Pike's ghost

Lee Berman · 30 Nov 2011, 06:25 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:25:45 -0500
Subject: (urth) Pike's ghost
Message-ID: <SNT123-W2096DB0970A132510B8AC4CFB00 at phx.gbl>

>Gerry has a point, however, in saying that Typhon did not have two penises.

The only point made by this observation is that this is meant as a work of art 

not a photographic portrait. The two penises are clearly a reference to Typhon's

two heads (I think it might be auctorial error on WOlfe's part to give Pas two 

heads, as we all know Typhon's two heads were a deeply kept secret). It may also

reflect the Typhon family's snake-like nature. Many snakes have two penises and

my impression from his work is that Wolfe's zoological knowledge is sufficient 

for him to know this.

Moreover, there are giant phallic images surrounding Typhon in the painting. 

Campion renders them as trees (Trees as phallic symbols, is this of interest to

James and Marc? ;- )). So yes, this is a work of art.

A work of art depicting Typhon on Urth. The connections to what we learn from 

Severian are pretty hard to ignore. Should we really think that WOlfe used the 

term "nursing an erection" twice in reference to the same (or a derived) character 

by accident or happenstance, as Gerry is suggesting? Is Wolfe really so oblivious

to his own previous writing?

The whorl during Silk's life does not have monarchs sitting on thrones. 

The rulers of the Whorl are Caldes or Ayuntamientos or Generals who surely 

would not be caught publicly masturbating as Severian tells us Typhon is willing

to do.

Pas is a computer program who, whenever he appeared, did so in a screen. I don't 

think he was sitting in a throne, masturbating in his screen appearances. The 

painting is clearly not inspired by anything occurring on the Whorl. Through the 

Severian connection and Typhon's depicted status as a throne-sitting monarch, the 

painting clearly depicts a scene from Urth.

So, Gerry made a mistake here. No big deal. He is right about many things and has

no need to feel ashamed about this particular misreading. I don't even begrudge him

a bit of pride-salvaging if he would like to continue ignoring the reference to

Severian's Typhon encounter and instead argue that WOlfe put the painting into 

his story to simply to add a splash of color and some gratuitous porn in a brothel. 

Perhaps that really is how Gerry sees Wolfe as a author. 

But that's not really my business. I have no interest in "saving" people from wasting 

their time with Gerry. He is surely a good guy at heart and I really don't want people 

to ignore him. I no more want to "censor" him than he intends to censor the people who

post theories he doesn't like. Gerry and I are both highly appreciative of all the 

contributions and contributors to this list. Thank you. Thank you all. From both of us.

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