Subject: (whorl) Silk Insane?

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 22:38:22 +0000

Rereading OBW, I was trying to make sense of the Rajan's musings that Silk
might be on Blue somewhere, or have died or Green.  Could Horn be that
deluded even after the confrontation with Mint?  Might this outward search
for Silk be a sort of subconscious goad to Silk's persona--if Horn calls
out "Silk? Silk?" enough times, he might eventually pop up and say "Here I
am!"?  The Rajan writes: "Searching does not neccessarily imply movement"
(p. 18).

But then I read this comment after the Rajan has made reference to slavery
in New Viron: "On Green I met a man who could not see the inhumi.  They
were there, but his mind would not accept them...In just the same way, my
own interior sight refuses to focus upon matters I find agonizing.  In
Ermine's I dreamed that I had killed Silk..." (p. 74).

I can accept that such a person as he describes, unable to see inhumi,
could exist, but I would not consider him sane.  If the Silk(Horn?) is
unable to accept who he is "in just the same way" then he is insane and I
think my attempt to find a coherent explanation of what Horn and/or Silk
knows about himself is futile.

The problem is, the Narrator doesn't otherwise seem insane.  I guess Horn
is a sufficient crutch until Silk's mind can heal.  The bigger problem I
have is accepting that Silk could be driven insane by Hyacinth's death.  I
guess that Horn (and we readers of The Book of Silk) never knew how
screwed up Silk really was.  

(Maybe his brain was somehow adversely affected by the upload to
Mainframe?  Making him too-dependent on (Kypris-posessed?) Hyacinth?)

(And if the Urbasecundus copy of Starcrosser's Landfall were being
made today, don't you think 'Mainframe' would be translated 'Network'
instead?  I guess were lucky it wasn't rendered 'MultivAC.')

-Rostrum

*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.
*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.moonmilk.com/whorl/
*To leave the list, send "unsubscribe" to whorl-request at lists.best.com
*If it's Wolfe but not Long Sun, please use the URTH list: urth at lists.best.com