{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/820", "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": "whorl", "thread": { "id": 820, "subject": "Digest whorl.v010.n104", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "2000-04-13T20:42:00+00:00", "last": "2000-04-16T05:47:35+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Langford", "address": "ansible at cix.co.uk" }, "date": "2000-04-13T20:42:00+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n104", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Adam Stephanides exfoliated:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "1) On p. 126 Horn refers to the burials alive of inhumi practiced in\nGaon as \"inhumations.\" I don't know whether this is an actual word\nmeaning \"burials alive\" or a coinage by Wolfe on analogy with\n\"exhumation.\" Either way it's a pun, if a grim one." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Inhumations, and the transitive verb \"to inhume\", are part of the \nprofessional jargon of Terry Pratchett's Discworld guild of assassins. \nHey, maybe Gene Wolfe's a Pratchett fan! Certainly John Clute has \nsuggested that Pratchett is a Wolfe fan, on the basis of parallels between \n=Small Gods= and =The Book of the New Sun=....\n\nDave\n\nDavid Langford\nansible at cix.co.uk | http://www.ansible.co.uk/\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Sheila Herndon", "address": "skherndon at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2000-04-14T09:16:18+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n104", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "--- whorl-errors at lists.best.com wrote:\nSeverian's *Book of Gold*, to a *Book of Silk*,\nand \nnow a *Book of Horn*. Likewise, our protagonists " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh, a new tangentical thought on materials- true\ndreams come through the gates of ivory, and false\ndreams comes through the gates of horn - \nsomeone correct this if I am wrong, as I do not\nknow the source of this folklore and have only\nread from secondary sources, a Seamus Heaney\npoem, and a comic book.\n\nso anyway, wonder if Wolfe meant to allude to the\nGates of Horn when naming Horn (if it is the case\nthat the allusion is to some old folklore).\n\nsh" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "2000-04-14T12:47:50+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n104", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hmmm... This is definitely a possible source of Horn's name, except\nthat the symbolism is the reverse of (ivory true, horn false).\nTo wit (from Fitzgerald's Aeneid translation):\n\n\"There are two gates of Sleep, one said to be \nOf horn, whereby the true shades pass with ease, \nThe other all white ivory agleam \nWithout a flaw, and yet false dreams are sent \nBy this one through the ghosts of the upper world.\"\n\n\nSo if this is intentional, it's an allusional argument for\nHorn's veracity as a narrator. Or, at least, for his veracity\nin the sense of prophecy and access to the underlying truth of\nevents (which is usually what is assigned to dream-truth).\n\n\n\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Timothy Reilly", "address": "treilly at ozemail.com.au" }, "date": "2000-04-16T05:47:35+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n104", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam Stephanides wrote:\nThere is very little humor in OBW (a trait it shares with most of\nWolfe's books), but a while ago Kieran Cleary posted one humorous bit.\nHere are two more" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\nI always thought Horn's speculations on how the inhumi get from Green to\nBlue (and to the Whorl) at pp 180-183 was intended humorously (not by Horn,\nbut by the reader seeing he's thinking himself into knots). Certainly it's\nhard to take some of the logic seriously, and it includes the elementary\nerror \"[l]ight objects fall much more slowly than heavy ones\" at p 181. But\nnow I'm less sure - since this is not talking about a vacuum (the context is\ndealing with re-entry heat) maybe it makes sense. And Horn's conjecture\nthat the inhumi simply hold their breath in travelling the (still very\nlengthy) distance between Green and Blue at conjunction is supported by\ntheir survival when buried.\n\nAs for Wolfe's humor in other books, I actually thought there was too much\nhumour in TUNS, one of the reasons I'm ambivalent about it. It seems to me\nto detract from the grandeur of the preceding volumes to have Valeria\ncracking puns about waves of gravity/dignity before she died and Tzadkiel\n(right name? off the top of my head) fluttering about like Tinkerbell at the\nBrooke Madregot. And the Patera Incus character for one just seems to have\nbeen put in TBLS largely for light relief; the same might be said to a\nlesser extent of Master Xiphias, Oreb and Tick. (Again I didn't like this,\nbut then I didn't like lots of things about TBLS). I personally don't think\nWolfe's attempts at humour in general are very successful - puns seem to be\nthe order of the day!\n\nOn another subject, I notice on rereading OBW that Horn's first experience\nof enhanced perception seems to occur shortly after he gets out of the pit:\nfrom \"that time forward\" he sees things \"as a good painter must\" (p 228).\nSoon after - apologising to Seawrack after raping her - \"[f]or an instant\n(only an instant) I had heard Silk's voice issuing from my own mouth. I\ntried to prolong it but could not\" (p 247). So seems likely, as has already\nbeen suggested, that he has had some sort of download from Silk (or\n\"Pasilk\"?) while in the pit - probably thereby resurrected as he does appear\nto have died.\n\nTim\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }