PEACE: the source story

Hello there?Urth.net, long time lurker, first time poster. I am suffering, at the moment, a specific mental ailment, Eireneomania. During my third consecutive read, an allusion that had been nibbling away in my brain finally chewed its way free. "An Inhabitant of Carcosa", by Ambrose Bierce, is the the source story for PEACE. http://www.ambrosebierce.org/carcosa.html In interviews, Gene Wolfe always points to one or another story as the root source of his story, the seed of the idea. Never would I say anything is 100% with Wolfe, but, I will say it now: this story is the seed of PEACE. I believe this will also support the theory that Weer is dead, though I am not sure anyone at this point believed otherwise. My favorite interpretation of PEACE places Weer's ghost in the far future, after the fall of our civilization. "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" would support that hypotheses. I hope this is not a repeat of something previously posted to Urth. I did a search on Urth, and the Internet in general, and found nothing similar. Have a read, any feedback would be appreciated. Please tell me I am not crazy. Thanks, Chris Keiser

My head asplode. I need to reread the Bierce, but I don't think I disagree. Adam

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512

The first time through that story, my head asploded as well, until I looked up the dates and realized that The King in Yellow had borrowed the names like Hyades and Carcosa from this story, rather than some other avenue of influence. The second time, I don't really see any smoking gun. There must surely have been other stories where the narrator is a ghost who finally realizes his spectral nature; just off the top of my head, I'm sure there was a Twilight Zones episode like that. Do we have any connection beside the generic ghostly narrator? - -- gwern -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEAREKAAYFAkokfFgACgkQvpDo5Pfl1oL3mACgnBT43YiP0fbxJjshdegSGoKH ItoAn1X2Ooj/hI3ic5JM92hT/R6UVW8P =AbTZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

- -- gwern That is certainly an honest request, considering Gene Wolfe. 1. Hoseib Alar Robardin finds his grave entangled in the roots of a tree. 2. The narrator does not know that he is dead. 3. Obviously, The inclusion of the Morryster's Marvells of Science shows that Wolfe is familar with Bierce (of course, is there anything with which he isn't familiar?). The inclusion of the three mythos tomes, (Bierce, Lovecraft and Bloch), another substrata of the novel, displays more than a passing fancy regarding authors borrowing fictional books from each other, and thereby strengthening their 'reality'. 4. The motif "all are dead, all is gone, I am alone" is repeated many times in PEACE. 5. Savages now inhabit the world ... Iroquois inherit Cassionsville after Blaine dies 6. "I continued, 'I am ill and lost. Direct me, I beseech you, to Carcosa.' ... very similar to Weer's conversations with many characters. 7. And the smoking gun ... "A chorus of howling wolves saluted the dawn. I saw them sitting on their haunches, singly and in groups, on the summits of irregular mounds and tumuli filling a half of my desert prospect and extending to the horizon. And then I knew that these were ruins of the ancient and famous city of Carcosa." Gene Wolfe is obviously his own grandfather, and has traveled back in time, influencing Ambrose to include the image of Wolf in his short story, so that a young Wolf may appropriate it for his first novel. ;-) Seriously, I think I will reread PEACE again, find perhaps some textual proof. Thanks,

Chris, you're definitely crazy. But only because you have laid eyes on things Man was not meant to see, and uncovered secrets Man was not meant to know. So you should just go with it!

"In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigor for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay." Silk died the first kind, Horn the second?

Actually, I was speaking specifically about the Novel PEACE, but, it may apply there also.

These metaphysical ideas were around long before Bierce. Not to talk him down: Ambrose Bierce is excellent. His descriptions of combat and war particularly. I don't doubt that Wolfe has read him. .

I can't disagree with you. Those were not novel ideas from Bierce. What I was suggesting was that this short story was the seed of the idea for Wolfe. He always seems to mention "Oh, I got that story from [this or that story]."

That is possible. Someone should ask him at some point, and we will know. I wouldn't be surprised if Wolfe's descriptions of war and combat owed something to Bierce. .