{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6626", "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": 6626, "subject": "Short Stories 96 and 97: Date Due and Death of the Island\n\tDoctor", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2014-08-17T17:05:17+00:00", "last": "2014-08-17T17:05:17+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-08-17T17:05:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Stories 96 and 97: Date Due and Death of the Island\n\tDoctor", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The story for Date Due appeared in the introduction to *Gene Wolfe’s Book\nof Days* in 1981 and “The Death of the Island Doctor” first appeared in *The\nWolfe Archipelago* in 1983, collected in *Storeys from the Old Hotel*.\n\nSUMMARY:\n\n“Date Due”\n\n A student finds a secret exit from the library and manages to steal\nseveral books a day until the volumes consume his household. Considering\nways to get rid of them, one Saturday he returns home to find the librarian\nin his own chair, where she tells him “This branch closes in five minutes.”\nHe is cast out until Monday morning, a “wanderer on the Earth”.\n\n“The Death of the Island Doctor”\n\nThe old tenured professor, Dr. Insula, decides to each a seminar on islands\n(“including isles, atolls, islets, holms, eyots, archipelagos, and some of\nthe larger reefs — but definitely not peninsulas”). The chancellor lists\nthe seminar as “Not For Credit”, and consequently no one signs up for six\nyears. Eventually, after 12 regular and 6 summer semesters of inquiries by\nDr. Insula to the registrar, “there came a time, not in fall but rather in\nthat dreary tag-end of summer when — the stores have Halloween cards and\nthe first subtly threatening Christmas ornaments [are] on display, when she\ncould bear it no longer.” Thinking that mistakes happen all the time, she\nassigns a credit to the class for the seventh year. A male and female\nenroll. She tells them that it will be held at Dr. Insula’s house.\n\nWhen they arrive, his lesson involves all manner of free word associations,\nall tied to islands, both mythical and real. Eventually, after a slight\ndiscourse on the subjective nature of history from the young man and Dr.\nInsula’s assertion that in that case his history is just as valid as any\nother, he sends the boy and girl out to seek an island where they will find\nsomething magical. They find the small island and explore it, but believe\nthey have found no magic.\n\nWhen they return the following week, the neighbor tells them, “He passed on\na week ago yesterday — It was such a shame. He’d come out to talk to me\nthat morning, and he was so happy because he was going to meet with his\nstudents the next day.” The young woman intuitively understands that they\nfound Dr. Insula sitting in his boat, and only later, (when it was time for\nthe long, long vacation that stretches from the week before Christmas to\nthe beginning of the new semester in January, and that they would have to\nseparate for nearly a month) that they discovered Dr. Insula had not been\nmistaken about the island after all.\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nThe earliest recorded documents, and even the oral tradition, were meant to\npreserve culture, history, even religion. Early Judaic writings combined\ntheir histories with a rigid set of rules and punishments as well. Aristotle’s\ncategorizations are in part scientific texts, though they are now taught in\nliterature classes. This holistic purpose to literature eventually\nfragmented, but Dr. Insula, “who had been out to pasture so long that no\none could remember anymore what department he had once headed”, harkens\nback to the time when poetry, history, and the mystical were still all\nunder the province of literature, part and parcel of the exploration of the\nhuman condition. “Dr. Insula himself said that in his time [History and\nLiterature] had been the same department, but all the other professors knew\nthat could not be true.”\n\nHere, the fabulous island that Dr. Insula (whose name means island) teaches\nthe students about is yet another storied part of the total human condition\n— that of love, togetherness, and the new life of Spring that follows the\nFall (here neatly mirrored by the Fall and Spring semesters at the college)\n.\n\n In the previous Archipelago stories, isolation and loneliness, sometimes\nassuaged through literature, were equated with the islands of the title. Here,\nthe island is one two people create in a communion, completing and\nfulfilling the promise of the human life cycle, creating their own magical\nplace completely separate from the external world, an island that belongs\nto them exclusively in their love.\n\nAll of Dr. Insula’s talk involves free word association with islands, such\nas ruminating that his tea was once called Ceylon tea (which in 1972 became\nSri Lanka, but he presents the Arabic and Greek names for the island as\nwell.) His Scotch bread even serves as a lecture on the British Isles that\nleads to poetry and beyond. Talk of Thule leads to Valiant, King Arthur,\nAvalon, and even the Holy Grail. However, the most obvious inspiration\nfor the story, that of Nikos Kazantzaki’s *Zorba the Greek*, soon comes up,\nwhen Dr. Insula says, ??To cleave that sea in the gentle autumnal season,\nmurmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to\ntransport the heart of man to paradise.? The students do not recognize its\nsource, the story of an educated man who realizes that his books and papers\nare not all the wisdom in the world, much of which he absorbs from the\nworkman Zorba.\n\nWhen Dr. Insula tries to pass off Malory’s reputed epitaph for King Arthur\nas valid history, the young man says, “No one writes true history” because\n“that [was] what they had taught him in school.”\n\nThe subjective nature of history prompts Dr. Island to teach them that\nmyths and fiction are just as important in their subjectivity. He asks,\n“Why is it that people at all times and in all places have considered\nislands unique and uniquely magical” Can either of you tell me? When they\ncannot respond, he asks if they have a boat, and the young man mentions\nthat he has an aluminum canoe on top of his Toyota (from the island of\nJapan, of course).\n\nThe story for the introduction in Wolfe’s *Book of Days*, which occurs in\nthe same universe(ity), deals with an obsessive love of literature, but\nthere is little to no overlap save for the rather mystical nature of the\nknowledge and obsession for books and stories running through both tales.\n\nAs the conclusion to Wolfe’s Island stories, this one serves to finally\ngrant a bittersweet ending — the cycle of life continues and two people\ncome together to create their own island. The isolation is no longer so\ntragic, for Spring follows Autumn, and those who die alone can still see\nthe promise of a fertile tomorrow as their wisdom is passed on.\n\nHis death in the boat highlights how magical the human condition can be,\nwhere myth, history, science, and love all come together. While Dr.Insula\nis dead, in a way he can never die.\n\nLITERARY ALLUSIONS\n\nWhile perhaps the most important literary allusion to never named, when Dr.\nInsula quotes *Zorba the Greek, *most of the allusions also involve in some\nmanner, perhaps obliquely, the seasonal passage of Autumn, when the old\nleaves fall — and here, in the final Fall semester of his life, Dr. Insula\npaves the way for a new Spring.\n\nScotch Bread summons Thomson’s poem “Autumn”, which deals with the\nmigration of sea fowl in the Hebrides, and gives Dr. Island a way to tie in\na place that sounds mythological (Thule) with its historical cognate\n(Iceland).\n\nDr. Island’s claim that Arthur’s coffin was discovered in Somerset in 1191\nplays with Mallory’s La Morte D?Arthur ? ?Yet some men say in many parts of\nEngland that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu\ninto another place... many men say that there is written upon his tomb this\nverse: Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rex que futurus*.\" *(Le Morte\nd'Arthur 21:7) This too ties in with the pattern of eternal death and\nrebirth in an almost seasonal manner.\n\nFor Dr. Insula, everything dealing with islands, since all history is\nsubjective, becomes part and parcel of his knowledge, so mentioning the\nTrue History of Lucian of Samosata can lead to Greek myth, such as Apollo’s\nbirth on Delos, to Christian lore, where St. John beheld the Apocalypse, to\nthe fictional Phraxos of John Fowle’s *The Magus*. All contain something\nof value to Dr. Insula.\n\nWhen he sends them to find the island, he promises to show them Atlantis,\nHigh Brasail, and Utopia and quotes Thoreau’s “The Atlantides”, dealing\nwith the mythic:\n\nOur fabled shores none ever reach,\n\nNo mariner has found our beach,\n\nScarcely our mirage is seen,\n\nAnd neighbouring waves of floating green,\n\nYet still the oldest charts contain\n\nSome dotted outline of our main.\n\nThis poem shows of the existence on maps of something which is mythical and\n“unreal”, but still somehow charted, as the intangible magic of the islands\nand existence can still be outlined.\n\nHis final quotation is from Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses”,\n\n?The deep\n\nMoans round with many voices. Come, my friends,\n\n?Tis not too late to seek a newer world\n\nPush off ?\n\n? for my purpose holds\n\nTo sail beyond the sunset, and the baths\n\nOf all the western stars, until I die.\n\nIt may be that the gulfs will wash us down;\n\nIt may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,\n\nAnd see the great Achilles, whom we knew.\n\nOf course this poem ends with the rather famous final lines, “Made weak by\ntime and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to\nyield.” Here Dr. Insula dwells on death and the possibility of being\nswallowed in the great gulf of nothingness, or the possibility that once\nagain the heroic trappings of youth and vitality will be found on the Happy\nIsles. This good-bye to the young woman tells her all she needs to surmise\nthat he is going on a journey into the unknown symbolized by those great\nwaters, seeking his own island.\n\nDATE DUE\n\nWhile they are both set in the same university, these stories show fairly\nopposite end results of the love of stories and literature. The student\nwho takes all those books becomes a victim of his own hobby, obsessively\ntaking something and hoarding it, when what it represents should be shared.\n\n\nHis sin here, rather than mere avarice, is probably the sequestering of\nknowledge. He eventually realizes that he must get rid of all those books,\nand the best lines involve his thought processes: “Even as he sat thinking\nhow he might free himself from his thousands of stolen volumes, he feared\nthey might fall and crush him — He considered setting fire to the building\nin which he lived, but he felt sure he would lose many valuable possessions\nnow forgotten and buried under the books. — Instead of accepting a\nlucrative offer from a major corporation,” he would open a book store. He\neven considers the best way to attract shoplifters.\n\nEventually the library reclaims its space, and the ending line, that “he\nbecame a homeless wanderer on the face of the earth until 9:30 Monday\nmorning” does not quite tell us whether he is ever able to reclaim his\napartment from the literal library that has claimed his existence.\n\nThe concealed door to the library is covered by holly, which could be used\nat entrances to detain evil spirits on the threshold.\n\nDate Due shows a character slowly come to hate the books he so obsessively\ncollects and traps in his room, creating a prison, while the knowledge\nwhich Dr. Insula has hoarded serves a far more beautiful and fruitful\npurpose — opening up to the vastness of reality rather than cluttering up a\ncrowded room.\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\n\nWhy is the door to the library in “Date Due” hidden behind fifty year old\nSerbian books?\n\nCONNECTION TO OTHER WORKS:\n\nAs the conclusion to Wolfe’s Island stories, he finally overturns the\nsolitary loneliness and tragedy of the earlier works and shows how two\npeople can create their own magical island. While it is fantasy, there is\na logical consistency and rigor to it. Wolfe says in his afterword in The\nBest of Gene Wolfe: “I love this story — this is a special favorite —\nbecause it so resolutely refuses to be like other stories. It is its own\nwistful self, always, weeping as it smiles. I hope you love it, too.”" } ] } ] }