Subject: (urth) Short Story 117: Read Me

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 17:32:15 +0000

*READ ME*

“Read Me” first appeared in *The Drabble Project* in 1988 and has not been
reprinted.

The story is only one hundred words long, as seen below:

Alice looked about her. "You're the most curious cards I've seen."

"That's because we're a tarot pack.  If we weren't curious, we wouldn't
have troubled the future, and so couldn't tell it."

"You mean troubled *to learn of* the future," Alice corrected him.

The Fool appeared offended. "I mean what I said. If we hadn't troubled the
Future, we couldn't tell it how sorry we are."

Alice was puzzled by that, though she proceeded bravely. "But you foretell
the future."

"No," said the Fool, "We four tell it." And he indicated the Falling Tower,
the Devil, the Magician and himself. (Wolfe)

DISCUSSION:

                Included in *The Drabble Project*, consisting entirely of
exactly 100 word short stories by SF writers, the brief “Read Me” employs
Wolfe’s cryptic and ambiguous wordplay to full effect.  The verb and object
combination the Fool uses to “tell the future” flirts with slipping between
an indirect object and a direct object depending on perspective (The Fool
wants to tell the future he is sorry, but Alice wants him to tell the
future to her).  The punning on troubling and foretelling is obvious.

Of course, given the idea that Alice is talking to a Tarot Deck with four
cards in the future position, we should do a reading.  Since The Fool is
talking, and it represents 0 in the tarot, we should also explore its
relationship to the person seeking the reading.  Generally, the Fool stands
in for that person (as the title also reinforces). It represents a zero or
fresh starting point, almost childlike in nature.  It can also represent
foolishness or an immature understanding of events.

The Tower in the future position usually indicates an immediate future,
days or hours away. It represents the decimation of some structure in life
completely and totally. Because of its pertinent description of the
spiritual significance of The Tower and those falling from its battlements,
a further description is enlightening:

The Tower shows a tall tower pitched atop a craggy mountain. Lightning
strikes and flames burst from the building’s windows. People are seen to be
leaping from the tower in desperation, wanting to flee such destruction and
turmoil. The Tower signifies darkness and destruction on a physical scale,
as opposed to a spiritual scale. The Tower itself represents ambitions
built on false premises. The lightning bolt breaks down existing forms in
order to make room for new ones. It represents a sudden, momentary glimpse
of truth, a flash of inspiration that breaks down structures of ignorance
and false reasoning  ? the lightning bolt is oriented left to right (from
the perspective of the card), from heaven to earth, and from Spirit to
material. The falling figures correspond to the chained prisoners in the
Devil card. They fall headfirst, because the sudden influx of spiritual
consciousness represented by the lightning flash completely upsets all our
old notions about the relations between subconsciousness and
self-consciousness. The flames are actually the Hebrew yods. There are 22
flames, representing the 22 Major Arcana. The gray clouds are the clouds of
misfortune that rain on everyone indiscriminately. The ruling planet of
this card is Mars. (“Tower Tarot Card Meanings”)

Since the people falling from The Tower correspond with the chained figures
depicted on The Devil’s, these cards are thematically linked. The Devil
forebodes ill fortune and defeat in the future, but if it is paired with
The Fool (which it is) then its meaning is augmented and might even
indicate that the person being read is safe and separate from the disaster
about to unfold, though the world and the external surroundings are facing
a situation with a dark agenda. The Magician in the future position
represents achieving the power and influence one craves. In conjunction
with the Fool, it represents success when one passively avoids it as long
as the Magician is identified with the person seeking the reading instead
of someone else.   As previously hinted, when the Fool shows up, it
represents free will, creation and, especially in the future position, a
new life. Since the Fool appears in conjunction with both the Magician and
the Devil in the future, there are some contradictory signs from a standard
reading:

When The Devil is near The Fool in a reading, your pleasure-seeking ways
are about to create a disaster.  ? The Fool is a great card when The
Magician is paired with it as long as a sensitive Tarot reader can assure
you that both cards apply to you. If this is the case, the chance to break
free and create a new reality will be a success. If it is determined that
The Magician represents someone else, beware. (“The Fool Tarot Card”).

Adam Stephanides on the Urth Mailing List once posited that this short work
is a metaphor for science fiction and speculative future writers: “I take
the Tarot pack to represent science fiction writers, who once troubled” the
future and now tell it they're sorry.  I'm tempted to go further and say
that the writers who "troubled" the future are the Campbell-era writers
with their technological optimism, and the ones who apologize to it are
present-day, less optimistic writers.

The goal of the tarot deck, using mystical forces to divine one’s current
position and plot out or seek a warning for the future, actually does echo
some of the speculative trends of science fiction in general: either
seeking to extrapolate a future or apply a warning to the modern era by
showing how certain current trends might result in disaster or success (on
the one hand, the goal of didactic utopian or dystopian fiction, on the
other the spirit of speculative adventure that asks, “What if ?”?)

While at first the parallel between SF and tarot doesn’t seem that strong,
there is a synchronicity of process: harnessing some energy, creative or
mystical, to foretell or estimate the future.  Here, we do have the
specific tarot symbolism to guide us. Overall it seems that the future is
grim and disastrous, and innocent girls like Alice, here equated with The
Fool, will face a difficult choice. Even in the face of physical, material
disaster, there is still the possibility of spiritual salvation.  The
future may be damned, but if the person seeking the future can create a
spiritual reality and become their own “Magician”, then they can escape.  Once
again, innocence and free will are implied no matter the surroundings. All
of these cards are related in tarot readings: the prisoners in The Devil’s
card are seen being cast down from The Tower into the material world; the
Fool modifies both The Devil and The Magician.  Certainly Wolfe selected
these cards for their related meanings: physical and material disaster with
the possibility of a dualistic escape through free will and the creation of
a higher or separate reality beyond that terrible, troubled future — but
only if the person being read and The Magician are one — if Alice becomes
trapped in the “magic” or falls under the influence of a more base,
material force (which might perhaps represent the anti-spiritual
“modernity” of our times), then the reading is grim indeed even for her.

LITERARY ALLUSIONS:

                Of course we are aware of Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories.  In
Alice’s *Adventures in Wonderland*, Alice encounters the Queen of Hearts
and the cards under her, and the thematic continuation of sentient cards
into the decks of the tarot.  In Carroll’s versions, Alice comes upon three
cards trying to paint white roses red (for their queen detests white
roses), but they are sentenced to death anyway.

CONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:

                This cryptic strain runs throughout Wolfe.   Carroll has
clearly influenced him, and references in *The Book of the New Sun* and “In
Looking Glass Castle” drive that point home.  The concept of the innocent
child exploring a strange unknown world is a motif we can see developed in
Wolfe’s fiction, evoking both pathos (such as in “The Eyeflash Miracles”)
and horror (as in “And When They Appear”, some of the Wolfe archipelago
stories).  However, nowhere else is it expressed quite so succinctly.  The
reliance of meaning on external or intertextual sources is also typical of
Wolfe.

RESOURCES:

Stephanides, Adam. “Wolfe’s Carrollean Drabble”. Urth Mailing List. 26 July
2001. Web. 26 January 2015.
http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0030/0571.shtml

“The Fool Tarrot Card”. Keen, Ingenio LLC. 2015. Web. 26 January 2015.
http://www.keen.com/articles/tarot/the-fool-tarot-card

“Tower Tarot Readings.” Biddy Tarrot. 2015. Web. 26 January 2015.
http://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/tower/)

Wolfe, Gene. “Read Me.” *The Drabble Project, ed. Rob Meads and David Wake.
*Essex: Beccon Publications, 1988. Print.
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From: Michael Thayer <michael.o.thayer at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 23:23:31 +0000

Mark - Thanks for the interesting explication of this curious short short
story (I hadn't encountered it before).  In your review, you allude to some
Lewis Carroll allusion in TBOTNS.  I think I missed this and would be
curious to know what specifically you have in mind?
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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 01:45:21 +0000

Sure - in claw of the conciliator when jonas and sev are taken to the
antechamber where people spend their whole lives waiting for sentencing,
jonas starts quoting carroll about the knight sliding up the poker or
something. I mention it in the Cat short story writeup as well i think ...
even alluding to the cat as something like the chesire variety.  The
mirrors of inire attain a quality like the looking glass in that scene as
well, i think. Clearly jonas has read lewis carroll.
On Jan 26, 2015 4:23 PM, "Michael Thayer" <michael.o.thayer at gmail.com>
wrote:

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From: Jeffery Wilson clueland.com <jwilson at clueland.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 05:02:37 +0000

On 1/26/2015 7:45 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:
> something. I mention it in the Cat short story writeup as well i think
> ... even alluding to the cat as something like the chesire variety.  The
> mirrors of inire attain a quality like the looking glass in that scene
> as well, i think. Clearly jonas has read lewis carroll.

	"I used to read, aboard ship. Once I read a history. I don't suppose 
you know anything about it. So many chiliads have elapsed here."
	I said, "I suppose not."
	"So different from this, but so much like it too. Queer little customs 
and usages . . . some that weren't so little. Strange institutions. I 
asked the ship and she gave me another book."
	He was still perspiring, and I thought his mind was wandering. I used 
the square of flannel I carried to wipe my sword blade to dry his forehead.
	"Hereditary rulers and hereditary subordinates, and all sorts of 
strange officials. Lancers with long, white mustaches." For an instant 
the ghost of his old humorous smile appeared. "The White Knight is 
sliding down the poker. He balances very badly, as the King's notebook 
told him."

-- 
Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >
A&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab
< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >