PEACE: oh wabe!

William Ansley · 30 Oct 2002, 04:46 · from urth-v0210.mbox · original

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From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) PEACE: oh wabe!
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 23:46:01 -0500
Message-ID: <urth-v0210-1986 at digest.urth.net>
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>William Ansley's memory of PEACE is very sharp!

It should be. _Peace_ is still my favorite of Wolfe's books and I=20
have read it many times.

>He wrote:
>>In the passage from _Peace_ you mention above, Weer is thinking about
>>nonexistant races of men. I don't have my book with me and so can't
>>remember the details, but from what you say above, it was the
>>orange-skinned people who worshiped sundials. The passage continues to the
>>effect that, after the threat of legal action allows the "orange tribe"
>>into the country club, "they out with strange oaths. What's a wabe?" (I am
>  >reconstructing the quote from memory.)
>
>This is right.  The only additions I would make are: "wabe" is part of the
>strange oath that slips out of an orange guy in an unguarded moment (an
>utterance that makes the familiar seeming become utterly alien); and that
>the orange tribe seems to worship sundials as "ours" seems to worship
>telephone poles (a play on how telephone poles have cruciform shapes due to
>utility unrelated to religion . . . another engineering joke).

Interesting. I'm going to quote the whole passage.

----------------------
[T]he orange people with their weird religion demanding the worship=20
of sundials (as our own seems to others that of telephone poles), so=20
that in friendly locker-room conversations, when we have at last and=20
at the threat of certain legal pressures admitted them in Pinelawn=20
and are discussing the round now past, they out with strange oaths.=20
What is a wabe?
----------------------

I have always thought Wolfe meant that to others (although just who=20
these others might be, I'm sure I don't know) we seem to worship=20
telephone poles because we have them all over the place, so they must=20
be some kind of totem object.

<Foghorn Leghorn>
Totem! Poles! Totem poles! I made a joke, son.
</Foghorn Leghorn>

>  >----------------------
>  >The grass plot round a sundial ... because it goes a long way before it,
>>and a long way behind it ... and a long way beyond it on each side.
>>-----------------------
>>
>>This is word play. The sound of the word "way" is combined with the sound
>>of the common first letter of "before," "behind" and "beyond" to produce
>>the word "wabe." (My apologies to everyone who already understood this
>>perfectly.)
>
>Hey, does this mean it is pronounced "WAY-bee," to rhyme with "baby"?  I
>thought it was "WAYB" to rhyme with "babe"!

"WAYB" is, of course, the canonical pronunciation. Considering that I=20
made a special effort to phrase my explanation above in such a way as=20
to prevent anyone reading it from arriving at "WAY-bee," the depth of=20
my failure is all the more humiliating. <g>

>Wolfe-content aside, everybody should go out and see Miyazaki's new movie
>"Spirited Away"!  Right now!  Miyazaki has several fine movies and this is
>one of them.  Many of the people around here have seen it already (I've
>seen it twice and might see it again before it gets to video).

I agree whole-heartedly with mantis here. This film is not playing in=20
a lot of theaters, but it is well worth going out of your way to see=20
it.
--=20

William Ansley

--=20

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