Too-Lupine Narrators

Michael Straight · 28 Mar 2001, 09:24 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Subject: (whorl) Too-Lupine Narrators
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 09:24:36
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0494 at digest.urth.net>
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Folks have complained that Horn's children wouldn't write that way, that
it is implausible that they would write a narrative that deliberately
hides the protagonist's identity until the "gotcha" moment at the very end
where they write, "Silk nodded."

I think this is a misunderstanding.  I think Horn's kids faced the same
problem that drives us to write about "Hornsilk" or "Silkhorn," that they
believed that this man was somehow both Silk and Horn and that rather than
use some awkward amalgam name like Passilk, they just didn't call him
anything until the point in the story where he had changed and it then
seemed appropriate just to call him Silk.

In other words, they didn't wait to call him Silk in order to keep the
reader in suspense, they waited to call him Silk until he actually was
Silk.

Wolfe, of course, is doing both.

-Rostrum

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