(urth) Fw: Re: Shades of beige

[Stuart Hamm]

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--- On Wed, 10/8/08, Stuart Hamm <hammstu at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
From: Stuart Hamm <hammstu at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Shades of beige
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2008, 4:49 PM


If Carrie is a beast-woman (and I still don't see anything to suggest that)

Page 206
Gideon is explaining how to spot a werewolf "They're sensitive to odors and insensitive to colors."
page 207
"Cassie had received the first covered dish.When she removed the cover the aroma made her mouth water in actual fact."

Not like GW to telegraph it...maybe the being insensitive to colors figures in as well...

S

     Mobile   (415) 786-3624
     Skype   stuart.hamm
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--- On Wed, 10/8/08, Mr Thalassocrat <thalassocrat08 at gmail.com> wrote:
From: Mr Thalassocrat <thalassocrat08 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Shades of beige
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2008, 4:21 PM




On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 2:36 PM, Adam Thornton <adam at io.com> wrote:



On Oct 6, 2008, at 10:47 PM, Mr Thalassocrat wrote:

We get an explanation from Gid for at least one character's preferred colour styling: werewolves wear shades of grey.


Sure.  Which is why all the color focus has to mean something. 
 
 
One of the people who kidnaps/arrests Margaret wears "a birch suit with those black stripes". Another wolf? A hyena? A zebra, perhaps? 
 
Scott wears a "bone-white-and-Chablis seersucker suit". A white wolf? An incontinent polar bear? Anyway, something unpleasant, no doubt. (Gid actually says shades of grey or white, for werewolves.)

 
If Carrie is a beast-woman (and I still don't see anything to suggest that), then I guess the color preference rule would make her beast-part something green. Tree frog? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Red-eyed_Tree_Frog_-_Litoria_chloris_edit1.jpg I guess maybe not :) 

 
 


Eg: Almost all of the story is tightly focused on Cassie - we see what she sees, and so on. But there are three scenes where the focus is on Gid sans Cassie: at the start, when he's shot, and when he's spirited away from Cassie's apartment after being shot. After that: no more Gid-focus. I really don't understand that. If you're going to shift focus to another character at some points, why not at others, and why not to others?


And the first scene *makes no sense* as a framing device.  Right?  I mean, *The President Of The United States*?  *Really?* 

 
 
Pick up thre book, skim the first few pages, toss it. Risky! But I guess the little god&evil dialog must be intended to frame a theme. I do find it quite difficult to unpack Gid's position on this, so I'm not sure how this is supposed to work.





A bunch other things. Overall, either there's a lot of hidden stuff going on here  (and Wolfe has taken some scary risks that people will just toss the book without caring enough to puzzle it out); or else he's jumped the Shark-God (except for the beautiful writing in the last third).


I enjoyed this one a lot more than _Pirate Freedom_.

I think there's something to be gained from looking at it as a Lovecraftian story.
 
I hope that isn't something you need to do to make sense of it - I have zero interest in HPL. Which obviously may be why I have probs with the book.
 
Here's one thing I don't get at all: India calls Gil her "Hitler". ????????????

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