more grist for the "enhanced Horn hypothesis"

Jim Jordan · 15 Oct 1999, 17:33 · from whorl-v0010.mbox · original

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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Subject: Re: (whorl) more grist for the "enhanced Horn hypothesis"
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:33:31
Message-ID: <whorl-v0010-0119 at digest.urth.net>
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At 12:10 PM 10/15/99 -0400, you wrote:
>>Given the Wolfean "unreliable narrator," it makes you start to wonder
>>if the Silk of the BOOK OF SILK is something of an exaggeration, which
>>would certainly fit in with the Christ parallels.  Silk is portrayed
>>as a kind of Father Brown, but perhaps in "real life" he was more of a
>>Father Ted.

	Well, he's Brown in the first book, not much in the latter three.

>I'm a bit confused here--fits in with the Christ parallels in that Silk
>couldn't possibly be that Christ-like, or fits in that the _gospels_ are
>exaggerations?  I would think the first would be a more likely approach for
>Wolfe than the second, but even then, there's Silk's Englightenment (which=20
>works two ways--(A) it might make Silk better than he would be and (B) may=
be
>he got Enlightened because he had a tendency to be a Very Good person
anyway).

	Some kind of "divine election" is involved in his whole life, as well as
the "scientific predestination" that resulted in his "virgin birth." I'm
not sure how Horn as narrator could construe the whole flow of events to
make them more gospellike than they in fact are. We certainly cannot assume
that Horn had access to Luke, Acts, and the book of Revelation to use as
templates. That would seem to be the doing of the Outsider and, behind him,
Wolfe.

>Also going against the exaggeration theory is that other people who knew
>Silk very well (Marble, Mucor, etc.) seem to have seen him as an
>extraordinarily good man.

	One would like to know more about his mother, who, given Wolfe's beliefs,
would have to be a kind of virtuous Mary-figure.


>I think a telling note in LONG SUN is that Horn is generally noticed much
more
>than Nettle--is Nettle even listed as "Author of the BOOK OF SILK" in the=20
>Persons, Places & Things section in Exodus?  It seems her role is
secondary in
>the actual composition--scribe and organizer (given OBW, there is no telli=
ng
>what order Horn might have put things in...)
>
>Horn does mimic Silk beautifully long before any possibility of possession
or=20
>anything, so as usual in LONG SUN, any possession is well in keeping with =
his
>original tendencies.

	Certainly the "imitator all along" business runs against any "special
enhancement" view, and perhaps accounts for everything. Horn's ignorance
might account for the seemingly truncated character of some sequences in
the narrative. On the other hand, he seems to know a lot of things that
it's hard to see how he could have learned -- not just details, but whole
event-sequences.

Nutria


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