(urth) silver glass

[Adam Stephanides]

I'd said I wouldn't rehearse my objections to the Silk-to-Pig-to-Horn
scenario, but other people have raised the issue, here are some of my
reasons for believing that Silk's memories and personality are present in
the Narrator throughout his stay on the Whorl.

1. An old post of mine from the Whorl list, when the topic was first
thrashed out, from 2/14/01:

on 2/13/01 8:05 PM, Kevin J. Maroney at kmaroney at ungames.com wrote:

> To me, the giveaway that there's a huge amount of Silk in "the protagonist"
> from the moment that Horn moves into his body is the amount of minutiae
> that he displays about the religion of Pas and the Children while on the
> _Whorl_. 

Indeed; and not only his knowledge, but the sententiousness with which he
dispenses it.

> I know the conversation about "what do you call it when you read the future
> from the flight of birds?" is with Pig, and I believe he does a full
> exegesis of an excerpt from the Chrasmological Writings before the scene
> Michael discusses. The Chrasmomancy in particular strikes me as being
> unmistakably Silk; in fact, while reading the novel I felt it was somewhat
> out of character for Horn to be so Silkian. I should know better.....
> 
> Anyway, refresh my memory. Does the protagonist indulge in Chrasmomancy
> before he gives his eye to Pig? If so, I'd say that's strong evidence that
> he's largely Silk from the moment they merge.

He does, in Chapter 12, with Olivine, an exegesis that takes several pages.
Very Silkian.

There are additianal signs of Silk's presence in "Horn" on the Whorl.  For
one thing, there is his strong visceral reaction to the knife he finds at
his feet (13-14).  I don't see how to explain this, other than that he
unconsciously remembers this knife injuring him.  For another, almost as
soon as "Horn" appears on Whorl, he is thinking about Hyacinth and of how
much he wanted her and how much better things would have been if he had
gotten her (this motif recurs later, though I can't find the place at the
moment).


2. From another post of mine from the Whorl list, from 2/16/01, on his
behavior in and around Blood's mansion:

He first tells Pig he wants to enter the mansion alone, with no explanation
(118, 119).  When Pig insists on coming with him, he deceives him so as to
be able to go in alone (121).  Once inside, he gets "a sort of itch" to find
Hyacinth's bedroom, although he tells himself it's foolish.  He decides to
try to return to Hound, hoping to blunder into Hyacinth's bedroom on the
way.  And he does eventually find himself, by chance, in Hyacinth's dressing
chamber; although he's never been there before, he "knew with absolute
certainty" that that's what it is (134-35).  From this evidence "Horn" is
just as fixated upon Hyacinth as the Silk-possessed Pig is, though better
able to rationalize it.


3. The Narrator on the Whorl knows that he's in someone else's body, and he
knows that everyone he meets thinks he's Silk. Yet he never makes, or even
considers, the obvious conclusion that he's in Silk's body. I don't see any
good explanation for this, apart from the influence of Silk's personality
denying its own identity.


4. Is it really likely that Silk-in-Pig would possess Horn and let himself
be taken to Blue? Silk-in-Pig had told Horn that he wanted to return to
Mainframe to be reunited with Kypris, iirc. Would he then immediately embark
upon another exile from Kypris, with only a very uncertain hope of return?
Marc presented it as an act of self-sacrifice for Horn's sake; but, for all
the talk about Silk's saintliness, he put his personal feelings for Hyacinth
above his duty. I see no evidence that Silk-in-Pig would be any different.


As to Marc's questioning of the reliability of the third-person sections: to
be sure, from the point of view of realism it's rather implausible that the
Narrator's conversations with his family could have contained the
moment-to-moment detail of the Narrator's thoughts that we find in the the
"editors'" narrative. But I don't see that the book gains anything by
treating these sections as unreliable. Unlike in 5HC or PEACE, the
"editors'" reliability or lack of it isn't one of the things the book is
about. If we're going to say anything about the Narrator's time on the
Whorl, we have to assume that the accounts of it are reliable.

--Adam