"Tracking Song" and other stories

Matthew Groves · 06 Jun 2007, 22:33 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: matthewalangroves at gmail.com (Matthew Groves)
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 17:33:36 -0500
Subject: (urth) "Tracking Song" and other stories
Message-ID: <39ed084f0706061533p5d1e4c8ak5b6978121ca55f17 at mail.gmail.com>

Joshua writes:
"Caves also pop up in Fifth Head. My memory of Fifth Head has degraded
somewhat, but I think that the mythological abo (Sandwalker?) made a
pilgrimage to one in "A Story." This cave is a thematical doppleganger of
Aunt Jeanine's basement room in the first novella."
And Transentient adds:
"Wolfe often has his characters grope around in complete darkness.
"A significant portion of one of the books in Long Sun is spent by a motley
assortment of characters wandering around in completely lightless caves. One
of them naked the entire time."

Yes, I should have noted both those occurrences, as well as Horn's cleaning
the sewers on Green, and probably many others.

Toward a list of criteria of the underworld type-scene:
- There is a cave, underground tunnel, labyrinth, and/or undercity;
- The theme of blindness (or at least groping in darkness) is often present;
- There are always small-man, half-man, or man-animal residents in the
underworld;
- The protagonist is often trespassing there;
- The protagonist is initially harrowed by the denizens of the underworld.
He is always explicitly or symbolically on trial, and/or he achieves a sort
of d?tente with its denizens, winning them over to his side.

There are more common threads, I'm sure.

Dan'l writes:
"Yes, there are quite a few running images and themes in GW's work [...]
"One I push at that nobody else seems to see or agree with: the embedding of
non-Christian cosmologies into a larger Christian cosmology, which itself is
frequently ambiguous."

Well, I don't know on what basis others may disagree, but for what it's
worth this seems to me like a central project of Wolfe's. (I say this as an
atheist and a Wolfe fan-boy.)
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