PEACE: Gift Exchange

Roy C. Lackey · 23 Apr 2008, 18:24 · from 2008-April.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:24:43 -0500
Subject: (urth) PEACE: Gift Exchange
Message-ID: <001401c8a56f$509a46e0$8cd24a0c at rclackey.stic.net>

Dave Tallman wrote:
>I started thinking about the Christmas gift exchange (pearls for toilet
>water) in the first chapter, and what it reveals about Weer's family.
>
>I don't believe Mr. Elliot did it. Not that he didn't sleep with Mab that
>night; Roy Lackey proved he that did in this post:
>http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0210/1901.txt.shtml. But "Old
>men... do not make such gifts."

Wolfe was in his early forties when he wrote that, so he wasn't speaking
from personal experience. My experience is just the opposite. Older people
tend to be less constrained by social conventions with each passing year,
less likely to give a damn what others think. Unless Wolfe screwed up
regarding the layout of the house when he wrote that Christmas episode, then
the "old man" (huh!) was already thumbing his nose at propriety on Christmas
morning by conspicuously having spent the night upstairs.

Note also that he had already been upstairs the night before when Den came
down to see the tree. He told Den that he had "just come down myself". (p.
23, Berkley pb) Apparently he was upstairs both before and after Den saw him
that night. At dinner earlier that evening he had been pissed at Mab for her
pretence that she was anything but an employee. If a six-year-old child was
perceptive enough to pick up on that, so was his mother. The old man's
switching of the gifts forced an end to the charade. Mab's reaction was
embarrassment that the "Bible Christian" (p. 20) conventions she affected in
polite company could no longer be maintained.

Della had nothing to gain by switching the gifts but petty spite on a woman
she had never even met before; Elliot maintained a bed warmer.

-Roy

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