He\nisn't even certain that it is Spanish Influenza.\n\nThe mothers even seem to be close friends who leave town together all the\ntime. The primary impediment to the mother's sharing the sheets is the old\nwoman across the street, a widow who would have become enemies for life if\nMrs. Delage was invited over, and the narrator states, “I believe my\nmother's friend died while I was at college.” However, it is unclear if the\nfriend referenced is the widow, who was never referred to as a friend, or\nMrs. Delage, who was so identified earlier: “Mrs. Delage, who became my\nmother's friend.” This seems like a rather nebulous excuse as well.\n\nAlmost every claim he makes about Suzanne consciously is subject to\nquestion, but a few of the speculative ones are almost suggestive: “It\nwould therefore have been entirely logical for Mrs. Delage to have been our\nfrequent guest, at least for tea; and for her to have brought,\noccasionally, her little daughter Suzanne, whom I would no doubt have soon\ncome to both love and hate.” This is a strong statement about someone whom\none has never met — assuming that love and hate would simply occur\nnaturally based on the concept of simply knowing her. Here there seems to\nbe some subconscious truth — the narrator loved, and hated, Suzanne Delage,\nbut repressed it, as the excised yearbook pictures (do we cut out pictures\nof people we never met?) and the vague memory of everything associated with\nher indicates. The fantasy meeting even involves a dance: “It is even\npossible I danced with her — but I do not really believe that, and if,\nindeed, it happened the years have so effectively sponged the events from\nmy mind that no slightest trace remains,” which is probably exactly what\nhappened.\n\nThere is one more odd disjunction that occurs at the start of the story,\nwhere our narrator claims, “I have never made an effort to meet [Suzanne\nDelage], and I doubt that she has ever attempted to meet me, if, indeed,\nshe is aware that I exist. On the other hand we are neither of us invalids,\nnor are we blind. This woman — lives, or at least so I have always vaguely\nsupposed, on the eastern edge of our little city I live on the western.”\nThe mention of being blind is very odd indeed. Why mention this at all? We\ndo know that an epidemic which prevented people from being photographed hit\nthe city, though the narrator is not certain which it was. One disease that\ndoes leave people blind is Small Pox, and there is an interesting\nconnection with the disease and quilts of just such types as the mothers\ncollect that is discussed below — specifically, in an attempt to eradicate\nNative American populations, quilts infected with small pox were\ndistributed. Assuming that our narrator has suppressed the memory of a\nterrible event, one in which he comes to love and hate Suzanne Delage and\nthen represses everything about their relationship, it is not unreasonable\nto assume that they were lovers and that something disastrous happened.\n\nWe have details in the text of a denial of blindness, of her living on\nthe western edge of town, of his complete lack of knowledge of her\nappearance, and his claim that his life is completely boring, but\nunderneath these details, especially parenthetically, there at least seems\nto be some strong emotional certainty involving Suzanne Delage and her\nimage, through the daughter, has a profound affect on him at the end. If\nthey indeed made love on the quilts collected by their parents and spread\nthe disease through the town as a result, destroying families and perhaps\none of them even going blind, then a reason for the repression materializes.\n\nWhile this involves a huge speculative scene (Suzanne and the narrator\npossibly consummating their juvenile relationship on an infected quilt and\nthen devastating the town before completely suppressing the memory), the\ndetails of epidemic, the denial of blindness, and the strange conviction\nthat he would come to love and hate Suzanne otherwise make very little\nsense — why are they present, especially the denial of their mutual\nblindness? Our narrator is metaphorically blind, but perhaps the smallpox\nhas made Suzanne literally so.\n\n\n\n THEME AND LITERARY ALLUSIONS:\n\n\n In this case, the primary literary allusion at work is also the one\nwhich must control the theme: Proust's *Remembrance of Things Past* or *In\nSearch of Lost Time*. We must decide if it is a simply situational\nreference or if the entire idea behind Proust's giant work is being\ninvoked. The start of the novel involves the narrator awakening involuntary\nmemories of his childhood which were forgotten through the same taste he\nexperienced as a child, changing his perception of his current life through\nall those memories coming back. This would fit with the theme of repression\nof the incredible or painful — things we cannot deal with or understand are\nsimply shoved to the bottom of our minds forever and we go about our lives,\nbut sometimes they can pop up again. The alternative, single scene\nreference is as follows.\n\nThe title character is named after a scene from Proust’s *Remembrance of\nThings Past*, probably first noted by Michael Andre-Driussi.\n\nShe spoke to me of myself, my family, my social background. She said:\n\"Oh, I know your parents know some very nice people. You're a friend of\nRobert Forestier and Suzanne Delage.\" For a moment these names conveyed\nabsolutely nothing to me. But suddenly I remembered that I had indeed\nplayed as a child in the Champs-Elysees with Robert Forestier, whom I had\nnever seen since. As for Suzanne Delage, she was the great-niece of Mme\nBlandais, and I had once been due to go to a dancing lesson, and even to\ntake a small part in a play at her parents' house. But the fear of getting\na fit of giggles and a nose-bleed had at the last moment prevented me, so\nthat I had never set eyes on her. I had at the most a vague idea that I had\nonce heard that the Swanns' feather-hatted governess had at one time been\nwith the Delages, but perhaps it was only a sister of this governess, or a\nfriend. I protested to Albertine that Robert Forestier and Suzanne Delage\noccupied a very small place in my life.\n\n\"That may be; but your mothers are friends, I can place you by that. I\noften pass Suzanne Delage in the Avenue de Messine. I admire her style.\"\nOur mothers were acquainted only in the imagination of Mme Bontemps, who\nhaving heard that I had at one time played with Robert Forestier, to whom,\nit appeared, I used to recite poetry, had concluded from that that we were\nbound by family ties. She could never, I gathered, hear my mother's name\nmentioned without observing: \"Oh yes, she belongs to the Delage-Forestier\nset,\"giving my parents a good mark which they had done nothing to deserve.\n(from Proust’s The Guermantes Way, Chapter 2).\n\nThat relationship is straightforward enough, but there are other\n“forgotten things” at least hinted at in the text. In our narrator's world,\nthe mothers actually are acquainted, and nonsensically seek for quilts\ntogether and then proudly display them at parties (why would they display\nthem in our narrator's house if Suzanne's mother were not permitted to come\nover?) If the text only refers to this portion of Proust's work rather than\nthe entirety, then the analysis in the section above loses some of its\nthematic validity.\n\nSpanish Flu: considering the manner in which the Spanish influenza, the\n1918 flu pandemic, is treated by the narrator, as an epidemic of some kind\nwhich he thinks was Spanish influenza, it seems like something one would\nremember: it infected 500 million across the world and killed perhaps\nalmost 100 million of them “three to five percent of the world's population\n? making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history” (?1918\nFlu Pandemic?). It was unusual in that it killed previously healthy young\nadults because of their strong immune response:\n\nIn the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, despite the\nrelatively high morbidity and mortality rates that resulted from the\nepidemic in 1918?1919, the Spanish flu began to fade from public awareness\nover the decades until the arrival of news about bird flue and other\npandemics in the 1990s and 2000s. This has led some historians to label the\nSpanish flu a \"forgotten pandemic\".\n\nThe infestation of small pox in quilts seems another fact that for many\nyears would be forgotten by the general populace — it is shameful and\nprobably evil, and the disregard for human life from the civilized portion\nof American society paints a fairly vile picture that is uncomfortable to\nlook at and might be repressed. Perhaps forgetting this past sin comes back\nto haunt the community, and the ghostly presence of Suzanne at the end\nserves as a symbol of this theme for our narrator's life.\n\nPROBLEMS WITH THE SMALL POX THEORY:\n\nThe quilts take up a fair amount of time, but the women desire 18th\ncentury quilts, though usually find ones of the earlier part of the 19th\ncentury. The quilt which belonged to “the wife of a major in a fencible\nZouave regiment” is mentioned in particular, and is spread over the sofa.\nWhile the name Zouave is usually associated with French forces in Africa,\nbut there are non-French Zouave regiments, even American units during the\nCivil War and until the 1880s when they transformed into something like the\nNational Guard. The dating of the quilts they attained seems off, but note\nthe use of parentheses and “I think” this quote: ?(it was their enduring\nhope, I think never well satisfied, to find a piece from what they called\n'American revolution times' - by which they meant the eighteenth, even such\ndates as 1790 or 1799)? Our narrator is notoriously bad at thinking,\nespecially in parentheses, which always seem to contain some pertinent\ndetail. If they did attain their desire, then it might have led to\nsomething disastrous, as we can see from the history of 18th century\nAmerican quilts:\n\nOn June 29, 1763, ... Bouquet was preparing to lead an expedition to\nrelieve Fort Pitt when he received a letter from Amherst making the\nfollowing proposal: \"Could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among\nthose Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every\nStratagem in our power to Reduce them.\"\n\nBouquet agreed, writing back to Amherst on July 13, 1763: \"I will try to\ninocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands,\ntaking care however not to get the disease myself.\" Amherst responded\nfavorably on July 16, 1763: \"You will Do well to try to Innoculate the\nIndians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that\ncan serve to Extirpate this Execreble Race.\"\n\nAs it turned out, however, officers at the besieged Fort Pitt had already\nexposed the Indians in just the manner Amherst and Bouquet were discussing.\nDuring a parley at Fort Pitt on June 24, 1763, Captain Simeon Ecuyer gave\nrepresentatives of the besieging Delawares two blankets and a handkerchief\nfrom the smallpox ward \"out of regard to them\" after the Delawares pledged\nto renew their friendship. While the exact meaning of his phrase was\nunclear, a later invoice appears to clearly establish the purpose was\ntransmittal of smallpox.\n\nIndians in the area did indeed contract smallpox. Some historians have\nnoted that it is impossible to verify how many people (if any) contracted\nthe disease as a result of the Fort Pitt incident; the disease was already\nin the area and had reached the Indians through other vectors. ... The\nsmallpox epidemic that had occurred during Pontiac's War ... killing as\nmany as 400,000-500,000 Native Americans during and years after Pontiac's\nRebellion. (“Seige of Fort Pitt”)\n\nHis claim that the sheets were never used is also in parentheses — they\ncould have been used by a teenage couple quite easily.\n\nThe strange old widow across the street is another oddity in the text,\nbut I think that the narrator's claim that the Delages lived across town is\nanother one of his mis-remembrances — maybe she lives right across the\nstreet.\n\nThe age of the narrator is a problem if we assume the girl is his\ndaughter, even though he retired “much sooner than most men” - for him to\nbe the father, he would have to probably be in his early or mid 30s, unless\nthe relationship with Suzanne lingered longer than in high school, and if\nit did, that would certainly have prompted his lifelong friend to say\nsomething more damning than that. Retiring “much sooner” is an\nunderstatement there. Perhaps the girl is not his child, but the\nrelationship of her mother and the narrator probably goes much deeper than\nhe can remember.\n\nIt seems that his claim of Spanish Influenza hitting the town is wrong,\nbut it is difficult to determine if his childhood is set in 1918 or even\nthe 1950s, as its depiction of small town groups seems fairly generically\nrural or suburban America.\n\nOTHER INTERPRETATIONS:\n\nIn light of the eerie description of the young girl and the difficulty in\ngetting a handle on the time line of the work if the girl at the end of the\nstory is his daughter from a high school relationship (is our narrator\nreally only in his early 30s?) there are several other explanations which\nfit a few details but not all. One is vampirism: the lack of pictures of\nSuzanne and her milky complexion as well as agelessness creates a kind of\nimmortal mind fog lurking over the town. Yet she is in some of the pictures\nwhich were cut out and excised, and this does not explain many of the other\nstrange details of the text.\n\nBorski asserts in *The Long and Short of It *that Suzanne is another\nname for “Lily” and draws the parallel with the mention of queens with the\nbitter old woman across the street as the villain of *Snow White *and\nthe apple of the story with Suzanne's presence in the Pie Club. Thus the\ngirl at the end is in some way still the original Suzanne, but our narrator\nproved to fail as the prince to awake her from her slumber.\n\nGwern.net has several other reactions to the story, referenced below.\n\nBoth of these seem to fail in holistic explanations of why all these\ninconsistencies occur in the narrator's memory and why he has cut out the\nyearbook pictures, if not in a kind of deliberate but forgotten\nsuppression. They don't serve the theme of forgotten things returning quite\nsuddenly and unexpectedly, occasionally with disastrous consequences. The\nsuppressed relationship, making love on the quilts, and the spread of\nsmallpox through the town makes use of the majority of the details in the\ntext if we accept the premise: extraordinary things sufficiently removed\nfrom every day life can be repressed and forgotten, even if they were a\nhuge important part of history (such as the disastrous but forgotten\nSpanish Influenza, which devastated the world but was relatively forgotten,\nor the spread of disease infested quilts in an attempt at genocide).\n\nCONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\nSince I favor a “realistic” interpretation of this story (part of the\ndetails show that extraordinary suppression of unwanted memories happens,\neven if, for example, 1 in 20 people in the world die or are affected by\nit), the strain of realism in Wolfe is actually relatively select. There\nare *possibilities *of realism under science fiction or fantasy (*The\nSorcerer's House* or “The Ziggurat”, for example). “Beech Hill”, “The\nRecording”, perhaps “The Flag”, “Pauls Treehouse”, and “The Island of\nDoctor Death and Other Stories” are all perhaps realistic fiction, but just\nas in those stories and others close to our reality, the strangeness lurks\nbeneath the surface — if not in the supernatural or spiritual, then in the\nextreme unlikeliness of the situation.\n\nThis story is important for its almost sublime ordering as a palimpsest ?\nalmost any interpretation can fit the premise, but in cases such as this in\nWolfe's fiction, his modernist, engineering mindset should lead us to look\nfor patterns of theme and in the unreliability, or we will be lost amid\ninfinite speculation. The published criticism on Wolfe has shown that this\nis a very real possibility.\n\nThe most important feature of this story is the use of the parenthetical\nasides, ostensibly extra information, revealing everything that our\nnarrator treats as extra irrelevant information to his story of himself.\nUltimately, he will never understand his life until he reincorporates the\nrelevant but separated and isolated information into his life.\n\n\n\n For the purposes of this write up, only a general assessment of the\nhistorical references was necessary, and thus the following sources:\n ?1918 Flu Pandemic.\" Wikipedia, Th Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia\nFoundation, Inc. 5 Aug. 2004. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.\nBorski, Robert. *The Long and the Short of It: More Essays on the\nFiction of Gene Wolfe*. Lincoln: iUniverse, Inc. 2006.\n\n“Seige of Fort Pitt.” *Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia*. Wikimedia\nFoundation, Inc. 11 May 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.\n\n“Suzanne Delage.” *Gwern.net*. 22 June 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.\nhttp://www.gwern.net/Suzanne%20Delage\n\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<53E22650.8030809@bindweed.com>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2014-08-06T12:57:52+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 81: Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 06/08/2014 01:45, Greg Bates wrote:\nI have never been able to make hide or hair of this story! Someone \nneeds to hold Wolfe down and force him to explain what he was going \nfor with it, beyond an extended riff on Proust." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think it is a twist on the theme of romantic love. The narrator \n*doesn't* ever meet the woman who should have been the love of his \nlife. We are told early that he had two brief and insipid marriages \nthat ended in divorce; he and his partners bored each other. His life \nwas lonely and dull. There's a reason we are told these things, and it \ndoesn't seem likely to have much to do with potential 'vampire' themes, \nor whatever.\n\nAt the end he sees the daughter of Suzanne Delage, who - we are informed \n- looks just like her, and in his only display of emotional animation, \nhe is instantly enchanted by her.\n\nSome malign conspiracy of chance or fate prevented him from meeting the \nwoman who should have been his love. He recognises the oddness of not \never meeting a particular small-town contemporary, but doesn't fully \nrealise the implications - that is left to the reader.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-08-06T13:07:59+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 81: Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "<53E22650.8030809@bindweed.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I wrote this step in the exegesis just for you, Gerry ;)\n\n1) That an extraordinary event actually could be forgotten, so that he\ncan’t be trusted to reliably remember it. If he could remember it, then the\npremise of the story is invalid. If we do not accept this premise, the\nanalysis can stop right here — the extraordinary event in his life is that\nhe never met Suzanne Delage." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wednesday, August 6, 2014, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\nOn 06/08/2014 01:45, Greg Bates wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I have never been able to make hide or hair of this story! Someone needs\nto hold Wolfe down and force him to explain what he was going for with it,\nbeyond an extended riff on Proust." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think it is a twist on the theme of romantic love. The narrator\n*doesn't* ever meet the woman who should have been the love of his life.\n We are told early that he had two brief and insipid marriages that ended\nin divorce; he and his partners bored each other. His life was lonely and\ndull. There's a reason we are told these things, and it doesn't seem\nlikely to have much to do with potential 'vampire' themes, or whatever.\n\nAt the end he sees the daughter of Suzanne Delage, who - we are informed -\nlooks just like her, and in his only display of emotional animation, he is\ninstantly enchanted by her.\n\nSome malign conspiracy of chance or fate prevented him from meeting the\nwoman who should have been his love. He recognises the oddness of not ever\nmeeting a particular small-town contemporary, but doesn't fully realise the\nimplications - that is left to the reader.\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<53E22BFF.40701@bindweed.com>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2014-08-06T13:22:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 81: Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 06/08/2014 14:07, Marc Aramini wrote:\nI wrote this step in the exegesis just for you, Gerry ;)\n\n1)That an extraordinary event actually could be forgotten, so that he \ncan't be trusted to reliably remember it. If he could remember it, \nthen the premise of the story is invalid. If we do not accept this \npremise, the analysis can stop right here -- the extraordinary event \nin his life is that he never met Suzanne Delage." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Indeed, that is the extraordinary event. The point of the story is its \nimplications. There's also the question of *why*, to which it seems we \nare given no answer.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "entonio at gmail.com", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-08-07T13:49:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 81: Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "<53E22BFF.40701@bindweed.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No dia 06/08/2014, ?s 14:22, Gerry Quinn escreveu:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 06/08/2014 14:07, Marc Aramini wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I wrote this step in the exegesis just for you, Gerry ;) \n\n1) That an extraordinary event actually could be forgotten, so that he can’t be trusted to reliably remember it. If he could remember it, then the premise of the story is invalid. If we do not accept this premise, the analysis can stop right here — the extraordinary event in his life is that he never met Suzanne Delage." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Indeed, that is the extraordinary event. The point of the story is its implications. There's also the question of *why*, to which it seems we are given no answer." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You mean to say Wilfe wrote a story with a foregone unremarkable conclusion? Why write it at all? In which act is the gun fired?\n\n(I like guns that don't end firing, but they'd better be surrounded by others that do.)\n\nThat the narrator hasn't forgotten the fact that he never met SD automatically prevents it from being an extraordinary event that has been forgotten. Not to mention that it isn't an event at all." } ] }, { "message_id": "<53E385EF.6080207@bindweed.com>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2014-08-07T13:58:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 81: Suzanne Delage", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 07/08/2014 14:49, entonio at gmail.com wrote:\nNo dia 06/08/2014, ?s 14:22, Gerry Quinn > escreveu:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On 06/08/2014 14:07, Marc Aramini wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I wrote this step in the exegesis just for you, Gerry ;)\n\n1)That an extraordinary event actually could be forgotten, so that \nhe can't be trusted to reliably remember it. If he could remember \nit, then the premise of the story is invalid. If we do not accept \nthis premise, the analysis can stop right here -- the extraordinary \nevent in his life is that he never met Suzanne Delage." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Indeed, that is the extraordinary event. The point of the story is \nits implications. There's also the question of *why*, to which it \nseems we are given no answer." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You mean to say Wilfe wrote a story with a foregone unremarkable \nconclusion? Why write it at all? In which act is the gun fired?\n\n(I like guns that don't end firing, but they'd better be surrounded by \nothers that do.)\n\nThat the narrator hasn't forgotten the fact that he never met SD \nautomatically prevents it from being an extraordinary event that has \nbeen forgotten. Not to mention that it isn't an event at all." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He did forget it, or at least it never percolated to the forefront of \nhis consciousness, until he started trying to think of a remarkable \nevent in his life, and could not. Then it came to him that there was a \nremarkable non-event he had thus far forgotten.\n\nThe gun is fired - as is often the case - at the very end, in which he \nsees and responds to the girl who is her image. [And when we are short \nof tangible pieces of a story to grasp, is it not reasonable to reach \nfor the beginning and end as standing out at least because of their \nunique locations in the sequence? Note, then, that the parts of \n'Suzanne Delage' crucial to my interpretation are right at the \nbeginning, and right at the end.]\n\nIn the introduction to 'Endangered Species', Wolfe notes that every \nshort story must have \"at least one event to narrate, though in a few of \nthese stories you may have to search carefully to find it\". There are \nmany events of a sort in Suzanne Delage, though for the most part they \nappear rather quotidean, and mostly happen to other people. Only one \nevent seems to stir any emotion in the narrator.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] } ] }