{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/722", "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": 722, "subject": "5HC: This 'n' that", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "1998-06-02T17:17:21+00:00", "last": "1998-06-02T17:17:21+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "adam louis stephanides", "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu" }, "date": "1998-06-02T17:17:21+00:00", "subject": "(urth) 5HC: This 'n' that", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "mantis writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think Robert Borski is probably on to something, in the way that\nthe two texts relate to each other beyond the handwriting issue.\nThis might be the \"next level\" of meaning and is probably beyond the\nofficer's awareness." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh, I agree. I didn't mean to imply that I thought Robert Borski was\nwrong about the symbolism of the shrike.\n\nIncidentally, I apologize in advance if anything I write duplicates CAVE\nCANEM. I haven't read it yet, only because I don't know how to decipher\ntexts in doc format and I don't have time at the moment to learn." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Next, I'm not sure in my mind exactly how V.R.T. killed Marsch, or on\nwhat day it happened." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You make an interesting argument for the murder taking place on April 12,\nbut I still have to go with the \"easy answer\" of sometime after April 21..\nYour argument depends upon V.R.T. using the heavy rifle from\na distance. But I doubt this, for the reasons Robert Borski gives; and\nalso, why would V.R.T. insist on killing Marsch in this way when he could\nkill him up close when he's sleeping virtually any time, as you yourself\nstate later?\n\nAnd then there are the changes in handwriting and tone of \"Marsch's\"\nentries after April 21, which I still prefer the obvious explanation for.\n \nWhy, then, as you ask in a later post, does Wolfe bring up the numbers in\nthe back of the book? They're what first lead the authorities to suspect\n\"Marsch\" is a spy. That V.R.T. is carrying them around is his bad luck,\njust as it's his bad luck that he's a patron of Cave Canem and is there\nthe night the Maitre is murdered, making himself a suspect." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Okay, so we assume the April 21 entries are the last of Marsch. He\nwas killed sometime after that. But the last part of that entry, the\npart about V.R.T. being uncircumsised and that he will kill them,\nseems so bizarre and unlike Marsch (and so much like the fantasies of\nV.R.T. to come later in the journal) that it makes me wonder." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think Robert Borski's explanation for this is sound." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Can I say now that the \"new prisoner\" being brought in (p. 251), the\nfat middle-aged guy, is the bewildered sf author G.R.W." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But surely we're the ones who are bewildered, not Wolfe. I know I am,\nanyway." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam was asking about \"A Story.\" We read it first as the\nanthropological fiction \"reconstruction of a lost world\" it purports\nto be, then we learn that it is the fantasy of a criminal in solitary\nconfinement and questionable sanity. And dubious anthropology." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think it's still a \"reconstruction of a lost world\" as well; V.R.T. is\ngenuinely interested in anthropological questions. And while V.R.T.'s\ncredentials may be dubious, his portrayal of the marshmen is very close\nto David's description of the aborigines' way of life in Mr. Million's\nlesson (except that in \"A Story\" it's the Free People and not the marshmen\nwho mate with trees, IIRC).\n\nRobert Borski writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why does VRT kill the abo catgirl? Well, for starters, he's extremely\npsychosexually-disturbed, having not only a mother who was a prostitute,\nbut he also initially thought she abandoned him because she saw him\nsexually trysting with a girl. In other words Sigmund Freud could have made\nhim his life's work, and Tony Hopkins would have been the ideal actor to\nportray him. We also see further evidence of VRT's maladjustment in his\nconsorting with whores at Roncevaux and the Maison du Chien. Likewise at\nMde. Duclose's boarding house when he tells us Celestine Etienne does not\nappear to be masturbating with her candle tonight--later admitting he\ndoesn't \"even know this young lady.\" That he eventually becomes racked with\nguilt and/or disgust and/or Oedipal angst and kills the girl does not\nsurprise me in the least." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm still not persuaded, though I don't want to belabor the point.\nUpbringings like V.R.T.'s don't necessarily produce murderers outside of\nHitchcock movies. It's not uncommon for young single men to \"consort with\nwhores,\" and such consorting seems also to be accepted in Port-Mimizon.\nHis remark about Mlle. Etienne might reflect the influence of his time at\nCave Canem." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But the reason I'd like to advance is sexually-charged. Dr. Marsch, I\nposit, is a homosexual." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think you've made a breakthrough here." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "world to know Dr. Marsch is dead. He also does not dwell on the matter in\nprison because he himself hating women is tottering psychologically close\nto latent homosexuality, but is totally in denial." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "OTOH, this I'm not convinced of. How would V.R.T. know, even\nunconsciously, that the instrument he bought is used for circumcisions?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The horizontal configuration includes the current batch of Wolfes, the one\nAunt Jeannine can't quite total to five (because she's unaware of who\nNumber Five's sister is).\n\n1. Maitre\n2. Aunt Jeannine\n3. Number Five\n4. David\n5. Phaedria" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Jeannine includes Mr. Million, just like you do, so that would make\nPhaedria Number 6 if she really is Number Five's sister. (And why is\nJeannine unaware of David's existence until Number Five tells her? I\ndon't recall any evidence that he was kept a secret.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "To Adam Louis Stephanides (who is probably still squirmish about the notion\nof aliens doing it with humans, Stephen Spielberg's wet-dreams\nnotwithstanding):\n\nYou forgot one reason in your otherwise cogent summing up of the abo-human\nhybridization problem:\n\nAs mantis now has me convinced, VRT, the alleged human father of RT, may\nnot be human.\n\nStay tuned..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You can't leave us hanging like this! Tell us more!\n\nBut I also forgot the most obvious reason: that Veil's Hypothesis is true,\nand that R.T. is indeed non-human along with everybody else except the\nWolfes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Robert Borski (who's still dubious about Superman boinking Lois lane)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I presume you've read Larry Niven's \"Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.\"\n\n--Adam" } ] } ] }