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

[Thomas Bitterman]

On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:

> The hound of horror would be very checkable, especially if the
> archives really do bristle with stories.
>

And it's the only thing the Compiler sources.  All small towns have ghost
stories.
Bax wove this one into his story. It's always handy to have a few true
things in
even the biggest hoax.

If we assume the Compiler is not Wolfe that leaves the question of what kind
of
book this is supposed to be.  The Compiler is trying to pass it off as
non-fiction
in the sense that the people, places, letters and many of the events
actually
existed/happened.  The Compiler does not indicate that he thinks Bax killed
George.  That makes this a colorful missing person story, with some
questions
about how it came to be written.

First, how did the Compiler find out about the story in the first place?
There is
no indication that the story, even while it was happening, made much news in
Medicine Man, much less the outside world.

Second, how did the Compiler get all the letters he did?  He credits Millie,
Shell's
daughter, and Mrs. Pogach for providing the letters they had.  However,
there are
letters in the book that that group can't account for:
- the letters to and from Doris
- letters that were sent to Bax (assuming the senders did not keep copies)

Bax knew about the story because he was there.  And he got all the letters
because
he either wrote them or received them.  He kept copies to help keep his
story straight.
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