Godlings
matthew.malthouse · 20 Apr 2001, 16:01
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From: matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk Subject: Re: (whorl) Re: Re: Godlings Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:01:53 +0100 Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0669 at digest.urth.net> X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0012/0669.shtml MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 19/04/2001 22:51:26 Robert Borski wrote: >Kevin J. Maroney writing: > ><That seems contrary to the idea of "small godlings". If the Narrator is >indeed thinking of Pig a small godling, it seems odd to call him that when >he's only slightly larger than a normal human.> > >Guess it depends on how you configure Pig's height. When Horn first >encounters him (perhaps significantly the chapter is entitled "Great Pas's >Godling"), he is in Silk's body, who is considered tall. Horn subsequently >describes how Pig's hands are twice his own size, and at one point how Pig= 's >elbow brushed his ear. My own elbows are located at about the 3/5 mark of = my >total height (I'm 6'4"), which may mean Pig is as tall as ten feet. Robert >Pershing Wadlow--the tallest person ever in history according to >Guinness--was only 8' 11". So I'd argue that Pig's height may well fall >within the parameters that define "small" godlingness. In the shriving scene soon after reaching Viron which I read (in a rather befuddled state) last night there's a comment that Horn would come up to Pi= g's knees. It jarred me because although Pig is big nothing intimated *that* big to me before. Roughly I'm 70", to the knees is 20" so Horn/Silk might be 2/7 the height of Pig. If H/S were say 6'4" Pig would be 266" or 22 foot 2 inches at which p= oint I go Eeek! The only other passage which I can recall that hints at such height is wher= e Pig and Horn leave Hyacinth's room an Pig "crawls" through the door. Now the d= oors in Blood's mansion are not likely to be mean little things but still I hadn= 't visualised anything like a 20 foot jolly green (if grubby) giant. Matthew *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.moonmilk.com/whorl/ *To leave the list, send "unsubscribe" to whorl-request at lists.best.com *If it's Wolfe but not Long Sun, please use the URTH list: urth at lists.best.= com
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