Subject: (whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n104

From: David Langford <ansible at cix.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 20:42:00 +0000

Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net> exfoliated:

> 1) On p. 126 Horn refers to the burials alive of inhumi practiced in
> Gaon as "inhumations."  I don't know whether this is an actual word
> meaning "burials alive" or a coinage by Wolfe on analogy with
> "exhumation."  Either way it's a pun, if a grim one.

Inhumations, and the transitive verb "to inhume", are part of the 
professional jargon of Terry Pratchett's Discworld guild of assassins.  
Hey, maybe Gene Wolfe's a Pratchett fan! Certainly John Clute has 
suggested that Pratchett is a Wolfe fan, on the basis of parallels between 
=Small Gods= and =The Book of the New Sun=....

Dave

David Langford
ansible at cix.co.uk | http://www.ansible.co.uk/

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---

From: Sheila Herndon <skherndon at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 09:16:18 +0000

--- whorl-errors at lists.best.com wrote:
> > Severian's *Book of Gold*, to a *Book of Silk*,
> and 
> > now a *Book of Horn*.  Likewise, our protagonists 

Oh, a new tangentical thought on materials- true
dreams come through the gates of ivory, and false
dreams comes through the gates of horn - 
someone correct this if I am wrong, as I do not
know the source of this folklore and have only
read from secondary sources, a Seamus Heaney
poem, and a comic book.

so anyway, wonder if Wolfe meant to allude to the
Gates of Horn when naming Horn (if it is the case
that the allusion is to some old folklore).

sh

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---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 12:47:50 +0000

Hmmm...  This is definitely a possible source of Horn's name, except
that the symbolism is the reverse of (ivory true, horn false).
To wit (from Fitzgerald's Aeneid translation):

"There are two gates of Sleep, one said to be 
Of horn, whereby the true shades pass with ease, 
The other all white ivory agleam 
Without a flaw, and yet false dreams are sent 
By this one through the ghosts of the upper world."

So if this is intentional, it's an allusional argument for
Horn's veracity as a narrator.  Or, at least, for his veracity
in the sense of prophecy and access to the underlying truth of
events (which is usually what is assigned to dream-truth).

"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

---

From: Timothy Reilly <treilly at ozemail.com.au>
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2000 05:47:35 +0000

Adam Stephanides wrote:
> There is very little humor in OBW (a trait it shares with most of
> Wolfe's books), but a while ago Kieran Cleary posted one humorous bit.
> Here are two more
<snip>
I always thought Horn's speculations on how the inhumi get from Green to
Blue (and to the Whorl) at pp 180-183 was intended humorously (not by Horn,
but by the reader seeing he's thinking himself into knots).  Certainly it's
hard to take some of the logic seriously, and it includes the elementary
error "[l]ight objects fall much more slowly than heavy ones" at p 181.  But
now I'm less sure - since this is not talking about a vacuum (the context is
dealing with re-entry heat) maybe it makes sense.  And Horn's conjecture
that the inhumi simply hold their breath in travelling the (still very
lengthy) distance between Green and Blue at conjunction is supported by
their survival when buried.

As for Wolfe's humor in other books, I actually thought there was too much
humour in TUNS, one of the reasons I'm ambivalent about it.  It seems to me
to detract from the grandeur of the preceding volumes to have Valeria
cracking puns about waves of gravity/dignity before she died and Tzadkiel
(right name? off the top of my head) fluttering about like Tinkerbell at the
Brooke Madregot.  And the Patera Incus character for one just seems to have
been put in TBLS largely for light relief; the same might be said to a
lesser extent of Master Xiphias, Oreb and Tick.  (Again I didn't like this,
but then I didn't like lots of things about TBLS).  I personally don't think
Wolfe's attempts at humour in general are very successful - puns seem to be
the order of the day!

On another subject, I notice on rereading OBW that Horn's first experience
of enhanced perception seems to occur shortly after he gets out of the pit:
from "that time forward" he sees things "as a good painter must" (p 228).
Soon after - apologising to Seawrack after raping her - "[f]or an instant
(only an instant) I had heard Silk's voice issuing from my own mouth.  I
tried to prolong it but could not" (p 247).  So seems likely, as has already
been suggested, that he has had some sort of download from Silk (or
"Pasilk"?) while in the pit - probably thereby resurrected as he does appear
to have died.

Tim