(urth) Random thoughts on AEG

[Nigel Price]

6	I raised King Kong, 30s pulp and reproducing the cliches of the genre:
Dave Lebling addressed the whole 30s pulp issue brilliantly back on Sat Sep
27 19:12:09 PDT 2008...

>>The book is obviously built around an homage
>>to the pulp fiction of the 1930s. Detective
>>story, theater story, Lovecraftian horror,
>>detective story, "strange powers" story (notice
>>the mention of a man named Cranston who could
>>disappear), South Seas adventure/love story,
>>and on and on. Wolfe is having a lot of fun
>>here. He's also using all the cliches of the
>>genres he includes, right up to the (grating
>>to today's ears) naive and friendly/dangerous
>>Natives to the Japanese Com Pu Ter who can't
>>pronounce Ls. None of that makes any sense in
>>2100, but in 1935 it was what pulps had.

Yes, and we can include the awful faux English accent of King Kanoa, which
reproduces the awfully mannered accents used by supposedly British
characters in American films of the 30s and 40s.

While we're on King Kanoa ("King Canoe"? King Canute?), there are a couple
of spellings in AEG that had me wondering whether the book was either poorly
proofread (like my posts!) or set in a parallel universe. King Kanoa refers
to his school as "Eaton", when he presumably means "Eton", and earlier in
the book, Gideon Chase quotes a poet he refers to as "Spencer", when he
actually means Edmund Spenser. (Others have made the same mistake, including
those who arranged his memorial in Westminster Abbey, if memory serves me
right, but still, Wolfe should know it's Spenser with an S!)

For anyone interested, Gideon chase quotes Spenser on page 78 of AEG:

>>Gideon nodded to himself as he signed.
>>"'One may buy gold at a price too deare.'
>>Who said that? Spencer?"

The quotation comes from line 108 of the August eclogue in Spenser's "The
Shepheardes Calender". The phrase is proverbial, however, and Spenser was
neither the first nor last to use it.

In the context of allegorical interpretations of AEG and the significance of
gold in the story, Matthew Henry's use of the proverb is interesting. In his
"Concise Commentary", he writes concerning the Parable of the Pearl of Great
Price in Matthew 13.44-52:

>>A man may buy gold too dear, but not this
>>Pearl of great price.

Nigel