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5HC

Jim Raylor · 26 Jan 2005, 10:25 · from 2005-January.txt.gz

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From: rjraylor at yahoo.co.uk (Jim Raylor)
Date: Wed Jan 26 10:25:22 2005
Subject: (urth) Re: 5HC
In-Reply-To: <1ad.2ff077c2.2f290b73 at aol.com>
Message-ID: <20050126182518.73681.qmail at web25704.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

Thanks Judith
You've raised a lot of interesting points and I am
kicking myself for not spotting the 'When Adam delved
and Eve span' reference which I am sure is valid.
I think one major theme which helps understand this
book is the question of what it means to be human.
For instance :
Chimpanzees create art, can talk if taught sign
language, use tools and exhibit social learning.
Do we have the right to treat them as animals?
In Roman times to be a full 'human' you had to be a
man and a freeborn citizen of Rome.
In 212 A.D. under the Severian Dynasty this was
extended to all free men in the Roman Empire, a
massive breakthrough in emancipation, of course women,
children (under 15) slaves and barbarians were
excluded.
Slavery was often justified with the argument that
these blacks do not have souls, they are not real
people.
What of the dead? Are they human?
Or elephants or whales? Any dog or cat owner soon
learns to treat their pet as a member of the family,
or they should not be allowed to keep animals.
Ancient people seem to have seen all animals and many
other things (trees, caves, wind, the sun and moon,
stars, the sea etc.) as having spirits as we do.

OK now I will annotate the points you have raised
which are all very interesting and valid to me.


 --- Broceliande27533 at aol.com wrote: 
> Dear Jim
>  
> Read 5hc in Orbit ed
 
***** Was it the same do you know? I would love to
read his other early works... once I finish with this
one!

>and then all three novellas ? c
> 1975 (in second hand 
> Quartet ed.) Read once or twice in intervening years
> and then came back to Wolfe 
> this summer.
 
It has to be re-read and re-read I believe

>Read Cave Canem and urth archives on
> 5HC. Am going through book 
> for about third time in six months annotating as I
> go.

> Not read either Proust of Kafka although understand
> that VRT v Kafkaesque.

VRT is definitely the most Kafkaesque. I have read all
Kafka's published work.
VRT contains references to The Trial, America, The
Castle, Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony and even
his collected letters. 

> Read Ancient Mariner at school 10 zillion years ago.

Re-read it and look for whales.
It's also full of Christian Symbolism and Coleridge
hid references to his other poems in the text.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Rime_Ancient_Mariner.html

> I assumed that the quote at 
> the beginning was relevant to the question  of No
> 5's name (and that of M. 
> Million and Maitre), (see Archives passim and
> Borski) as is the ref in the final 
> section to the "iron dog  with his three wolf
> heads." On some things I 
> disagree v strongly with Borski

I think Borski's major deficiency is that he sees as a
pipe as a pipe.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Many of his insights are valid. I don't buy his
genealogy or his maps, but Hitchcock (Patricia
Highsmith) Circumcision, Homosexuality, Hell and many
other points are valid.
I think the Ascian/Asian connection and the references
to elephants are something he has completely missed.

Unfortunately Borski, when he sees a broken puzzle as
a pair of shoes or a surgical device, seems to stop
looking and misses Babbage's difference engine and Ada
Lovelace. Elgar's Enigma variations one of which is
allegedly about a dog, The Enigma code and Alan Turing
etc etc.

I seem to be in the minority in reading this as a
great Korean War novel, and a collection of children's
stories etc

> (on others I agree
> or am neutral): the evidence for 
> the name is I think overwhelming.

Yes... but...
I think the book was grown from his own name Gene
(Rodman) Wolfe
Gene is homonym for 'Jean' (a girl's name in English)
which is french for 'John', Jacques is French for
James.
'Jack' is a variant of John. Ivan is the Russian form,
the hero of all the old stories,
The origin of the name Gene is Eugene.
Female form Eugenia.
Gene also gives us Genetics and Genesis etc etc
I laughed when I found John Wolfe-Barry  
>  
> Quite apart from my annotation I am amusing myself
> with an analysis of the 
> evidence (internally in the book that is) (1) for
> the existence of the abos or 
> otherwise, and 

I think he is suggesting the Abos evolved into us.

(2)  whether rather than Victor
> having replaced /become Marsch, 

I think the murder scene is written (in all three
novels) to allow any of the participants (named or
implied) to be valid suspects.
For example perhaps the prisoner is the shape-shifting
abo cat-girl, imitating the dead anthropologist!
When I get the bottom of this mystery I will be able
to move on to something else.

> Marsch has replaced/become Victor: after all that is
> the reverse of Veil's 
> hypothesis and may be relevant to "Liev's
> postpostulate" about which there has 
> been a great deal of debate. 

Levi-Strauss's structural anthropology is hard to read
but it is highly relevant here, I believe.
I have always considered my sister to be a better
writer than I.
She alerted me to look for famous women in history in
the book and she has not even read it!

>  Why the French? Does that have any particular
> meaning? Vietnam is 
> interesting, but I was struck by echoes in the whole
> of the book of the French 
> involvement over all of North America and the
> Caribbean. What about General Wolfe and 
> Quebec (I know nothing about this period of
> history)
. 
The French and the British had a huge influence on the
world in Colonial times. Much of Africa is still
Francophone.
The contemporary reference to France is the Vietnam
connection.
But you are right there are massive clues to the
History of North America.
Geneva was a Celtic town and it is built around a cave
inhabited since prehistoric times.
Rome and New York were built on Marshes drained by the
Etruscans (religious engineers) and the French.
The Acadians ended up in Cajun Country. Wetlands.
The Huguenots and Acadians are worth investigating.
http://huguenot.netnation.com/general/huguenot.htm
http://www.valleyweb.com/acadians/
Jean de Loup is the Loup-Garou of Cajun myth.
It also fits in well with my unpopular 'Anne of Green
Gables' Theory.

> Why the reference ot the family in the photograph?
> Why Celtic (I have an 
> inchoate theory about that?).
 
Back to AoGG in my mind, Anne's red hair and
green-grey eyes hint at a Celtic origin. Her mother
died before she was three months old.
There is also a wicked pun on Wales/Whales implied I
believe.
The Celts are another vanished race who are alive and
well thank you very much. Many went to America.
I could say more but I am interested in your inchoate
version and do not want to impose my beliefs.


>What is the long house
> in the photograph?

I read it as a row of terraced houses. In Cork for
example, you often find streets where each house is as
different from its neighbour as you could imagine, 
though they share an internal wall. 
But sticking my neck out again I would suggest it is a
reference to the architectural folly of Port Meirion
(My Prisoner theory)
'The Prisoner' was aired on TV in Canada (near
Illinois) in 1967 before it was even shown in the UK.
Thomas Disch  (another of Knight's protegees), who
later wrote a book about Number 6 was one of the
writers involved in the production of this cult
classic.

> One last thought for the moment where I have
> formulated a clear opinion.
>  
> I was thinking about the question of tool
> use/inability to use tools. Again a 
> lot of debate in the archives about this and
> evolutionary theory: Dollo's 
> hypothesis and so on. All clearly relevant. But GW
> being GW there are likely to 
> be more shades of meaning. (It's been suggested that
> the abos had no opposable 
> thumb but that can't be right I think: they couldn't
> have done the things that 
> they are described as doing and I read the inability
> as being some kind of 
> mental/psychological/conceptual inability.)

I believe GW may still have problems with his hands
and leg from his childhood Polio. Monkeys were used in
experiments that led to a cure, poor crippled monkeys.
Tool use is taken as a determinant of intelligence in
animals and man. 
Interestingly enough the prehistoric ancestor of dogs
and cats had a semi-opposable fifth toe on its
forepaws.
http://www.kerwoodwolf.com/EVOLUTION.htm

Gene joked once in an interview that when he wasn't
writing he enjoyed shovelling snow. (whilst reading
'Cat in the Hat'?) In Suess' classic the snow turns
pink I believe. Rosy... Rougette, as the french say.

>  
> There is that passage at the end of Dr Hagsmith "the
> test that the French are 
> supposed to have applied at the ford called Running
> Blood-stopped every man 
> that passed and made him dig with a shovel" (I think
> that the Running Blood 
> ford is the  Rougette river that painted Marsch's
> boots and Victor's legs (with 
> red mud presumably) on April 10th).

No, it was blood.
Back to my obscure 'Ho Te Que - Tiger Lady of the
Delta' Theory.
She died in 1965.


Aaaargh! But you are also right and I should have
spotted this before. Anne in Green Gables is obsessed
with why the roads there are all red... like her hair.
A rougette is also a radish (reddish?)
Frequently GW seems to juxtapose a positive and a
negative interpretation... Was the river running with
blood or just red clay soil (excellent for
agriculture).

I am not sure how seriously I should look for drug 
references in GW, but given the times and the
references to hallucinogens, it may be appropriate.
I was reminded of Terry Southern's story book 'Red
Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes'. published in 1967.
http://www.litkicks.com/People/TerrySouthern.html

>  
> Borski thinks that is a reference to a massacre. 
> When I first read it that 
> was how it felt to me: and there's an echo of
> Holocaust victims and perhaps 
> others digging their own graves. (Borski also thinks
> Mr D `"might be fifteen 
> years ago, might be more. Our years are longer here-
> did you know that?" is  
> reference to that massacre but I think he was
> talking about Victor's birth/age).

Korean War started in 1950, Vietnam in 1965 according
to American history.
I think it is a reference to all genocides including
the holocaust. 

> But I then thought  "shovel", do you dig with a
> shovel?
>  
> And then a picture came repeatedly into my mind of
> the "Adam Delving" stained 
> glass window at Canterbury (it survived the
> Reformation because it was too 
> high for the stones"). I put "Adam delving" into a
> search engine, and up it 
> came. It shows Adam after the Fall  digging with a
> pointed ended shovel-like 
> implement (and there's a red ribbon like area in
> front of him too).

Very well spotted. I keep missing the Christian
references.
If Adam was the first man then no-one before him used
tools. 
 
> So I think that (amongst all the other references)
> this is to do with the 
> suggestion that the abos were prelapsarian humans:
> Adam only started delving 
> after and in consequence of the Fall and perhaps he
> also couldn't as well as 
> didn't use tools before then. See also David in the
> debate in the library "Humanity 
> implies descent from what we may conveniently call
> Adam, that is, the 
> original terrestrial stock", and, at the end of "A
> story" : "Three men with their 
> limbs wrapped in leaves".

One thing I love about Gene Wolfe is that when you do
spot a connection, you can then find he makes the same
point over and over again. If you can't find it in at
least three places I would dismiss it as coincidence.


>  
> (There was some discussion in the archives about the
> relationship of 5HC to 
> James Blish's A Case of Conscience, which is also
> about whether a sentient race 
> are unfallen beings with souls).

I don't think I have read it, but I do think GW has
littered the book with references to his favourite SF
writers. I would be surprised if any of the authors in
the first few Orbit anthologies were not referenced
explicitly or implicitly.
I am a big fan of Thomas Disch, so it easy for me to
spot the references to many of his stories.

> Thats all for now.
>  
> Judith

To be honest, I am a little upset at the continuing
abuse I have received from a few people on the Urth
list. I admit I was a little over-exuberant when I
began posting after reading everything on T5HOC I
could find and although Borski and others, gave me a
few leads, I feel nobody has explained the book to my
satisfaction.
I have been corresponding with Korean War veterans and
their families and they have been extremely helpful.

Thank you again for your insights and I hope you find
something of interest in my reply here.

Regards

Jim


	
	
		
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