(urth) Fiction, halves, twins

brunians at brunians.org brunians at brunians.org
Mon Apr 26 07:34:03 PDT 2010


Gene's started playing with the tarot?

That should be interesting.

I see I do need to reread this soonly.

.



> I agree that, in the end, it just doesn't make much sense if the whole
> thing was a ruse. Or rather, the first half of the book would make sense.
> But after George gets arrested, or at least after he gets released and
> isn't likely to be receiving letters any more, it just gets too weird and
> difficult to figure out how and why Bax would keep up with the fiction.
>
> But speaking of "halves," I've been wondering about that. The book is 44
> chapters long. The middle chapters 22 and 23 have the same name ("Silver
> Bullets"). Somewhere in a review, Neil Gaiman mentioned that he thought
> the Tarot was significant and the 22 major arcana cards might have
> something to do with that. I'm not quite sure where he would go with that,
> though.
>
> I do wonder if the two halves of the book are at all connected to the
> ideas of twins. I wouldn't go so far as to say that one half was written
> by one twin and the second half secretly written by another, but,
> nonetheless, something is going on there.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Jonathan Goodwin <joncgoodwin at gmail.com>
> To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Sent: Sun, April 25, 2010 2:09:47 PM
> Subject: Re: (urth) TSH: Ted's identity
>
> As it would reveal things, deliberately or not, about the fabricator's
> state of mind, the details about those characters would matter. If you
> were looking for unconscious revelation, then the most apparently
> insignificant details might be particularly important.
>
> I myself don't quite think this is the best approach, but the fact
> that it has occurred to several of the book's early readers shouldn't
> be ignored.
>
> On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 2:03 PM, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
>> Gwern Branwen quoted and wrote:
>>> > Ummm. This makes it clear that Emlyn does _NOT_ know what happened;
>>> > for he begins by saying "I imagine..."
>>>
>>> I read that as the imagine is about Emlyn's speculation about
>>> Goldwurm's thoughts and reasons for not keeping Ambrosius around to
>>> question. I don't read it as Emlyn imagining the entire scenario, and
>>> only actually knowing 'Goldwurm was killed by someone who may've been
>>> named Ambrosius.' I suspect I'm not alone in this.
>>
>> Quite so. In addition, Emlyn is, in effect, the only source of
>> information
>> we have concerning Ambrosius and Goldwurm, so we are stuck with his
>> testimony.
>>
>> Let's cut to the chase: Emlyn is supposed to be a boy from Faerie, as
>> are
>> the two sorcerers. If none of the faerie and/or supernatural stuff is
>> real,
>> then nothing about these characters matters. Speculations regarding
>> ghostly
>> Ted's identity and whether or not he was also Ambrosius and what the wet
>> thing he left behind may have been are fools' exercises. There can be no
>> magic rings, werewolves, a talking vixen, a sorcerer's tower in faerie,
>> a
>> house that expands and has windows onto faerie, or eerie forests far
>> larger
>> than any map shows them to be.
>>
>> -Roy
>>
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