Driving past Castleview

I did say I would have a bash at those myself. Dan'l Danehy-Oakes made some interesting suggestions, here are some of mine. Three key points first: 1. I would like to resurrect Nutria’s argument that Casteview is “about perception”. This is a recurring theme in Wolfe’s work, and a particularly important one here. Wolfe makes Shields spend two solid pages explaining to Bob Roberts how people who saw a castle with three, four or even five towers could actually have been seeing the same castle. He even makes a little model, for pity’s sake. Wolfe could have saved himself a big wodge of expository writing here simply by saying that everyone who saw the castle saw the same number of towers. That he didn’t suggests to me that he wants us to think about people seeing the same thing differently because they’re seeing it from different perspectives. 2. Tom Stoppard once described “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” as the dramatic equivalent of driving past Elsinore castle. You might see a ghost on the ramparts, you might glimpse a funeral procession in your wing mirror, but like poor R and G themselves you would have no idea from these snapshots what the “real story” was all about. I find that a useful way of thinking about Castleview. 3. We see the supernatural characters, which Dan'l Danehy-Oakes usefully identifies as “fey”, primarily in terms of late western European mythology, and particularly Arthurian mythology. But as with the Latro books, Wolfe is writing from the post-White Goddess, post-Joseph Campbell standpoint that understands that mythical characters overlap. Thus Viviane Morgan isn’t just the Lady of the Lake and Morgan le Fay, she’s also the Phantom Hitcher – a modern myth which I don’t suppose dates back much more than 50 years.

Nope. See the quote from Morte d’Arthur prefacing the book.

He’s an alien and a faerie – different ways of looking at the same entity. In the fine Wolfe short story “A Cabin On the Coast” a pipe-smoking leprechaun tells the protagonist “Would ye like to see me as a tiny green man wi' horns like a snail's? I can do that too.”

A tenant of Meadow Grass who has been turned into a vampire.

I think she really is French, because that's how she talks when she is alone with Boomer. I don't know why she drops the accent with Sally, or why she picks it up again when Seth is mentioned. Wolfe gives us quite a few hints about Lucie, which makes me feel there’s something here we’re just not seeing.

Agreed. I wish there was more of him in the novel.

I can’t improve on Dan’l’s "cool effects?" With its insanely, ludicrously frenetic pace, and magically-transformed cats, I don’t think this is a book we are supposed to take –too- seriously.

Because these are just our personifications of the same supernatural being.

Seems so to me. Given that he’s the leader of Morgan’s troops in the final battle, and gives Shields his mortal wound, I suspect that he’s also Mordred.

Not necessarily. The camp has the misfortune to be both isolated and located near a gateway to Faerie, so a certain amount of mischief seems inevitable.

That's very true. These things don't get in there by accident, especially with Wolfe. Like the talos factory. So I agree, perception is important, and that explains why some people see aliens, others fairies, others wild Indians. The same thing happens here, of course, though they tend to be weather balloons.

It certainly describes how it feels to read it! I hope for something a little more than that, though, even if we never understand everything. It already makes more sense that it did the first couple of times I read it.

Ah! So, was he carrying the scabbard? I'll have a look when I get home.

Yes. His "monster" form may be his true shape or a wild distortion caused by partial concussion. I quite like both of those ideas :-)

Like Sancha? Sancha really is turned into a vampire, complete with an almost plausible rational explanation very reminiscent in tone of those interviews in which Wolfe argues for the reality of Bigfoot in historical times, or the Greek gods. Like the Bigfoot/troll, this is a case of Faerie being much more physically and objectively "real" (in the story, and in Wolfe's real-life opinions) than we would expect. But I digress. Why would Lucie be afraid of Sancha, or vulnerable to her? Her name is "de Carabas", too, which strongly suggests she is from the Other Side, not an innocent camper.

Yes.

Very true, but everything else fits so neatly. It isn't just supernatural effects carelessly thrown in for effect - there clearly is some deeper theme. Perception, and the Arthurian myth are two things that pull it all together. I just don't believe in loose ends in Wolfe, especially not big loud ones.

Well, yes, but there do seem to be two of them in Arthur. I think. Probably.

He echoes Mordred in those respects, certainly. I wonder if there are any other parallels? We are dealing with resonances rather than exact correspondences, of course, but it may shed some light somewhere. He seems too likable to be Mordred, though. When he isn't killing the book's main protagonist, of course ...

That might be it. Spectacled Bear.