The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned by Rudesind

David Stockhoff · 02 Jul 2010, 17:36 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:36:26 -0400
Subject: (urth) The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned
	by	Rudesind
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You have a point about finding specific photos. Even though Wolfe was in 
publishing and no doubt knows more than a little about how and where to 
find images, there was no Web gallery to browse. However, we're not 
necessarily looking for a photo Wolfe saw. It could have been a photo 
someone else saw and painted. It could have been an image in our 
national memory, or our shared fannish memory. It could have been his 
own bad memory.

I still think this is an worthwhile quest, because:

(1) The book may have had the same effect on me as it did on you, and 
I'd be fascinated to know the truth.

(2) Issues of memory are hardly irrelevant to the novel. Nor are issues 
of myth.

(3) Is the painting a Borgesian artefact? Is it a knowingly false but 
truer-than-true insertion?

(4) Is it an SF in-joke, as might be if the image was on the cover of 
Astounding?

Error? Red herring? MacGuffin? These are basic interpretive questions. 
I've already suggested that I don't think Wolfe makes things up when he 
has an alternative at hand. Thus the question: was there an alternative 
to making it up?

Keep in mind that this painting is the only plain link to the 20th c in 
the entire book(s), if you set aside the many pulp references.

Dave Lebling wrote:
> I'm really fairly amazed at the level of nit-pickery over this 
> question. Let us cast our minds back to the thrilling days of 
> yesteryear (the late 70s), when Wolfe wrote SotT. There was no 
> internet on which you could look up all the thousands of 
> then-unreleased Apollo program pictures, there were a few places you 
> could find pictures in hardcopy (Life -- already moribund, National 
> Geographic, a few coffee table books, etc.). As an SF fan, I'm sure he 
> had resources such as the F&SF cover -- or not, he may not be a pack rat.
>
> It seems quite obvious that the description he wrote is based on his 
> memories of various photos and paintings he had actually seen, but he 
> very likely wasn't staring at an actual photo when he wrote the words. 
> Even if he was, who's to say he might not have taken auctorial 
> liberties with what he saw?
>
> I know that after many re-readings of SotT, my minds-eye image of the 
> "canonical" Apollo photograph is now the (non-existent) one Wolfe 
> described.
>
> -- David Lebling, aka vizcacha
>
> 2010/7/2 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com 
> <mailto:entonio at gmail.com>>
>
>     David Stockhoff wrote (02-07-2010 17:24):
>
>         Yeah, except it's not rising over anyone's shoulder.
>
>
>     You draw a vertical line, it *is* over the shoulder. If you then
>     picture the planet rising in an arc, clockwise, it doesn't sound
>     far off. But here my understanding of english may be just deficient.
>
>
>         I suppose I should clarify that I think it's plain that "visor
>         of gold"
>         doesn't mean that at all. It just needs to be dominated almost
>         entirely
>         by a solar/moonscape reflection.
>
>
>     The reflection on the visor, in that picture, looks like it's
>     something relfected on a gilded surface. The black part could be
>     interpreted as shadow. In fact, if I didn't know better, I might
>     also guess the visor's surface was golden.
>
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