Urth Net
PEACE: some scattered notes
Here are some notes from my recent rereading. Hardcover this time.
1) branding as a finalization "brand new" -- steps of a process, near end of sequence but prior to actual use. (Weer's progress a similar process? He is finalized in the end and taken elsewhere for actual use?)
2) Weer half-living, half-dead. The stroke has crippled his left side.
3) Kate Boyne telling Hannah Mill (with Maud Mill and baby Mary Mill) the banshee story c. 1860. Kate Boyne sees Den from c. 1920 (60 years later), Hannah sees him, too. Kate sees someone else, a person Hannah cannot see (PEACE published in the mid-seventies, about 60 years after Hannah told Weer the story, and now Weer is telling the reader the story). Kate seems to have been awakened: first boundary violation.
Kate Boyne has a role in 4 out of 5 sections: first Hannah Mills tells Weer Katie's tale of the Banshee; then Doherty tells about Old Kate and St. B's boat; (nothing immediately obvious in section 3); then Kate's diary and the Quantrill encounter; finally Dan French's sidhe story.
4) Weer's fifth birthday party: first the women forge the treaty, then the fall of Bobby Black. (Text presents fall then forgery.)
5) Weer's Christmas presents at age five: the knife and a book. Is it the one containing "princess and her three suitors" and ben Yahya? Yes, it seems! (167, 194)
6) Weer's dream last night of age 25 in the Chinese garden. The dead bird
= Olivia, the toppled troll = Peacock; both dead by time Weer is 25. Dream like the china pillow story in style (the wall and the plain) and in reality (old man Weer revisiting young Weer's situation).
7) Kate seeing Weer; Weer believing he is imagining Dr. Van Ness; Weer believing he imagined visiting Dr. Van Ness.
8) Porcelain objects: the Napoleon figure, the elephant foot rest, the china pillow.
9) China Pillow Story. Wishes come true, even the wish to start over again. But it also reflects "a man who dreamed his future" which is a case of ben Yahya : Weer (age 9), as well as the "last man" fantasies : Weer (aged beyond death).
10) Smart's tale of Tilly. Lonely guy used to talking to himself -> frametale Weer (who may be talking to himself)
11) Writing materials: first mentioned in interruption of Tilly Tale (145), notebook and pen (next para), scribbling (159). The TAT card showing writer comes later (166), so it is not being originated there. Pen, paper, illness (194). Notebook and pen, writing in the apartment in the Commons (216).
Weer is no more "writing" anything than he is "imagining" anything; he is haunting through time and space. He is a confused ghost, but he is getting better!
12) Smart's vest and gold chain in the 1950s (159).
13) Frametale Weer hears door close (162).
14) Map problems: Gold's Books "1 1/2 blocks" from Macafee/Dubarry's (192), so on map switch Mulberry and Plum? And Gold's is by River Street, too. More than 3 blocks from Olivia's house/city library (192).
15) Bella's ghost article (195-200) and Gold's "reminiscences of vanished circles of wits ( . . . mostly about jokes played after midnight in the corridors of second rate hotels)" (168): possibly a mundane explanation for the event.
16) Wish he could find the Persian Room (200)
17) Weer leaves Dr. Van Ness's office as president again (236), post-stroke (250).
18) Two pictures (243), where letter said only one included and described Candy photo in g-string and pasties (238).
"tramp" woman who looks like Carole Lombard
tall man (presumed Tom Lavine the Canadian Giant) wearing vest and gold chain, standing next to another man
19) Dan French reminds Weer of who? First seems like ghost of coldhouse. Then seems like Doherty, which is the link to Kate Boyne.
20) Spray tower: a rain that dries before it hits the ground echoes that circle in the Inferno (258).
21) The old potato farmer drags his =left= leg (259).
=mantis=