Subject: (whorl) more grist for the "enhanced Horn hypothesis"

From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 07:42:35 +0000

Last night I was re-reading the passage in OBW where Horn visits
Marble and Mucor.  Maytera Marble alludes to Hammerstone's deep
fondness for Patera Incus, which as I recall, was a small
"improvement" that Incus made, he being of the "hacker priest" class.
A paragraph or two later, Horn laments the fact that the BOOK OF SILK
doesn't convey just how great Silk really was.  Hmmm!  This may be a
red herring, but given its textual proximity to Marble's observation
and the fact that we have ample evdience of how human "software" can
be re-jiggered by the will of the gods, it wouldn't surprise me to
discover that Horn's perception of Silk has been enhanced.

Given the Wolfean "unreliable narrator," it makes you start to wonder
if the Silk of the BOOK OF SILK is something of an exaggeration, which
would certainly fit in with the Christ parallels.  Silk is portrayed
as a kind of Father Brown, but perhaps in "real life" he was more of a
Father Ted.

Another random observation: "Passilk" immediately made me think of
"Tashlan" from C.S. Lewis' THE LAST BATTLE.

Lex

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From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 12:10:32 +0000

>as a kind of Father Brown, but perhaps in "real life" he was more of a

I'm a bit confused here--fits in with the Christ parallels in that Silk
couldn't possibly be that Christ-like, or fits in that the _gospels_ are
exaggerations?  I would think the first would be a more likely approach for
Wolfe than the second, but even then, there's Silk's Englightenment (which 
works two ways--(A) it might make Silk better than he would be and (B) maybe
he got Enlightened because he had a tendency to be a Very Good person anyway).
Also going against the exaggeration theory is that other people who knew
Silk very well (Marble, Mucor, etc.) seem to have seen him as an
extraordinarily good man.

I think a telling note in LONG SUN is that Horn is generally noticed much more
than Nettle--is Nettle even listed as "Author of the BOOK OF SILK" in the 
Persons, Places & Things section in Exodus?  It seems her role is secondary in
the actual composition--scribe and organizer (given OBW, there is no telling
what order Horn might have put things in...)

Horn does mimic Silk beautifully long before any possibility of possession or 
anything, so as usual in LONG SUN, any possession is well in keeping with his
original tendencies.

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce

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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:33:31 +0000

>>as a kind of Father Brown, but perhaps in "real life" he was more of a

	Well, he's Brown in the first book, not much in the latter three.

>he got Enlightened because he had a tendency to be a Very Good person
anyway).

	Some kind of "divine election" is involved in his whole life, as well as
the "scientific predestination" that resulted in his "virgin birth." I'm
not sure how Horn as narrator could construe the whole flow of events to
make them more gospellike than they in fact are. We certainly cannot assume
that Horn had access to Luke, Acts, and the book of Revelation to use as
templates. That would seem to be the doing of the Outsider and, behind him,
Wolfe.

>extraordinarily good man.

	One would like to know more about his mother, who, given Wolfe's beliefs,
would have to be a kind of virtuous Mary-figure.

>anything, so as usual in LONG SUN, any possession is well in keeping with his

	Certainly the "imitator all along" business runs against any "special
enhancement" view, and perhaps accounts for everything. Horn's ignorance
might account for the seemingly truncated character of some sequences in
the narrative. On the other hand, he seems to know a lot of things that
it's hard to see how he could have learned -- not just details, but whole
event-sequences.

Nutria

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 08:06:49 +0000

On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Jim Jordan wrote:

> We certainly cannot assume

Or vice versa.  

-Rostrum