The Sorcerer's House Questions (Major Spoilers)

Thomas Bitterman · 30 Mar 2010, 00:12 · from 2010-March.txt.gz

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From: tom at bitterman.net (Thomas Bitterman)
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:12:13 -0400
Subject: (urth) The Sorcerer's House Questions (*Major Spoilers*)
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Message-ID: <e11bddb61003291712pb9800a9kc3c6070c27c121a8 at mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 5:19 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 5:01 PM, Thomas Bitterman <tom at bitterman.net>
> wrote:
>
> > Nothing else fits the notes.
> > - if Wolfe is the Compiler, why would he have to pay one of his own
> >   characters for some letters?  why/how would he search out the sword
> >   and perform other in-world actions?
> > - if it is some other, unknown, in-world character, how did they hear
> about
> >   this obscure, small-town missing-persons case?  how did they know the
> >   letters were out of order?  how did they get letters sent to Doris,
> whom
> >   they never spoke to?  or the letters from George to Bax, both dead?
>
> None of these are insurmountable, and all are far more likely than the
> framestory in TBOTNS. (Oh, in the incredible vastness of space, the
> translator found a tiny object floating around from a previous
> universe? Whatever.)
>

Given the universe of the New Sun the framestory is not the most far-fetched
thing that happened.  Explanations should fit within the universe of the
work,
or at least within the same realism-ballpark.

> There's somebody interested in anything. The long tail. Maybe the
> compiler is a historian from that town. Maybe they are a relative.
> Maybe they are a researcher who heard about the Hound of Horror and
> investigated. (Remember the backfiles bristling comment; that's the
> comment of someone who has went into the stacks.) There are millions
> of books published each year; they can't *all* be about major
> interesting topics. And the letters are intrinsically interesting.
> (Look at us!)
>

Most books are written to turn a profit, or are at least published to do so.
Small-town missing-persons stories generally don't.  So that leaves a
local historian or a relative.  One might expect a historian to be a little
more curious about things like dates, title transfers, police records and
the like.  None of the major characters are exactly crawling with relatives.
Bax is at least as likely.

It just occurred to me that his next-door neighbor is named Mrs. Naber.
The whole book is littered with clumsy lies and inconsistencies.

How did they know the letters were out of order? Do you have some
> reason to distrust the given explanation?
>

The explanation is "half the dates he provided were clearly incorrect".  So
yeah.  How would the Compiler know that?

> How do you know the compiler never spoke to Doris? He doesn't mention
> her. Not all thanks are exhaustive.
>

No, but they do tend to include the most important sources.  Doris wrote
or is the subject of more letters than Mrs. Pogach, who is thanked.  I may
be wrong; it may be that Doris is just mentioned a lot but not written to
much.  Still an omission from such a small list bears examination.

> Why couldn't Millie (whom the compiler thanks first and foremost for
> access to letters, including letters belonging to George) have
> George's letters? If 'George' inherited the mansion, then he also
> inherits those letters, which would have been left in the mansion. Why
> would 'George' have kept them? Trophies, or just scholarly ratpacking.
>

In other words, no good reason if 'George' is not Bax.  Who keeps letters
where their wife hits on their brother?  This is a good reason to believe
that Bax killed George.  If 'George' is Bax, then Millie would have all the
letters sent to Bax (and, we can assume, she kept the ones sent to
the original George).  I can buy that.  It is a little weird that she would
keep
the mash notes from his girlfriends, but ok.

None of these answers are particularly odd, none throw any particular
> light on anything (and so Wolfe can't be expected to have supplied
> them), and importantly, don't force us to doubt each and everything we
> are told. Total skepticism is not a good exegetical starting point
> with fiction.
>

There is no need for total skepticism.  Just follow the rule: Anything
having to
do with Faerie is made up.  Bax is using Faerie-stories to either mess with
Millie, or provide and explanation for something he'd really rather not
explain,
or both.  The real-world events: Bax being in Medicine Man, killing George,
paying Mrs. Pogach, and so on, really happened.  Or more or less did - the
Compiler says he changed names in some instances, so maybe those things
happened to people whose names we don't know.

> --
> gwern
>
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