{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6647",
    "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": 6647,
    "subject": "Short Stories 104-109: Redwood Coast Roamer/Four Wolves",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2014-08-26T02:03:34+00:00",
    "last": "2014-08-26T02:03:34+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<CAF1072wB5_bR0GVcgfzHmuWVBBGwm8+D32HMEGXXxKVdP2v0uA@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2014-08-26T02:03:34+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)  Short Stories 104-109: Redwood Coast Roamer/Four Wolves",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Redwood Coast Roamer/Four Wolves\n\nAll of these stories were written on a trip Wolfe took via Amtrak to\nSeattle, written in the observation car. They appeared in several different\nplaces, but ?In The Old Hotel: did not see the light of day until it became\npart of the collection *Storeys from the Old Hotel.*\n\nI. MY BOOK\n\n“My Book” first appeared in Amazing Science Fiction stories in May of 1983\nand is reprinted in *Endangered Species*.\n\nSUMMARY: A rather eccentric writer prepares to write every day by beginning\nwith some Mahler on the radio, and he reviews some of the essays and\nthoughts that inspired him. Ultimately, he decides on writing his book from\nthe end to the beginning, starting with the final word, “preface”, and\nworking backwards. He ends by stating, “And so I have proceeded, step by\nlaborous (delightful) step, chapter by chapter, until soon, perhaps this\nvery year, surely before the coronation I will begin the preface.”\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nWolfe identifies our author as a madman in his introduction to *Endangered\nSpecies*, and besides the eccentric writing habits and thought processes,\nthere are a few cryptic details. The pages which he sets out so carefully\nin their white glory are ruined when he returns to them, as if a part of\nhim crumples them up in frustration, a frustration which is then\nsuppressed. He researches things multiple times over and over but never\nseems to write, until he comes upon the most disjointed and inconvenient\nmethod of composition ever, one devoid of all normal and logical\ndevelopment. The neurosis of composition is stressed, and the literary\nallusions below make quite clear that his blockage has become the object of\na particularly perverse negative obsession.\n\nWhile the narrator might have written chapter after chapter as he claims,\nit seems as if the entirety of his book is simply presented from the last\nseveral words: all he has to write about is the process of composition —\nthere is no depth or meaning to any of his labors. His book might actually\nbe “My Book” - a three page short story about nothing but delusional\nstruggles in composition. This stark barrenness is the height of pride and\nexcess, a kind of neurosis that, though it references everything, never\nsucceeds in growing beyond itself. The last line is ironic, for while it\nseems that he is going to finish his book when he begins the preface, it\ncould be that for all that sound and fury he never quite begins the book he\nwants to write.\n\nSince “My Book” refers to Rahv, Mahler, and Kafka (indirectly), there does\nseem to be a slight bias towards Jewish artists in its references, and the\nonly truly inexplicable detail is the upcoming coronation. Given that it is\nprobably a contemporary work, the idea that this neurosis is growing in war\ntime Europe on the cusp of a transition to the modern era is rendered\nunsound by the Rex Stout and baseball references. The literary allusions\nmake the theme of the narrator's insanity much more apparent.\n\nLITERARY ALLUSIONS:\n\nThe author claims that his project began with the idea that man only has a\nconcept of religion as a historical force from a Philip Rahv essay. This\nessay may be found as the introduction to *The Selected Short Stories of\nFranz Kafka* in which Rahv comments first on Kafka not only as a neurotic\nartist but as an artist of neurosis, driven by obsession. The desire of\nKafka to destroy his work completely and the concept found in stories such\nas “The Great Wall of China” that explores the vast separation between\nauthority and the orders to be followed, between a heavenly and corporeal\nlimited viewpoint, emphasize the piecemeal and haphazard thinking\ndefinitely at work in the narrator of “My Book”\n\nSince “My Book” refers to a fairly late Nero Wolfe novel, *The Father Hunt*,\nin quoting, “It was nice to know the next step was obvious, but it would\nhave been even nicer to know what it was,” we know that the story is set\nafter 1968 and is possibly contemporary with the time of its composition.\nHowever, the other behaviors of the writer, from listening to Mahler to\nbeing inspired by Rahv, certainly seem a bit more old fashioned. *The\nFather Hunt*'s plot (a woman's mother is killed, and she believes her\nunknown father has something to do with it) seems to have little relevance\nto this particular story besides giving us a Wolfe reference.\n\nThe narrator compares his research to Injun Joe's Cave in Twain's *Tom\nSawyer *? a place where he has been lost for some time, unable to move from\nrepetitive research to meaningful composition.\n\nThe most important allusion is quite explicit: Oliver Onion’s “The\nBeckoning Fair One”, in which a writer on the cusp of producing what might\nbe his most significant work becomes gradually obsessed with his new living\nplace and descends into madness, intermittently determining to scrap all of\nhis manuscript and working further on it, but accomplishing little.\nEventually, emaciated and demented, his lady friend winds up dead in his\nhouse, killed by his delusions (or possession, as the case may be, as the\nprevious owner of the house starved himself to death rather oddly).\n\nUltimately the idea of a man obsessively writing about the composition of\nhis book, which might be the book itself, seems like one of Borges\nself-referential mazes rendered meaninglessness, signifying only itself,\nthough we have some very interesting quotes about mankind’s experience of\nthe divine in history.\n\nRELIGIOUS ALLUSIONS:\nI wonder if the preponderance of Jewish artists mentioned has anything to\ndo with the theme of waiting for something so long (the Messiah and\nRedemption) and failing to recognize when the moment of validation and\nmeaning comes, though this could be entirely unintentional (though the Rahv\nquote is quite suggestive — especially since the Jewish conception of the\nMessiah is so much more secular than most Christian ideas of Christ. The\nnebulous nature of the Jewish afterlife, perhaps developed in contrast to\ntheir death-obsessed Egyptian oppressors, is particularly based in the here\nand now rather than the later. Our writer wants to create a great\nmasterpiece but his book will have no meaning beyond the story of its own\ncomposition. The coronation and ascension never comes.\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\n\nWhile our narrator is insane, how is he connected to the coronation? Is it\nreligious, secular, or an imaginary delusion of grandeur?\n\n“My Book” is extremely brief, and the idea that our narrator has\nunconsciously already written his book is clever without seeming earth\nshatteringly significant. It is perhaps the most difficult to parse\nthematically from all of the stories Wolfe composed on his train trip to\nthe West Coast.\n\nII. THE RIVER\n\n“The River” first appeared in *Amazing Science Fiction Stories* in May of\n1983 and has never been reprinted.\n\nSUMMARY:\n\nThe short story begins, “Through all the countries that no map shows there\nruns Siith, the Infinite Stream. Some say that in the end, in farthest\nplaces, it runs back upon itself; others that it flows at last into the\ngulf. Both are correct.” The rest of the story is a description of the\nriver — at some places broad, in others narrow, but with no bridges, as\nonly the current and birds can traverse it, “and the speech of birds is\nknown only to those who have tasted dragons” blood. Once a century or so\nthe current swirls some scrap of paper from a minor scribe and cities fall\nand rise, with temples and churches, and perhaps missiles fly, “but they\nare only scraps from the tables of the minor scribes.?Althor-elmil is Lord\nof the river, and he takes all the boats built by people, and those who do\nnot swear to serve him die. He casts feral beasts and those who live by\nstealth into the river, and sometimes people see ?strange things drawn from\nwells, blood drinkers, and hairy men.”\n\n“Of late it has been observed that Althor-elmil builds ships having wins\nand rockets, and these are taken by Marhoon, how is Lord of the Air.”\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nThis seems to be one of the literary myths Wolfe speaks of in a few of his\nessays and speeches, those things that are the opposite of allegory. He\ndefines them as follows: an allegory posits that a giant might be despair,\nbut a literary myth asks something like, “what if love were a woman?” This\nstory does the same thing — we see the river, and we have to ask ourselves\nwhat symbolic association seems to satisfy this description? Is the river\nhistory, the exploration of the unknown, or is it actually the unknown and\nmysterious in life? It would seem to be perhaps exploring the question,\n?What if the unknown were a river??, since only those who have tasted\ndragon’s blood can ask the birds what the river is like (fantasists, I\nsuppose). The inference could be that the river is the border between the\nknown and unknown. When a scrap of paper drops into the river, progress\nhappens: buildings and churches go up, missiles and wars occur, but they\nstill do not have a lasting effect on the river. The story has no concrete\ncharacters besides Althor-elmil and Marhoon, and it is interesting that\nthey are differentiated between. When humanity seeks to explore and map the\nseas and face the unknown, it is still on its home planet, no matter how\nhostile and large the seas. Yet these air-ships, to the sky and moon, seem\nto representing something else. Now the river no longer seems a symbol of\nthe unknown — it is the sky.\n\nThe Wolfe-wiki states that the river seems to represent the boundary\nbetween reality and fantasy, the known and the unknown, and this seems a\ngood way of describing it.\n\nIs there a meaning to the name Althor-elmil? Does it imply son of thunder,\nthe thousand, or should we be looking a more Arabic root?\n\nMarhoon is Arabic for mortgaged or pawned, something given as security for\na loan.\n\nIn “The Boy Who Hooked the Sun”, Sith is another name for Kronos, and the\nword is also related to the Sidhe, or the Faerie Folk Wolfe employs\nfrequently.\n\nThe scrapes of paper allow cities going up and to occur, as the boundary\nbetween the known and unknown shifts with new ideas and discoveries. Why\nshould this infinite river suddenly give way to a different lord? Is this a\nspiritual statement or merely one dealing with the nature of the unknown as\nhumanity leaves the earth behind?\n\n\n III. AT THE VOLCANO'S LIP\n\n“At the Volcano's Lip” first appeared in the May 1983 issue of Amazing\nScience Fiction Stories and is collected in *Storeys from the Old Hotel.*\n\nSUMMARY:\n\nThe wife of the narrator complains that his loud talking prevents her from\nhearing the roar of the earth, and a planned flight is prevented because\nthe pilot would not fly with “snow” on the mountain.\n\nThey drive down back roads and see devastation, the wife pointing out here\nthe volcano’s effects can be seen, but the narrator seeing only “the prim\nlabor of saws — the tread of trucks” in a national forest.\n\nThey buy postcards and a Frisbee with a picture of the mountain. “She had\nexploded with the force of five million (or perhaps five billion) tons of\nTNT, with the fore of a hydrogen bomb, with a force equal to the combined\nforces of all the bombs dropped on Japan, plus that of the test that may\n(or may not) have been conducted by the Union of South Africa.” (The story\nis probably referring to the Republic of South Africa and the Vela Incident\non September 22, 1979)\n\nThey buy a cup fired with a picture of the volcano and see a river of ash,\nand the wife repeats that they would have seen it if the husband had not\ntalked so loud, “drowning the roar of the volcano, the roaring of the\nengines. But I love you anyway.” The story ends with the ominous, “The\ngeologists had seen smoke and scented poisonous vapors, that their\ninstruments all felt the earth trembling, trembling at the margins of the\nmissile silos. It may be, I told my wife, that there are louder talkers\ncoming.”\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nClearly designed around the explosion of Mt. St. Helens in the early 1980s,\nthe narrator notices how commercialized the destruction of the earth is —\nthe massive force of the land and the volcano serves mostly to create\nsouvenirs for mankind, and he compares the destruction to what mankind has\ndone — cutting up national forests, fighting and creating weapons of mass\ndestruction like the missile silos mentioned at the end. While he may speak\nwith a loud voice, the idea that louder talkers are coming is a threat of\nescalation — whether those talkers be the harbingers of war as the\nsuperpowers arm themselves against each other, or the earth itself, which\ntrembles in disgust in all its might, ready to descend upon a creature who\nhas spoken a bit louder than it should have. His wife cannot hear the\nnatural sounds over him, but the absurdity of this is revealed at the end,\nwhen she implies one man’s shouting would drown out the volcano and the\nengines, and for this reason they were kept from witnessing the volcano’s\neruption.\n\nIt seems his shouting might be that of someone shouting out for peace,\nrestraint, and understanding, as well as a considerate treatment to the\nenvironment, since the narrator sees the commercialization and destruction\nrampant in the world and feels the looming threat. The title, “At the\nVolcano’s Lip” implies that humanity and civilization are at that\nprecipice, since our couple never gets to approach the lip of the erupting\nvolcano.\n\nIV. IN THE MOUNTAINS:\n\n“In the Mountains” first appeared in May 1983 in Amazing Science Fiction\nStories and is collected in *Storeys from the Old Hotel.*\n\nSUMMARY: The narrator remarks that it is still snowing even in April. “The\ncliffs, the color of anti-rust primer, are dusted with white. Forests of\nChristmas trees run up them forever. Elk do not fear our train”. These elks\nare now “good members of the Elks Club now” and silenced. He tells his wife\nhe saw a tree that a bear had just walked around since “it had that look.”\n\nThe narrator goes on to tell of a couple who wanted to live in the woods\nbut her fear of bears kept them in the city, where the harsh chemicals and\npollution ruined their health. “Once I asked his doctor if he would always\ncough like that. ?No,” his doctor said. “Not always.” He talks of the\nsharp blade of the old man’s ax, dulled in color and varnish but unused.\n\n“The wood of the frightful bears are gone now, cut to make houses and\nbooks, or perhaps only to clear the land (Why should land be clear, when\neach mirror shows an uglier face”) No doubt the frightful bears are gone\ntoo, perhaps to the high mountains, the mountains of Montana, of\nWashington. May they with my heart abide here forever, stalking elk,\ndodging clumsily, slyly, around Christmas trees, leaving bear tracks in the\nsnow.\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nThis is a conservationist piece that reveals the almost mystical\nassociations the narrator makes at the beginning, about a tree looking as\nif a bear had just walked around it, are tied to real cause and effect: our\nnarrator noticed the tracks — the wife merely thinks him silly because she\nunderstands neither him nor the natural world. The destruction of the\nforest and the loss of the wild frontier are juxtaposed with the story of\nfearful “Goldilocks”, who has become gray and ill, her family ruined by\ncity life, her children not turning out “well”. While mankind desires a\nclose relationship with the natural world, his fears keep him separated,\nconstantly eradicating it, to show a world barren of nature, a barrenness\nthat mirrors an ugly face.\n\nWhile the Elk Club is not really a hunting organization, it does represent\na fraternal, organized society that has merely adopted the Elk as a symbol\nof the American spirit.\n\nWhile Christmas trees would normally have some kind of symbolic\nassociation, I feel that this story is satisfying in its simple message —\nthe modern world is much more destructive and dangerous than the\n“frightful” bears, who leave tracks and signals that let us know about the\nnatural world if we know how to look for them — at the beginning, the elk\ndo not fear the train, but they should. Similarly, we do not fear the city,\nbut perhaps we should. If there is any religious significance to the tree\nin nature, we see it in its living environment stripped of consumer driven\ngreed; the bear sidesteps it without bothering it, neither resisting nor\ndestroying it, but existing around the natural world, while the man in the\ncity has his sharp ax ready to cut down any tree that gets in his way.\n\nV. IN THE OLD HOTEL\n\n“In the Old Hotel” appeared for the first time in *Storeys from the Old\nHotel* in 1988, though it was written with all of these stories.\n\nSUMMARY:\n\nA couple is registered in an old hotel because English friends (unaware of\ntheir presence) are there too, a man and his daughter. The speaker compares\nthe hotel to an old man resting and gasping for breath, the modern\ntelevision out of place in the hotel's antiquity.\n\n“Tomorrow and tomorrow. The old hotel is forever looking to tomorrow,\nstriving to show it has a place in the future, that it need not be torn\ndown.”\n\nAn old man in the elevator comments on two pretty women that join them to\nthe narrator: “They get better all the way down.”\n\n“But not for you, old man, I think, lying awake beside my sleeping wife.\nYour time with the girls is over. And I fall asleep.”\n\n“The old hotel smiles its tense smile, polishes its dark wood — an old\nretainer out to show he does not have to retire so soon, though he may be a\nlittle lame.” The narrator says he would rather see false teeth than false\nsmiles.\n\nThey meet the English friends on the street, and the girl says, “It was\nover by noon — I’m fit as fit.”\n\nCOMMENTARY: The rustic allure of the old wheezing hotel striving to stay\nrelevant as time leaves it behind, pushing off its dissolution and death\njust a bit longer, seems to be the primary impact of the central\ndescription of the story. Wolfe’s narrative voice is sympathetic with the\ngenuine honesty of the primitive world rather than the veneer of\nartificiality in the modern world. The primary question is a simple one:\nwhy doesn’t the couple want the Englishman and his daughter from Devon to\nknow that they are registered in the same old hotel?\n\nThere is a nice irony in the narrator falling asleep next to his sleeping\nwife thinking that the old man’s days with the women are gone — while this\nold hotel attempts to look towards tomorrow and still eventually faces\ndissolution, the same drive to last in humans when they are young involves\nhaving children, and after that, striving to stay relevant in a changing\nworld as their reproductive days fade into nothing but a dream and a memory.\n\nIf “it” was over by noon, was the girl pregnant? Something else? The\nEnglishman has white hair, which seems to indicate he could be an\nappropriate age for having a grandchild, and since he and the narrator\nreside at the top floor of the hotel, and the girls get prettier as one\ngoes down, it seems that this meeting on the street level would imply that\nperhaps there is some kind of new life outside the inevitable acquiescence\nof the hotel.\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\n\nBesides the purpose of the young woman's stay in the hospital (which would\nseem thematically to be most probably the birth of a child, or something\nrelated to the life cycle and reproduction), the narrator refers to the\nhotel as Kennedy. Is there any significance to this name?\n\nVI. ON THE TRAIN\n\n“On the Train” appeared in *The New Yorker* in 1983 and is reprinted\nin *Storeys\nfrom the Old Hotel.*\n\nSUMMARY:\nOur narrator glances outside of a train on which he seems to have spent his\nentire life and sees an earth become almost liquid, “rushing to flow over a\nfalls that is always just behind the last car.” The narrative claims the\nuniverse can be contained in three questions — “How long is the train” And\nfrom what station does it originate? We can assume the third is “Where\ndoes it end?”\n\nThe narrator does not remember boarding, but his mother said she recalled\nit, though she has now left his compartment. He says he “would go up and\ndown the cars looking for [the doctor who delivered him] (and [his\nmother]), but one cannot look for a doctor without arousing the anxiety of\nthe other passengers or exciting their suspicions.”\n\nThere is a porter named Flip who “was once [the narrator’s] dog, a smooth\nfox terrier”, who makes the berths and serves coffee and knows more than\nanyone else about the train. If the narrator’s wife and he try to make Flip\nstay to answer questions, Flip will call his Uncle, the Dawn Guard.\n\nThe narrator speculates that the train is “either very long or very short,\nsince when it goes around a curve — I cannot see the engine. Possibly it is\ninfinite — but it may be of a closed as well as an open infinity.” After\nthinking that it seems both circular, in a circle going around the earth,\nand straight, extending into infinity among the stars, he notes that the\nmountains seem to crowd closer, “as if to ram us by night.” He lies in his\nberth, “listening to the conductor (so called because he was struck by\nlightning once) come down the car checking — tickets in the dark.”\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nWe should mention once again Wolfe’s comments about the story, which relate\nthat he rode an Amtrak to Seattle and back on which he composed the short\nstories that are included in this entry. He states\n\n“Flip was the ruffian clown who woke Little Nemo from his wonderful dreams,\nin one of the finest Sunday comics ever. My father gave Flip’s name to the\nfox terrier we owned when I was very small: Flip’s barking always woke my\nfather up. There was no reason for you to care, to be sure, but for both\nyou readers who have stuck with this until now — The earliest memory I have\nof my mother is that of a lovely young woman bending over me as I life abed\non the seat of a railway car. Her eyes are blue. She wears a gray cloche;\nfrom under it peeps a stray lock of auburn hair. Would the year be 1934” I\ncan’t say for certain, but about that. Now I must stop, lest the afterword\ngrow longer than the story.\n\nWolfe has here revealed the symbolic weight of the train: his earliest\nmemories are on one, and thus its association with the start of life’s\njourney, which at times seems a circular entirely earthly trip and at other\ntimes only a journey into an infinity almost incomprehensible, especially\nto a sincere dualist. The farthest echoes of his memory summon up that\nmaternal face and the sound of the train.\n\nThe comic strip Little Nemo involves a boy who is summoned into Slumberland\nto be the playmate of Morpheus? daughter, and at first the green and\nshort-tempered clown Flip is something of an enemy that tries to wake him\nup before he gets there, but they become allies. Note that in Wolfe’s\ncomments, we see how the dog also woke his father from his slumber.\n\nIn some ways much of Wolfe’s dream cosmology involves the concept of the\nability to wake from the waking world into something that is perhaps less\nbound by the laws of the physical world but is “more” real nonetheless. The\nconductor who checks tickets is perhaps symbolic of the power of the gods,\nJove, coursing through the one who drives the train, (which of course could\nbe a reference to the divine power invested in the form of a man, the\nTheoanthropos), though I am not familiar enough with Little Nemo to know if\nthere is a reference there as well, with its treatment of slumber and myth.\n\nEach family seems to create its own compartment in life, and his children\nhave now formed compartments of their own, while his mother has left his,\ngone to an unknown place.\n\nThe Dawn Guard referred to in the dream has an identity in the comics, the\nGuardian of the Dawn, who breaks up the images of Slumberland as the sun\nrises — in this way, the train trip is certainly a dream image.\n\nThe symbolist in Wolfe has created a story where the earliest memory\nbecomes a metaphor for the entirety of life, which we can certainly expect\nto haunt his fiction (my own is watching my grandmother heat up pot after\npot of water on the stove to prepare my bath, since we had no hot water in\nour small apartment near Madrid).\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\n\nThe flowing river that the objects outside the train appear to become seems\na repetitive motif in Wolfe's fiction for something numinous and\ntransubstantial, beyond ordinary comprehension. In this story, is that\nmerely due to the artistic style of the Nemo cartoons?\n\nCONNECTION WITH OTHER WORK:\n\nThis type of literary myth became increasingly frequent in Wolfe’s writing\nin the 1980s and seems an outgrowth of early stories such as “The Green\nWall Said” and ?Cues?, but they are closer to “The Old Woman Whose Rolling\nPin is the Sun”, “At the Point of Capricorn”, and even perhaps “Love, Among\nthe Corridors”, all of which seem allegorical but are a bit more\nsophisticated than standard allegories."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}