lots of stuff

Jerry Friedman · 10 Jul 2010, 00:55 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 17:55:03 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) lots of stuff
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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>

>I wrote:

>> When he mentioned a monkey, he might not have remembered
>> every other time he mentioned a monkey.
>>      
>
>Wolfe does make mistakes. And he can inadvertently reuse ideas. A famous 
>instance that he noted himself is
>that his protagonist in "The Other Dead Man" and the villain in "An Evil Guest" 
>have the same name. And it is >not uncommon for writers to have an inclination 
>for particular adjectives and analogies.

>But if this is the case in this instance, I would think there would be examples 
>of Wolfe comparing characters to
>monkeys in other stories? Especially since he did it three times in this one 
>novel.

He might have just had monkeys on his mind at the time.  Or happened to think of 
characters who were monkeylike.  Or wanted them in a book (that may be) about 
transcending one's baser nature.

> Can anyone think of some others?

But that's why the Pansuccursor gave us Google Book Search.  Not counting 
characters who are monkeys or who are compared to monkey bars who flunked 
Darwin, there's Pouk (twice), Mother Cloot, a girl in a story told by Fava, and 
I hesitate to mention anyone in the same universe as Father Inire, but Severian 
(in TUotNS), Silk (in both /Litany/ and RttW), and all human beings (in "The 
Death of Dr. Island", "The Ziggurat", and OBW).  That leaves the field pretty 
open.

You can see all of those and more mentions of monkeys at

http://www.google.com/search?q="Gene+Wolfe"+monkey&hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks:1&ei=T8Q3TN6DIcT7lweG3O3UBw&start=0&sa=N

Jerry Friedman

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