Alden Weir's Dimensionality

(Maybe it should be Alder rather than Alden -- elm, though then you can't throw in Den) I have the impression (coming back to the pillow story) that Weir's life represents a wrong choice at every key point in his life, while Smart makes the correct choices. Weir's final financial security/success is quite accidental. Furthermore, his behaviour at the forking points -- on the stairs, outside the freezer room, in the creek-bed -- is quite understandable/forgiveable (coming back to the idea of Purgatorio rather than Inferno). Also I might raise the two allusions to Cabell (and isn't there one Cabell novel set in Florida?) -- Cabell saw Jurgen as the thinker and Manuel as the doer (Weir/Smart?). Felix Kennaston in the Cream of the Jest is perhaps even closer, though Wolfe and Cabell's world-views are slightly different. (do I need a smiley?). | David Duffy. ,-_|\ | email: davidD at qimr.edu.au ph: INT+61+7+3362 0217 fax: +0101 / * | Epidemiology Unit, Queensland Institute of Medical Research \,-./ | 300 Herston Rd, Brisbane, Queensland 4029, Australia v

Slightly, yes. I always thought that my high school English teacher disliked fantasy (with a grudging like for Bradbury) until I discovered he'd done his master's thesis on Cabell. I tried to get him to read Wolfe (he's even Catholic...) for years to no avail... By the way, looking up something about Nabokov stumbled across this page on lycos: http://rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/borges/borges.infl.wolfe.html Right now it's just a bit from the McCaffrey interview, but it might turn into something someday...