Ziggurat confusion

Alice Turner · 24 Jan 2000, 17:38 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: "Alice Turner" <akt at attglobal.net>
Subject: (urth) Ziggurat confusion
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 17:38:08
Message-ID: <urth-v0028-0716 at digest.urth.net>
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Mantis and Alex, please help out a confused citizen. (Yes, there are spoile=
rs, but I'm not going to leave any space.)

mantis:

> Point one: Where does Gene Wolfe's sympathy lie in the story?  Swanwick
> says to use the standard "find the wolf" trick.  The wolf in this story is
> the coyote.  Who killed the coyote?  Emory did.

How do we know that, and why would he do such a thing?
=20
> Point b: Who killed the son?  Emory did.

How do we know that, and ditto?

> Question Marquess: Why does the final scene seem like incest?  Because it
> is incest--the "alien" is one of his daughters.  The allegations of incest
> for the divorce were probably a lie, but as is so often the case in Wolfe
> fiction, the lie has a terrible way of coming true in the end.

But this is dreadful. It means that he also shot his wife and other daughte=
r, and that there were no alien women at all, and that the gun and the ax w=
ere never stolen. How do you know this? I would certainly not have guessed =
this.

> All together, iirc, this paints a feral picture of Emory: destroying his
> better self the coyote, killing the rival his son, and marrying his own
> daughter to "start over, doing it right this time."  Not unlike Baldander=
s,
> in cutting himself off from the outside world (and/or God) in order to
> persue megalomania; or the pirate scientist of 5HC; but in detail more li=
ke
> several heroic Greek horrors all at once.

It seems too melodramatic to me; why do you (or Swanwick) reject the scienc=
e-fictional story in favor of a homicidal maniac interpretation?

Now Alex:

> Hmmm...  Yeah, I caught the Tamar reference--I hadn't thought of the
> daughter-of-the-future possibility--but this is a clone of a step-daughte=
r if
> so, which IMO makes Emory considerably less responsible for incest than, =
say,
> Severian.  I simply don't think the story presents things so as to suggest
> that the incest (with the daughters) is real.

Me neither. Besides, Tamar was a daughter-in-law, and it was her own idea. =
Though I suppose pun could be intended.
>=20
> Yes, Emory kills the coyote--but acknowledges his own guilt, if you look
> closely.  Certainly he's a <vastly> more ambiguously bad figure than
> Baldanders (not that Wolfe doesn't give even Baldanders his devil's due).

Does he admit it? Where...and why? He *likes* the coyote.

> It seems to me that Emory IS quite Weer-ish:  they share a kind of curios=
ity
> that can lead them into error/disaster, yet also seems to serve as a rede=
eming
> element (consider a Weer who DIDN'T hunt for the treasure with Lois, or an
> Emory who said "hell, I'm not going back to my cabin with those crazies, =
let's
> find a motel, son").  Both have a kind of wisdom that they often seem una=
ble
> to apply to themselves (note Weer's comment re: testifying about the abuse
> to the "good twin"--his reference here to God makes me have trouble seeing
> Emory as a cut-off-from-creation figure like Baldanders).  Emory's certai=
nly
> flawed, and his curiosity gets his son murdered, but he also seems to me =
to
> have a considerable amount of author sympathy (in this sense I disagree w=
ith
> Gardner Dozois' comments in the intro to whichever Year's Best SF he didn=
't
> print "The Ziggurat" in as well as with Swanwick--Wolfe hardly ever portr=
ays
> a protagonist without massive, potentially deadly, flaws--but Emory has as
> much underlying author sympathy with him as, say, Number 5 or Weer, I thi=
nk).
> In fact, I think one thing this story does is set up a situation where it
> seems to be a possibility of a "lone man defending his cabin against inva=
ders"
> and then turns it inside-out--neither the man nor the invaders are purely
> evil or wrong--both are trapped by misunderstanding and human nature--but=
 the
> end indicates that even in these cirumstances, after blood and pain, ther=
e may
> be a possibility for something else, even if that's ambiguous, too.

Gosh, this is certainly the way I read it too. I mean, look at those detail=
s of making the bunk bed for Jan, of planning how the girls can sleep, of t=
he "girls" and "boys" demarcations, they don't seem like the set-up for a b=
loodbath, and I completely believed in his fatherly feeling for the girls. =
Falsely accusing a man of inappropriate behavior is one of the deadliest an=
d most unfair weapons a woman can aim; it's what made Sue Miller's THE GOOD=
 MOTHER such a frightening work of realism.  I didn't even think he killed =
the coyote, and I still don't get that. Can someone help me out?

-alga



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