Fiction, halves, twins

Craig Brewer · 26 Apr 2010, 14:27 · from 2010-April.txt.gz

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From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:27:06 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Fiction, halves, twins
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I agree that, in the end, it just doesn't make much sense if the whole thing was a ruse. Or rather, the first half of the book would make sense. But after George gets arrested, or at least after he gets released and isn't likely to be receiving letters any more, it just gets too weird and difficult to figure out how and why Bax would keep up with the fiction.

But speaking of "halves," I've been wondering about that. The book is 44 chapters long. The middle chapters 22 and 23 have the same name ("Silver Bullets"). Somewhere in a review, Neil Gaiman mentioned that he thought the Tarot was significant and the 22 major arcana cards might have something to do with that. I'm not quite sure where he would go with that, though.

I do wonder if the two halves of the book are at all connected to the ideas of twins. I wouldn't go so far as to say that one half was written by one twin and the second half secretly written by another, but, nonetheless, something is going on there.

----- Original Message ----
From: Jonathan Goodwin <joncgoodwin at gmail.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Sun, April 25, 2010 2:09:47 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) TSH: Ted's identity

As it would reveal things, deliberately or not, about the fabricator's
state of mind, the details about those characters would matter. If you
were looking for unconscious revelation, then the most apparently
insignificant details might be particularly important.

I myself don't quite think this is the best approach, but the fact
that it has occurred to several of the book's early readers shouldn't
be ignored.

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 2:03 PM, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
> Gwern Branwen quoted and wrote:
>> > Ummm. This makes it clear that Emlyn does _NOT_ know what happened;
>> > for he begins by saying "I imagine..."
>>
>> I read that as the imagine is about Emlyn's speculation about
>> Goldwurm's thoughts and reasons for not keeping Ambrosius around to
>> question. I don't read it as Emlyn imagining the entire scenario, and
>> only actually knowing 'Goldwurm was killed by someone who may've been
>> named Ambrosius.' I suspect I'm not alone in this.
>
> Quite so. In addition, Emlyn is, in effect, the only source of information
> we have concerning Ambrosius and Goldwurm, so we are stuck with his
> testimony.
>
> Let's cut to the chase: Emlyn is supposed to be a boy from Faerie, as are
> the two sorcerers. If none of the faerie and/or supernatural stuff is real,
> then nothing about these characters matters. Speculations regarding ghostly
> Ted's identity and whether or not he was also Ambrosius and what the wet
> thing he left behind may have been are fools' exercises. There can be no
> magic rings, werewolves, a talking vixen, a sorcerer's tower in faerie, a
> house that expands and has windows onto faerie, or eerie forests far larger
> than any map shows them to be.
>
> -Roy
>
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