Subject: (whorl) cant, etc.

From: Joshua A. Solomon <j.solomon at ucl.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 16:38:40 +0000

[Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Been lurking awhile. Have read most Wolfe thanks to
rave review of SHADOW in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.
LONG SUN certainly is full of puzzles/half-baked ideas.
Ever since I tried--unsuccessfully--to work out the "timeline"
for FREE LIVE FREE, I've been reluctant to work hard at unravelling
Wolfe's more obscure plotknots. 
	At first I was disappointed with LONG SUN because it seemed that
the writing wasn't anywhere near as tight as the writing in, say, 
NEW SUN (the original tetralogy). After lurking here I now realize
that these puzzles are what makes LONG SUN worth reading.
A few miscellaneous items:
Palatine (it's not hilly) is an affluent (moreso than
Barrington, anyway) northwest Chicago suburb.
(Charlie) Trotters is a trendy Chicago restaurant.
And from James Joyce's Ulysses (Penguin page 59): "Bus her, wap
in rogue's rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping dell."
Unless I find more cant in Ulysses, I probably wont post more soon
because I've just started it. It's 933 pages. Maybe I'll reread
LONG SUN after that.

bee

Questions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com

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From: Derek Bell <dbell at maths.tcd.ie>
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 20:07:45 +0000

>that these puzzles are what makes LONG SUN worth reading.

	Yes, there is subtlety in _Long_Sun_, though probably of a
different kind to the _New_Sun_. I also loved the cant - Wolfe's a
flash cull!

>Barrington, anyway) northwest Chicago suburb.

	Wolfe's made a few puns on place names, especially Palatine -
in _Pandora_by_Holly_Hollander_, the neighbourhood of Barton
(Barrington) is on the far side of Palestine (Palatine) from Chicago
- though, as Holly said in that book it isn't where you expect it. (I
checked a map of Illinois and saw there was a Palestine - in the south
of the state!)

	Speaking of that book, the ex-investigator Aladdin Blue has a
wound that a lot of Wolfe's heros have - a leg wound. Silk of course
has a break in his leg, Severian says some call him "Severian the
lame" - that seems to be all I can think of. Latro has a wound, but in
the head. Most of the characters I named in this paragraph had swords:
Silk had the azoth, Severian had Terminus Est and Latro had Falcata.
(Alladin Blue doesn't count, unless he had a swordstick!) Someone on
rec.arts.sf-written once compared Silk and Severian to Moorcock's
Eternal Champion.

	Derek

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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 17:59:25 +0000

At 08:07 PM 2/21/97 +0000, you wrote:
>the head. 

	See also "The Hero as Werewolf."
	I asked Gene about the foot wound and possible connection to Genesis 3. He
said he had not thought of it in connection with "Werewolf," but I did not
ask about Severian (and this was before Silk). I think Silk's foot wound is
clearly from Genesis 3; Severian's likely is. I don't think Latro's head
wound identifies him with Satan/serpent, though, because it does not fit at
all. Also, Gene had hoped to take Latro to Palestine and to the New World
before it is all over. I'd love to see what Wolfe would do with Latro
visiting Jerusalem!

JBJordan