(urth) The Sorcerer's House Questions (*Major Spoilers*)

[Craig Brewer]

>>I just think the story is lame if the whole thing is a fabrication of

>>Bax's, because --after all-- it already IS a fabrication by Wolfe.

Perhaps. But I'm intrigued by the idea that this one might not just be Wolfe-as-usual. After all, there's a lot in this one that makes me think there might be other dimensions to work out. Maybe the game this time isn't "figure out the puzzle" but instead "see how the lies illuminate the reality."

Say, for the sake of argument, that nothing supernatural actually happened. Then we can ask why Bax would bother to create this whole farce? On the one hand, it freaks out his brother, gets Bax his wife, and is a full-on revenge and con scheme -- that's the plot level. But, in the story itself, we might also see Bax working out his failed relationship with his brother -- a bit of psychological allegory, perhaps. The whole "good twin/bad twin" thing with Emlyn and Ieuan is like him trying to decide if either he or George is the "good" or "bad" twin. There's the issue of absent/mysterious fathers from two brothers who have fought their whole lives and competed with each other over how to define success in terms of money, women, and careers. In other words, all of the "fantasy" elements could well be Bax coming up with little allegories about his relationship to George. It's myth-making in a perfectly Wolfean sense: using one myth to illuminate another
 story, but this time it's "Faerie" illuminating a broken relationship rather than, say, Norse/chivalric motifs illuminating a Christian story (TWK).

Again, I'm not convinced that this is right, but I'll hold out the possibility. One thing that keeps coming up is how the whole issue of the nature of trust and betrayal appears over and over.

Take the "Silver Bullets" chapters (22 and 23) alone, it's almost pervasive: Bax and Emlyn go back and forth about "promising" and whether they're telling each other the truth about werewolves/facefoxes (160-1), Bax having the policeman ride with him for directions even though he doesn't have a license (a tiny but successful "con," 164), the way Bax describes Trelawny as someone who trusted once and decided never to again (164), the entire scene about how to determine the truth of Bax's identity and whether or not to trust someone (and how difficult it is for Bax/Doris to trust the lawyer) (164-8), the wonderful image of Bax being able to write two different things with two different hands (167-8), the rigmarole about spoken versus written ways that Skotos gave identifying markers about Bax (166), whether or not the police could trust George's story or everyone else's (170), whether or not Bax wanted to lie about George hitting him (170), lying about the
 gun being loaded (171, 174), whether Skotos was a "daredevil" or a "scoundrel" (175), Bax explaining in the most detail so far about how he defrauded George and his friends (177-8), Bax lecturing Ieuan about trying to deceive a deceiver, again in the context of brothers deceiving each other (181), meeting Cathy Ruth, who claims proficiency at writing very public lies (187-88), the note in the box that could mean different things either magical or mundane (i.e., kill a werewolf or discover who the son/mother is) (190, 192).

And this, at the very end of chapter 23: "I don't say it often, because anyone can say anything. Words really mean very little. Men can be defrauded with words and women can be seduced with words, and it really comes to about the same thing." (195)

And the name of the next chapter: "Never Trust."

And why "Silver Bullets" twice? Dull material that can easily rust its shiny, fantastic surface away...and kills magical, two-faced creatures? heh...

Granted, a lot of that is thematic rather than plot-level details. But I guess I just have a hard time believing that such a careful writer as Wolfe would create a narrator whose primary biographical signifier from the beginning of the story is "released prisoner convicted of fraud" and then have us listen to him describe an utterly outrageous story of magic and luck with total credulity when he's also cramming the narrative full of overtones about how everyone could potentially be conning everyone else, from the newspaper people to the real estate agents to the jeweler trying to lowball Bax on the coin to the psychic with fake crystal balls.

>>If we treat the story as a work by Bax
>>instead of Wolfe, what is the value of that? Shall we investigate the
>>quality of Bax's novel instead?

If some of the stuff I've just said is right, then that's PRECISELY what we're supposed to be doing. If...

Craig