never the Twain shall meet Lafferty nor Davies

Jeff Prucher · 08 Jul 2003, 22:32 · from urth-v0307.mbox · original

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From: Jeff Prucher <jprucher at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) never the Twain shall meet Lafferty nor Davies
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 15:32:53 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <urth-v0307-3587 at digest.urth.net>
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Mantis writes:=20
> Before that I read fiction by Robertson Davies for the first time, his
> novel FIFTH BUSINESS.  Many years ago, in another country, I'd lent a
> friend a copy of PEACE and after he read it he said it reminded him of
> FIFTH BUSINESS.  And there is a certain amount of congruence: if we factor
> out the SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE aspects of PEACE, the similarities are even
> more clear.  The village life; the childhood rivalries; the historical
> events of early 20th century; seductive circus women; mysterious magic.  =
It
> is almost as if PEACE is a case where the hero never leaves the village, =
as
> opposed to FIFTH BUSINESS where the hero leaves but is still bound in
> strange ways.

This reminds me of another Davies-Wolfe confluence that I don't think has b=
een
mentioned here.  In WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE (I'm pretty sure I have the rig=
ht
title: I'm thinking of the middle book of the Cornish Trilogy), Davies invo=
kes
an angel named the Lesser Tzadkiel, who is the angel in charge of biography.
The Lesser Tzadkiel has the ability to record all the events of a person's =
life
(the book, if I recall correctly, consists largely of the angel playing back
the entirety of one man's life), which is what Severian's memory does.  It's
probably no more than a coincidence, but it always struck me as being
appropriate that Severian should be associated with the angel of biography.

-Jeff

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--=20

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