{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6651", "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": 6651, "subject": "Bibliomen part 2", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2014-08-28T15:03:31+00:00", "last": "2014-08-28T15:03:31+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-08-28T15:03:31+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Bibliomen part 2", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "JOHN J. JONS, JR (April 15, 1942 — 1998)\n\nJons is stricken with diarrhea in New York City and, still looking for a\nrestroom twenty minutes later, is mugged. He wrote “A Guide to the Public\nToilets of America”. “It was published to little notice in 1990, and within\na year had sold over one million copies.” When he was not considered for\nthe Nobel Prize, he wrote *Meditations on the Utilitarian Theory of\nLiterary Merit* (pushing the idea that practically useful literature is\ngreat literature). It was ridiculed. “Jons died of accidental causes in\n1998, having apparently attempted to clean the front sight of his .357\nMagnum with his teeth and pulled the trigger in the process.”\n\nA revision of his guide to toilets is found and published. “Only after\nseveral million copies had poured from the presses was it discovered that\nthe directions in the revised edition were uniformly incorrect.” Jons'\ngrave marker is inscribed “Cloaca Deception”.\n\nThe reason for his name is the obvious eponymous word play we would expect\nfor a man destined to write about toilets. Rather than having an obscure\nartist die unknown, we have a prominent one who is never given the\nintellectual respect he feels he deserves, seeking revenge on his public.\n\nThe guidebook motif will be repeated by Wolfe in his collaboration with\nNeil Gaiman, *A Walking Tour of the Shambles.*\n\nXAVIER MCRIDY (1939- )\n\nIn the most overtly Borgesian effort of *Bibliomen*, Xavier McRidy begins\nwork on *The Paper Nautilus* in 1969, about a reviewer reading *Mr. Milton\nin Medoc* by S. Peety. In that book, the title character is writing a\ndissertation on* Allegiance to La Villa Real de la Santa Fe De San\nFrancisco* (by Juan Gabriel Sebastian de Solo y Varios — whose name ending\nmeans alone and many) in which an Argentine author attempts to persuade a\nreluctant publisher in Buenos Aires to translate *The Paper Nautilus*.\n\n“McRidy has hopes of a critical success if he can ever find his way out.”\n\nHere is the labyrinthine metafiction of the Argentine Borges: a man writing\na novel in which, through a chain of fictional reviews, dissertations, and\ntranslations, his novel appears again, nested in the chambers of a paper\nnautilus, a labyrinthine book. The irony of the title which translates to\nallegiance to the real city of the holy faith of St. Francis is in the\nindeterminate nature of a final level to reality in the entry.\n\nXavier means “owner of a new house”. McRidy could be derived from a name\nmeaning “son of the expert”, or could be based on some more nebulous pun.\nPeety most commonly occurs as a phonetic spelling in dialect for pity, but\nit might just as easily refer to something else.\n\nLIEUTENANT JAMES RYAN O'MURPHY, NYPD (May 8, 1931 -)\n\nLieutenant O'Murphy, born the day after Gene Wolfe, is interviewed by the\nNew York Daily News on February 31, 1988. He is the head of the\nBibliokleptcy and Plagiarism squad.\n\nHis squad investigates book crime. He clarifies why people attempting to\nsell the rights to the Hitler diaries were not subject to prosecution, and\nthey soon talk of the book forger Louis Gold from *Peace*. O'Murphy says\nGold is out of his jurisdiction, but proceeds to praise his technique and\nskill highly. His forgeries “would have been as good as original material,\nand maybe better and more characteristic.” O'Murphy says minute details\nshould be checked, inserted as private jokes, such as the date of the\ninterview, to identify Gold's forgeries. (Here, O'Murphy mentions that\nArthurs has fled to the South of France to avoid prosecution for his\ndishonest academic work — Mr. Milton from the fiction *Milton in Medoc,*\nbelieving himself related to John Milton, also retires there.) The Woody\nAllen mockumentary *Zelig* is mentioned, about a man who assumes the\ncharacteristics and habits of the famous people that inspire him, and\nO'Murphy indicates films are not his province, though if Allen shows his\nface at the prominent bar for writers and entertainers in New York,\nElaine's, they will get him (Woody Allen always hung out there).\n\nHe is currently working on the case of the French Grave Robbing — the book\nwhich killed Bernard French was titled *Great Lost Art of Western Europe*,\nand because most of the large books were pulped, it is quite valuable. At\nleast two people opened French's grave and stole the book. He believes the\nplates will be taken out in Amsterdam.\n\nLt. O'Murphy is the nephew of the Monsignor O'Murphy who helped Sister Mary\njoin the order of the Sisters of Perpetual Vigilance, and sounds his ideas\noff on him.\n\nHis entry lets us know that *Bibliomen* as a whole is probably the forgery\nof Louis Gold from *Peace.*\n\nCan we determine who stole the book which contained Bernard French? Though\nthere is no motive at all, the few characters alive and positioned to do so\nare Kirk Arthurs, Jon Johns, Paul Rico, and John Kinder Price, but it is\nmore likely the mystery is meant to be unresolvable. Kirk Arthurs and Mr.\nMilton both flee to the South of France, however, though they may not exist\nin the same reality.\n\nJames implies “supplanter, Ryan means ?royalty”, and O'Murphy implies a\nmale descendant of the sea warrior — appropriate for the dominant metaphor\nof books as a metaphysical kind of boat.\n\nANNE PARSONS (November 7, 1935 -)\n\nAnne Parsons becomes an Assistant Librarian at the Kansas City Learning\nResource Center (once known as a library). When the Center seeks to expand\nthe Audio Visual section, she proposes building a new facility to house the\n“noneducational and antieducational” materials. They opt to get rid of all\nthe books to make space for the VHS tapes, selling them at ten cents a\npiece to the public. Anne Parsons buys them all and moves them into the\nabandoned building she had hoped to replace. She institutes a classic\nlibrary system. Special interest groups demand representation, and she\npoints out texts like Othello, Don Quixote, and the works of Samuel R.\nDelany.\n\nSoon, her building is spray painted with obscene pictures and an attempt is\nmade to fire bomb it. When the number of viewers increases, a “brutal\nstreet gang” known as Arthur's Pages appears to protect them. A convicted\nrapist, William Bugge Ribberts, is found dead with a scrap of paper in his\nmouth saying, “who kills a man kills a reasonable creature”. (This only\nseems ironic out its context in Milton) Parsons refuses to explain.\n\nMost of her collection is now gone, and she plans to purchase another\n50,000 volumes and is training an assistant, but Parsons only responds to\ninquiries with “Shhh.”\n\nThe message found in the dead man's mouth is an injunction against\ncensorship made by Milton in his *Areopagitica:*\n\nas good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a\nreasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills\nreason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man\nlives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of\na master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life.\n\nThis shows the devotion to books which Arthur's Pages have brought, seeking\nvengeance on those who destroy books or censor them. The threat of books\nbeing replaced by more modern media is given free reign here — the classic\nlibrary model thrown out in favor of a video resource center.\n\nThe name Anne implies “favor or grace”, and the last name Parsons is\nsomeone who works for or serves a parson, a man of God. Here the library\nand books are seen as the vitality and spirit of reason and immortality.\n\nThe argument that the canon and works of literary quality are\nrepresentative in general of a very specific, homogenous demographic (dead\nwhite males) is briefly presented and challenged by Parsons in this entry.\n\nADAM (?) POOR (?) (1951 - )\n\nSaid to be born on the Isle of Sark, Poor is only known from the\nbiographical information on his book's cover. His first book, *Voices\nVocable*, involves a cast of seven characters who have boarded a train from\nSark to Bournemouth. The challenge is to sort the characters out by their\nvoices. “It is possible that the tunnel linking Sark to Bournemouth had\ncollapsed and they are limbo [sic], or that there is no tunnel.”\n\nHis second novel was a detective story, *The Salted Mine,* in which one\ndetective solves a murder, the second accuses the first, and a third comes\nto exonerate him, though clues planted by Poor indicate the third detective\nis actually the murderer.\n\nAttempts to locate Poor have been fruitless, and his birth on Sark declared\na forgery by *The National Enquirer. ?*His publishers are said to be\nholding his royalties in trust, and it is said Prince Charles and Princess\nDiana are among them.\n\nSark is actually a real Channel Island located off the coast of Normandy,\nFrance, considered the last feudal state in Europe. It does not allow cars\nand has a population of approximately 500. It is accessible only via boat.\nBournemouth is a coastal town of England. The train mentioned is clearly\nfictional — they would have to be using a boat, or the tunnel actually be a\nfictional one under the sea.\n\nSark is the setting for Mervyn Peake's novel *Mr. Pye* and may have\ninspired the *Gormenghast* setting. Peake actually lived on the island at\none time.\n\nAdam means “red”, while Poor is actually a place name reference which could\nbe Picardy in France, besides the obvious English meaning of the word.\n\nI feel that Poor's narrative technique is one which makes overt several of\nWolfe's tendencies, especially in stories like “Cherry Jubilee”, where both\ndetectives are wrong and listening to the speech patterns of the identical\ngirls help sort them out. This entry also shows the reclusive author who is\nknown only by their work, and this could be either through the workings of\ntime and history or an intentional avoidance of publicity and fame (though\nhere Poor could easily be a pseudonym or a “fictional” author).\n\nIs there any relationship between Adam Poor and his imaginary, conceivably\ncollapsed tunnel and Man-on-Fire of Sister Mary through the red resonance\nand the (non-textual) ghost story of the Hoosac Tunnel deaths, or is this\nentirely coincidental?\n\nDo the seven characters on the train in *Voices Vocable* have any\nrelationship to other characters in *Bibliomen* or in other works? Seven\nseems to be a favored number for its religious significance — it is also\nthe line the Chairman of Isaac, Abraham, and Joseph uses to call Lucifer.\n\nJOHN K. (KINDER) PRICE (1873- )\n\nBorn in Pennsylvania, Price moves to Massachusetts and, after the death of\nhis wife and child, tries to find a hobby, including building ship models\n(as per the Dickinson reference again) and stamp collecting. After reading\nof a book of spells in a pulp magazine, in 1939 he resolves to find it\n(probably an HP Lovecraft story). “Because the book did not exist, he could\nneither fail nor end the search by discovering a copy.” His search expands\nfrom Springfield and local libraries to sending correspondence all over the\nworld: the Congo, Persia, and Bythinia. In 1952 a neighbor reports Price\nhad not been seen for several weeks, and the house later burned down. He\nwas spotted intermittently at Dartmouth campus and garage sales around\nBoston. The most recent sighting (1977) was in the stacks of the British\nMuseum Library. “It is conjectured that Price has still not discovered the\nbook he seeks; but he appears to have found something.”\n\nThe search for arcane lore seems to have led Price to some form of\nimmortality. Lovecraft and the tales of eldritch knowledge clearly\ninfluenced Wolfe's approach to fantasy.\n\nSince the last appearance of Price is contemporaneous with the last\npublished book of Adam Poor, is there any relationship between the two?\n\nJohn means “grace or mercy of the Lord”, Kinder can imply “children”, and\nPrice means “son of Rhys”, which implies “enthusiasm”. What is the price of\nbeing young forever?\n\nPAUL RICO (1960 - )\n\nBorn in New York City, Paul is a graffiti artist who begins with\nobscenities and eventually becomes more allusive and clever, reaching\npublic attention with “I JUST GOT REAL”. He transposed restroom graffiti to\nthe subway cars he favored. Most are cleverly banal, such as “FREEDOM OF\nTHE WALLS!?, ?UP WITH SKIRTS”, and “PEACE OR DIE”. When his graffiti is\nmentioned in the New York Times, he becomes more intellectually ambitious:\n“FREE THE NINE WORTHIES”, — DIAL-A-DWARF — RING THE NIBELUNGS?, and\n“PERSEUS IS AFRAID OF SNAKES”. On seeing a poster advertising the book he\nputs out called TRAINING THE MIND, he vandalizes it immediately.\n\nUnconventional expression is explored as art with a social conscious here,\nquite tongue in cheek. Almost every one of the vandalized messages are\ndouble entendres or paradoxes — such as the freedom of expression available\nby writing on walls, which ultimately in actuality delimit and circumscribe\nliberty.\n\nPaul means “small or humble”. Rico as a family name implies “rich”.\n\nRISHI (c .3500 or 3300 BC -)\n\nRishi's entry takes the form in a parable of wisdom. An ancient sage sits\nin a cave for the last forty years of his life. “By day he spoke with the\ngods, by night with spirits, and with animals and the winds at all times.”\n\nPeople come to ask him how to achieve wisdom, which the sage knows is quite\nsimple: following a nearby riverside path to the book of wisdom. The first\nsupplicant will not go because of insects, the second because she has\nalready seen that side of the mountain, the third because the village he\nmust go to is poor, until finally a handsome and young disciple comes. Each\ntime before, Rishi had altered his advice to overcome the objection of the\nprevious supplicant, but he simply repeats his first injunction to this\nfinal seeker of wisdom to follow the nearby path to the village where the\nbook rests, where it is read from every day.\n\n?In the final year of Rishi's life, he who had been the youth returned; but\nhe did not hold himself boldly, nor were his eyes yet bright. 'Great Rishi\n— there is no longer a path.'\n\nThis parable shows that eventually, when wisdom is not sought, the path\ntowards it vanishes. The old sage has been so out of touch that he does not\nrealize the world changes around him, and while the parable has a\ntraditional tone, even the man of wisdom is rendered foolish in his hopes.\nOf course the idea of a book as containing wisdom fits with the theme of\n*Bibliomen* as a whole, but wisdom is lost if it is not actively and\ncontinually sought.\n\nWho is the Sloan who attributes Rishi's birth to 3300 BC rather than 3500?\n\nSKEETER SMITH (APRIL 10, 1969-APRIL 3, 1978)\n\nThe baseball player Skeeter Smith is an editorial comic character created\nby Chick Beal for the *Chicago Daily Star*. Beal envisioned him as a comic,\nbut Skeeter was perceived primarily as an athlete. In 1972, when a decision\nwent against the Cubs, Skeeter forced the umpire to eat the rule book, an\numpire who resembled Beal's editor.\n\nAfter that, Skeeter wasn't very funny. He then moved to the *Indianapolis\nChronicle* as Beal and his wife separated, and then after further problems\nmoved to the Julius, Georgia Patriots, appearing on the last page of\nthe *Julius\nEmperor*. (I am not certain this is a real city and team — more likely\ncreated for its pun of Roman Emperors with the name Julius or of the Julian\nline). On April 3 a small box indicated Skeeter would no longer appear, and\non April 4 Chick crosses a busy highway and is killed in an apparent\nsuicide.\n\nThe popularity of a fictional comic character and his creator are given\nparallel lives here, showing how all art is ultimately a metaphor for human\nexistence. Chick only outlives his creation by a day. Even in a strip about\nbaseball, it seems that the author's life somehow creeps in, coloring the\nrepresentation.\n\nSkeeter means “quick and darting.” Smith means “one who works in metal” or\n“to smite.”\n\nChick is a short form of Charles, which means “free man”. Beal, in addition\nto implying a handsome man, could mean “bee-hill” or “Land by the Bend”.\n\nTHE WOMAN WHO RESIGNED (?)\n\nA thin woman with no makeup comes to town and checks into the Big Tree\nMotel, and within a week her nondescript, androgynous and cheap clothes\nwere found on the edge of town. Years later a deer hunter brings in a\nstrange thing he has shot, neither human nor animal. The coroner who tested\nthe blood asserts it is not human, and the innkeeper of the Big Tree Motel,\nMrs. Collins, indicates she thinks the woman just gave up. The narrator\nindicates the thing wasn't human, and Mrs. Collins says, “But that's what\nyou want, isn't it” ?. To quit the job of being one, give up on everything\nand go somewhere far away. Haven't you ever noticed how far away a bird is\nfrom us? It'll sing to you, but you can't talk to it, and it doesn't care\nif you live or die. The woman left behind two books: Grimm's *Fairy Tales *and\n*Genetic Engineering Practice*. Deer hunters continue to have stories of\nseeing something in the woods, and when the narrator gets lost, he comes\nacross a farmhouse where a woman claims to have milk and crackers outside\nfor her dog, though her dog stays inside with her.\n\nWe finally have a look at science textbooks, crossed with Wolfe's earlier\nstory, “Sweet Forest Maid.” The woman has made her escape from humanity an\nexperiment, bringing to life the sylvan fairy tales of forest spirits,\nprobably by experimenting on herself until she has bred something both new\nand ancient in the wilderness.\n\nLETTER TO HIROSHI HAYAKAWA\n\nIn this letter, Gene tells a publisher of a nurse helping a brilliant young\nman who was dying, and he tells her of all the things he will do — go to\nthe university, travel, and see the sick. Before he dies he says the powers\nat the edge of the universe revealed he would do all that, then he died.\nShe sees his face the next day reflected in a magazine kiosk, and seems to\nsee him over her shoulder as well. At that point, the Japanese American\nnurse screamed out a word that means “ten thousand years” - Banzai! This\ncan also be an injunction to long life as well as acclamation for the\nEmperor. This hopeful injunction of spirit enduring long after the body\ndies ended the original publication of *Bibliomen. *It purports to be\nreality but is more mystical than several of the entries.\n\nSEAMAN (1951 -)\n\nGlenville Neal was born in London and began drawing the comic *Smoke and\nMirrors* in 1978. Smoke, the Lord of Obscurity is a demigod “ruling Earth\nfrom a vast palace outside time and space” who eliminated historical\nabnormalities, both assisted and occasionally opposed by his consort\nMirrors, the Lady of Illusion. Neal immigrates to the United States and in\n1988 begins to see Smoke everywhere, claiming he must draw him in order to\navoid being plagued by his own creation.\n\nThe final paragraph reveals that Neal is simply a fictional creation of B.\nJ. Solomon, and that Neal's circulation has gone down as his mental health\ndeteriorated, until he is transformed to a more conventional superhero\nafter his wife leaves him: Seaman, “a righter of wrongs and avenger of\ninjustices residing beneath a vast dome of glass under Lake Superior.”\n\nHere we have Neil Gaiman of Sandman fame fictionalized as a graphic novel\nartist who creates something interesting in his art, but in this reality he\nis simply another, more banal creation than his own drawings, and in order\nto maintain ratings, B.J. Solomon completely commercializes his character.\nOf course we have the idea of psychological fracturing which could explain\nthe leaking of fiction into the real word, but Glenville Neal seems trapped\nin another creator's reality.\n\nThe name Solomon means “Peace” — does this refer to any other\n(nonfictional) fiction writer?\n\nDoes Glenville Neal drown himself after his wife leaves him?\n\nCAPTAIN ROY C MIRK, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (January 15, 1928 — April 28, 1996)\n\nMirk became a naval officer and then a University Professor of American\nliterature until his retirement in 1993. Mirk published several nonsensical\nworks: such as Poultry as Symbolism in Nineteenth Century American\nLiterature, Washing as a Euphemism in the Works of Jack London, and A\nPost-Modernist Critic Views the Antebellum Middle West. He comes up with\nthe idea of bringing his works to a wider circulation — he buys a schooner\nnamed the Appaloosa and renames it the Bounty.\n\nHe travels up and down the North American Coast and encourages people to\ntrade volumes freely, taking and giving as they see fit. In January of\n1996, Mirk rearranged the confusing hold by subject area, putting “critical\nworks he favored” to starboard and books of all other types to port. He\nspies Davidson's *Mutiny in Space* on the shelf on April 18th and pulls it\nout, at which pint the Bounty capsized and sunk. “His body has never been\nrecovered.”\n\nHere we have a wonderful idea that turns sour because of the critics' own\nagenda. Mirk wants his ideas promulgated, so he promotes literature and its\nfree exchange but is disappointed that no one ever takes the critical books\nhe has written. In favoring his own agenda, he unbalances the literary\nview, seeking to place his own obsessions in a position of prominence. This\nis another criticism of the academic world, especially in post-modern\nre-evaluations that ultimately decentralize meaning and significance.\n\nIt is interesting that Avram Davidson's *Mutiny in Space* seems to cause a\nbook mutiny on the Bounty — marginalized entertainment in the form of\nscience fiction (but of a very particular type, with the literary but\nunique science fiction of Davidson) capsizes all the careful\ncategorizations that Mirk has attempted to force on his collection. Mirk\nand his work is lost at sea, for despite his efforts to circulate\nliterature, it was his own agenda, one not worthy of remembrance.\n\nThis final entry ties together the idea that the original sources\nthemselves will survive, infused with the vitality of the sea rather than\nthe frail, artificial ship upon it.\n\nRoy can mean “king” or ?chief?, Mirk implies “dark”. The murky agenda of\nthe Captain undermines his endeavor, just as the academic world presses its\nown concerns on a pre-existing literary world, attempting to control and\nre-organize something which should live as itself without conforming to\nacademic categorizations.\n\nLITERARY ALLUSIONS\n\nFor the most part, the references to particular authors and stories are\nlisted in the individual story sections, but the entirety of *Bibliomen* is\nperhaps inspired by the artificial metafictions of authors such as\nPirandello in *Six Characters in Search of An Author* or Borges' various\nstories that see reality as just another level of fiction. The various\ngenres in the individual entries pay tribute to the comic medium, graffiti,\nscience fiction, academic criticism, publishing, experimental fiction, and\neven book collecting.\n\nCONNECTION TO OTHER WORKS:\n\nThe absurd in Wolfe usually takes the form of comedy. His collaboration\nwith Neil Gaiman, *A Walking Tour of the Shambles*, “Dumpster World”, and\n“Planetarium in Orbit” all have a similar feel. *Bibliomen* is the most\nliterary of these efforts in its exploration of metafiction, adventure\nnovels, psychological breakdowns, science fiction confessions, literary\npuns and allusions, guide books, comics, and even picture books, but is\nstill very far from serious.\n\nThe return of Louis Gold, the forger from *Peace*, is a nice Easter egg —\nand there is some indication that he is the author of *Bibliomen* as a\nwhole." } ] } ] }