Wolfe on PEACE

Robert Borski · 05 Nov 2000, 17:24 · from urth-v0030.mbox · original

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From: "Robert Borski" <rborski at charter.net>
Subject: (urth) Wolfe on PEACE
Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2000 17:24:17
Message-ID: <urth-v0030-0086 at digest.urth.net>
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I've been enjoying immensely the recent series of posts on PEACE--quite
possibly my all-time favorite list discussion--so please accept my thanks
and congratulations to everyone who has participated. Perhaps someday
someone (all right, mantis) could gather the material and publish it in a
handy reference guide.

I also thought I'd pass on a few comments Wolfe made about PEACE in a 1983
THRUST interview conducted by Robert Frazier that some of you may not have
seen or read before.

**********
Wolfe: When Tom Disch reviewed ["The Hero as Werwolf"], he pointed out the
missing E of _werewolf_ on the end of my own name. I wasn't conscious of
that when I wrote the story, but I suspect he's right. _Werwolf_ is a valid
old spelling. I used it to point up the fact that _werewolf_ means
"man-wolf." _Wergild_ is the price of a man's life. Note also that the
protagonist of PEACE is Alden Dennis _Weer._ I've always been conscious, you
see, that I am neither exemplary nor popular, and every so often I try to
tell my side of the story.

Thrust: I found the material in PEACE fresh and wondrous; was it
autobiographical?

Wolfe: Some, but not a lot. My father came from Logan, Ohio. I went there
several times as a boy for more or less extended visits, and lived there
once for a year or so. Those memories gave me a great deal of background,
but that was about the end of it.

Thrust: PEACE seems to to be told by a _sidhe,_ mentioned in the last pages
of the book. As if some immortal creature lives by constantly reliving. What
exactly _is_ going on with Alden Weer?

Wolfe: Weer is dead. In spirit, he is reliving his life, which he confuses
with the house he built during his final years. Note that at the end of the
book Miss Bold asks permission to plant a tree on his grave. It is the fall
of that tree, at the beginning of the book, that has freed his ghost--an old
superstition.

**********

Robert Borski

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

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