The Guild's Revolutionary

James Wynn · 23 Nov 2009, 14:00 · from 2009-November.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:00:57 -0600
Subject: (urth) The Guild's Revolutionary
In-Reply-To: <84D73864-A63A-4CC8-AD9F-CF9C7B400D25 at io.com>
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	<84D73864-A63A-4CC8-AD9F-CF9C7B400D25 at io.com>
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>For instance, I was all aboard the "Nessus is Buenos Aires" train when
>I read _BotNS_ first at 13 or 14, because I was also in the throes of a
>Borges phase and Master Ultan was obviously, clearly, no question
>about it, Borges.  Same with "Baldanders."
>Later I found out this might be controversial.

I've always thought the Borges=Ultan theory was tenuous. Not impossible, 
just not much supporting it beyond Utlan's blindness. Borges is a great 
writer, but other than "The Book of Imaginary Beings" which cites the 
Baldanders, I haven't noted much influence from him. Of course, that might 
be due to a deficiency in my Borges knowledge.

>I strongly suspect if we actually put everything together that each
>reader had always said "Well, DUH, I didn't mention it because I
>thought everyone knew it already," then we'd actually discover a lot of 
>stuff.

Okay. While Wolfe might well have been introduced to the monster 
"Baldanders" by Borges, it comes from the Renaissance fantasy story 
"Simplicius Simplicissimus".<looks over at it sitting on his shelf right> 
According to the story, the name means "first one thing and then another" 
because, like the wizard Taleisan, it is always changing into other things. 
Although I can think of several reasons why Wolfe might have been attracted 
to a "successive monster", as Borges calls it, I have no idea how this 
relates to Wolfe's Frankenstein.

J.

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