Pike's ghost

Gerry Quinn · 23 Nov 2011, 23:36 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 23:36:02 -0000
Subject: (urth) Pike's ghost
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From: Andrew Mason
> Gerry Quinn wrote:

> > My feeling, though, is that it?s not so much a ghost as a vision sent by 
> > the Outsider
> > Silk he?s on the right track.  But of course, this is something that can 
> > be both.

> Well, the Outsider can certainly send spirits of the dead. If it were
> just a vision, though, and not a spirit, one would have to find soem
> other explanation for Wolfe's remarks about putting a ghost in one of
> his works.

Yes, but maybe the ghost is not Pike but some other character in some other 
book.  Pike does indeed seem like the best candidate, though.


> > I don?t see Mucor?s appearance as a real problem.  She is fascinated by 
> > Silk
> >  and is clearly following him since the exorcism.  Next day she appears 
> > twice in
> > the tunnels.  She appears when Echidna possesses Marble, and nobody is 
> > saying
> > that?s too much of a coincidence and Echidna must have brought her 
> > along.  Even
> > if Echidna likes her (didn?t she say that sometime?)

> Mucor's appearance is indeed not a problem. I'm treating  that as the
> basic fact which needs no special explanation, and the other two as
> consequences of it. The problem is three ghostly appearances at the
> same time. it seems unlikely they have three separate explanations. To
> be sure, coincidences do happen in the solar universe, and that's not
> too surprising in a world which has a providential God, but in this
> case Silk actually theorises about a connection between Mucor and
> Pike, which would be an oddly misleading clue if it was just an
> acident that they were both there at once. (Silk's theory might be
> wrong, but in the absence of something very clear which confounds it,
> it seems reasonable to think he's right.)

I don't recall Silk's theorising.  But there *is* actually a connection 
between Mucor and Pike: she is his granddaughter, even if fewer realise it 
than Wolfe expected.  Could that be the purpose of Pike's ghost?


> > Oreb is the tricky one.  Silk comes up with an explanation that is at
> > least rational but nobody believes (maybe that?s a hint from Wolfe that
> > the ghost is real).  I?m not convinced by your idea that Mucor gives 
> > others
> > special powers ? I don?t remember any instances of it.

> Well, you might say 'except this one' - which, given Wolfe's known
> tendency to think things are obvious when they aren't, can't be ruled
> out. But it doesn't seem too surprising to me - if she can summon
> spirits of the dead, why might she not also summon spirits of the
> living - given that the living have spirits which can leave their
> bodies, as her own case implies?

It's fairly similar to my argument that she might have searched for Silk by 
possessing a bird.  It's reasonably plausible in terms of stuff Mucor can 
do, but there's no other obvious incident of her doing such a thing.

- Gerry Quinn

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