(urth) Lives of the Great Beasts

[David Stockhoff]

I don't understand. You're right about "megatherian" and the linguistic 
pattern it fits. But what's your point otherwise?

Do you think Wolfe didn't know someone had come up with a similar term 
for the Great Beast? It's possible, but who really cares---at very 
least, they were doing the same thing. If he did know---and the man 
knows more than I do---it doesn't mean Wolfe imitated Crowley: it just 
means that words have resonance.

Is it possible to say "The Lives of the Daemons" and not invoke "The 
Lives of the Saints"? The thing about the linguistic pattern you note is 
that it depends on those very resonances.

All books are made of other books.

Jonathan Goodwin wrote:
> It is too much a stretch. If Crowley had called himself
> "megarutabaga," and Wolfe reproduced it, then yes. But "megatherian"
> fits with the book's linguistic pattern (use of extinct animal names)
> and context (actual great beasts, significant plot drivers) too
> clearly to reach back for a dubious allusion this way.
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 12:38 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:
>   
>> Or, the argument could be purely literary. Anybody NOT heard of the "Lives
>> of the Saints"?
>>
>> It's not much of a stretch to combine that with an interesting coinage for
>> the Beast of Revelation, whatever the source, in a novel about the
>> destruction of the world.
>>
>> Jonathan Goodwin wrote:
>>     
>>> On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 12:23 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>>>> I still don't see it as necessarily hinging on Crowley's anything.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> It's possible that I don't understand what you're arguing, then. I
>>> thought it went something like this: Crowley was a magician. Crowley
>>> called himself the "megatherion," his own coinage for the Beast of
>>> Revelation. There are magicians in BoTNS.* Therefore, the Lives of the
>>> Seventeen Megatherians likely refers to similar self-styled "great
>>> beasts" who were magicians rather than to the powers in the sea.
>>>
>>> This argument, if I've reproduced it correctly, goes wrong by
>>> overestimating the likely relevance of the first two steps, or,
>>> perhaps, by assuming a broader context for the second step than it in
>>> fact has.
>>>
>>> If you're also suggesting, as I think you might be, that a title
>>> modeled on Plutarch or Vasari would be inappropriate for still-living
>>> beasts and would be better applied to their vassals, perhaps the Group
>>> of Seventeen, who might well be thought of as magicians, that's one
>>> thing. I don't see why they would die, either, though. The title would
>>> be appropriate if they change while growing as much as I had earlier
>>> assumed, though.
>>>
>>> *Probably not really, though. Severian's suggestible, and it's
>>> directly stated that the Ascians and others are controlled by
>>> thoughts. Typhon's oath seems to be an incipient bit of mind-control
>>> in the same way that the duel with the magician is, or at least
>>> Severian perceives it that way; but it's difficult to ascribe this to
>>> magic or even charisma.
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