Yesterday I relayed the gist of the list's reactions
to the "Clute Revelation" to Clute himself (if in so
doing I misrepresented anyone's viewpoint, I
apologise). Below is what Clute has since written to
me, including his remarks on the points the list has
raised.
141 quoted lines · 1–2 deep
--- John Clute wrote:
Dear Nick,
Interesting responses, which sort of run the
gamut of what I think
about the notion, or intuition--rather than
thought-through
hypothesis--that Horn/Silk may be an inhumu; or
that, perhaps more
cogently, that Gene Wolfe is allowing us to consider
the possibility at
this stage of the enterprise.
As I'm sure you know, the third volume is
due out soon; and as I'm
sure you know, Wolfe--unlike his procedure with
Long Sun --apparently
wrote the whole text before any of it was published:
so I do live in the
expectation that nothing here is inadvertent, and
that everything
discovered will, as with New Sun enrich the whole.
Comments follow.
1) One member agrees with you, and is cross you
expressed the idea before he could.
---Sorry about that. To make it worse, you
might note that I
mentioned the inhumu notion very briefly in my
earlier review of the first
volume, also in SFW .
2) Several others are thoughtful, saying they need
time to reflect.
---Me too.
3) A feminist feels you're engaging in the
reactionary
error of assuming that because someone sympathises
with the enemy he must be one of them; in her
view,
Horn is demonstrating the great human virtue of
interspecies empathy, not betraying an alien
identity.
---A bit confused by this, as there are
several floating
assumptions in here. Unless you were just
identifying one of the list as a
feminist so I could sort folk out, it doesn't quite
seem to me that the
issue before us is a feminist issue. But would be
glad to get a
different take. It may be reactionary to assume that
if you're not with us
you're with them, but the application of the
principle here presupposes
the inhumi as enemy, a notion I'm very leary of at
this stage. I would go
so far as to suggest that Horn/Silk (whoever they
are) is more concerned
with family than species; and that the book is
expanding, as are
Horn/Silk's Assumptions of different forms, through
an expansion of the
idea of family.
4) Most criticism of your hypothesis rests on
textual
details: if Horn is an inhumu, why doesn't Oreb
perceive this? If Horn is an inhumu, how can he
write
his text with such facility, whereas inhumi in
general
can hardly write at all? When is the transition
from
human to inhumu supposed to have occurred? If Horn
is
capable of shapeshifting, why doesn't he do away
with
his injuries such as his missing eye? And so it
goes.
---All good points, it strikes me (see
comment after next
paragraph). The question here about when he might
have changed is the
question I asked: when did he begin to find it
difficult to eat human
food? Chronology is so complex in the text that I
could not begin to give
an answer to this on the basis of one reading--or,
for that matter, work
it out to my satisfaction that this is an irrelevant
track to follow.
Basically, the Whorl list has been agreeing for
the
last nine months that Horn is the (human) redeemer
of
the humans of the three whorls, and that "the
secret
of the inhumi", which Horn is sworn to protect,
relates somehow to that redemption: if humans
achieve
goodness in themselves, the inhumi preying on them
will imbibe and emulate that goodness.
---I'd be very disappointed if this were the
case: by which I mean
I'd be disappointed if this were the "secret of the
inhumi" which
we have as far as I know not yet been told--because
1) although the idea
seems transparently and conspicuously true 2) WE
ALREADY KNOW IT.
In Green's Jungles (I haven't chapter and verse
here) seems to make it
extremely clear that inhumi take on the
characteristics of those they
change into (as it were) as part of the process of
feeding on them.
The idea that the achievement of human
goodness (which would
similarly transform the inhumi) seems to me, though
very likely to be the
case, not to be an inhumi secret at all.
My intuition about Horn/Silk is inchoate
and absolutely not
defended by me unto death, unlike the way I got
addicted, nearly 20 years
ago now, to the idea that Severian's mother was in
fact the Autarch. (It
took a long time to lose the sweet-tooth of that
particular notion.)
My intuition is based on a sense that
somehow or other Horn/Silk's
nature-as-inhumu (if it is confirmed to be a fair
take) is intrinsicate
with his relationship to the Neighbors, or
whoever/whatever represents
them to him, inhumi (those inhumi who took on
Neighborly nature) or ghost
or aquastors in the Corridors of Time or what. And
that Horn/Silk as
inhumu as Neighbor might well "fool" Oreb, etc, etc.
Best,
John