Kiki

Craig Brewer · 20 Apr 2010, 14:30 · from 2010-April.txt.gz

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From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:30:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Kiki
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The OED says that "cart" was also often used for "carriage," so it could just be Wolfe using older vocab.

I'm more interested in Kiki's role in the narrative. I mean, is she just there for "we're now in faerie" flavor, or does she have some other identity we don't really know. The character list says that she was befriended by Doris and Bax, but does giving her a ride really go so far as making friends? Since Martha mentions witches and sorcerers fighting witches, I like the possibility that she's a witch, but then I wonder what else might identify her as a witch, apart from just being old, bent, mysterious, and able to tell that there's a vampire in the trunk.

And, for some reason, when they mention that her house is just out of sight in the forest, something about that reminded me of one of the first glimpses of Faerie we get in Crowley's _Little, Big_ with the little house. Nothing specific, just one of many flashes of Crowley's book that kept popping into my head while reading. The houses that change shape/size is another obvious similarity, of course.

________________________________
From: Matthew Keeley <matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Mon, April 19, 2010 11:08:02 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) Kiki

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:27 AM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:

>And there's also the eery significance of carts in /*Le Morte d'Arthur*/ and elsewhere: The condemned were carried in carts to the gallows, but goddesses were also carried in carts in procession long before that. 
>>
>So a witch's or fairy's riding "twice in a cart" could mean something very precise, but I couldn't guess what.
>
>

At one point Lancelot, questing to save Guenivere, loses his horse, swallows his pride, and rides in a cart to save the queen. Indeed, Lancelot was sometimes known as "The Knight of the Cart".

-Matt

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