Eyeflash/Sugarland

William H. Ansley · 23 Jun 1999, 00:15 · from urth-v0027.mbox · original

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From: "William H. Ansley" <wansley at warwick.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Eyeflash/Sugarland
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 00:15:01
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Clifford Drane <dranec at hotmail.com> wrote:

>Mr. Ansley, I did read your wonderful posts about 'The Eyeflash Miracles'.
>You did a good job of pointing out the links between the two stories. I
>think further exploration about *why* the links are there at all is in
>order. Perhaps we'll find that it's just a little fun two-headed story that
>Wolfe whipped up.
>

You can call me William, Clifford.

Although I put a lot of effort (probably far more than is evident from the
haphazard result) into my Ozflash posts, I was doing the easy part compared
to answering the "Why?" question. It is very likely unanswerable, but that
shouldn't stop us from trying; it never has before.

There are many other questions I would like to have answered about the
story. Here are some:

Why doesn't Little Tib recognize any of the Oz characters?

When is it taking place? Is it our near future, or an alternate history lin=
e?

Where is it taking place? It seems to be the United States, but why is the
capital in Niagara? Has the US broken up?

If it is our time-line, what happened to get us from here to there?
Something big seems to have been left out (as usual with Wolfe.)

Did Little Tib's parents really both become government agents?

Was Little Tib's father complicit in his blinding? Little Tib's first dream
suggests this.

And on and on...

>There are two possibilities I can immediately think of for the Oz referenc=
es
>- 1) Oz is an actual alternate reality of which Little Tib is a doorway, or
>2) Tib's powers simply conjure spirits that due to various reasons take the
>form of Oz characters.

I don't think (1) is likely. Little Tib's contacts with Oz are either
through dreams which are (to me at least) obviously dreams (albeit with
many Oz elements) and not visits to an alternate reality (unless it is an
alternate reality that is dream-like in a way that Oz, in Baum's hands at
least, never was) or by interacting with a single Oz character in the
"real" world. These Oz beings never talk about being transported from Oz in
any manner, although they may mention Oz related people, places and things.

(2) fits in with the way I read the story much better. As to why the
"spirits" Little Tib's "conjures" up take on the form of Oz characters, I
still can't come up with a better answer than my suggestion in my Ozflash
postings that the Oz images are coming from the mind of Little Tib's
father, Big Tib. Of course this leads to another why. Perhaps part of Big
Tib's (subconscious) mind is trying to offer Little Tib a safe hiding place
or help and the best hiding place and source of help it can come up with is
(childhood memories of) Oz.

It is interesting to compare Little Tib's angels with Silk's Enlightenment
in TBotLS. The angels seems to help Little Tib, but it may well be that
Little Tib is actually causing the helpful events to occur, with the angels
as a guiding rather that effective force. Little Tib may be the help that
was sent to him, as well.

William Ansley

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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