Wolfe's errors

Jim Jordan · 12 Jun 2000, 08:32 · from urth-v0029.mbox · original

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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's errors
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 08:32:14
Message-ID: <urth-v0029-0065 at digest.urth.net>
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Well, one anyway:

Adam wrote re:Crowley:

>Okay, so Crowley didn't deliberately change the number of "suit cards"
>to 52, as I had thought.  There's a more general lesson here, one that
>applies to Wolfe too.  I'm no expert on the history of cards, playing or
>Tarot, but the books I have consulted give a history that differs from
>Crowley's.  We shouldn't assume that the information we find in
>reference books--even standard ones--was necessarily what the author had
>in mind when he or she was writing.

	In *Soldier* Wolfe has Latro sleep with Venus, since after all she is
married to Mars and Mars is the god of Rome, so it is appropriate. But in
fact, Venus was not married to Mars but to Vulcan, and only had an affair
with Mars. Big crisis there, and I was surprised that Wolfe had forgotten
it. I asked him about it, and he became a bit confused and said that he
thought Mars and Venus were married, and then fell back into saying that
perhaps in some versions of the myths they were. Well, that's possible I
guess.
	And after all, none of us knows everything! But this does show that
sometimes when Wolfe is playing with myths and perhaps also with the Bible,
he may get some details wrong. Worth bearing in mind when exegeting and
interpreting him!

Jim Jordan NUTRIA


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