time's arrow

William H. Ansley · 05 Sep 1998, 00:31 · from urth-v0018.mbox · original

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From: "William H. Ansley" <wansley at warwick.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) time's arrow
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 00:31:52
Message-ID: <urth-v0018-0111 at digest.urth.net>
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Rostrum (Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>) wrote:

>ObWolfe: Someone mentioned "In Looking Glass Castle" as a story featuring
>a backwards-living character, but I don't see that at all.  That's the one
>featuring the world where there are no men and the scientist with a man
>hiding in her house, isn't it?  What am I missing?

(To the tune of "Little Orphan Annie".)

Who could it be
but Robert Borski!

Who said:

>As for Gene Wolfe, "In Looking Glass Castle" is a shorter work of his where
>a character lives life backwards and thus remembers the future--clearly
>modeled here on Lewis Carroll's White Queen, who does the same. In this
>case, however, it's Daisy McKane, who, although she's naturally confused,
>remembers her own drowning.

I am with Rostrum on this one. I don't see how Robert can get "experiencing
time backwards" out of this story. But then again, I haven't understood how
Robert came up with many of his interpretations of other Wolfe stories,
either.

While I will bow to no one in my admiration for Lewis Carroll, as I have
demonstrated elsewhere on this list <g>, his White Queen is a pretty feeble
model for living backwards in time. The scene where she screams and bleeds
*before* pricking her finger is the only real example of this in _Through
the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There_. Perhaps that is why I
haven't noticed the backwards aspect of "In Looking Glass Castle".

William Ansley

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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