(urth) Severa

[Lee Berman]

>Andrew Mason: Bear in mind, though, that Wolfe said he thought everyone would get
>the secret of the inhumi. He suggested the reason they didn't was that they couldn't 

>grasp the thought of people not preying on one another. 

 

Where is this quote from? I think I remember something like that.  Anyway, that sentiment 

is quite misanthropic. It may be that Wolfe thinks that lowly of the human race in general. 

But also of his readers?

 

>But I don't think that was the reason: I think that the real reason is
>that it was not mysterious enough. There is a lot of stuff in the archives with people 

>saying 'It can't be that: it's too obvious'. 

 

I am not among those people. There are many Wolfe mysteries to which the solutions are

given quite freely. For me, obviousness alone is not a disqualification. In the case

of the inhumi secret, the problem I see is that "you are what you eat" simply doesn't 

seem like much of a secret. Why is it so carefully protected? (I've heard the arguments;

they all sound post-hoc and very weak to me).

 

Now, if you combine that secret with James and Marc's idea: "We inhumi are what we eat

and we only became the beings you see flying around because our original form is that of

a parasitic vine, a form in which we still hide. As long as there are vines on Blue there 

will be inhumi." There I think you might have a secret the inhumi would want to protect. 

I've spoken my piece on the "flying through space" fib of the inhumi. If they are hiding as

vines, this "unassisted spaceflight by animals" fib is another part of keeping that secret.

 

>But I don't think it was ever meant to be a secret from us; it was a
>secret from the people of Blue, It couldn't be stated straight out,
>because the books had an in-story author who had promised to keep the
>secret; but it was conveyed (in Wolfe's view, at least) as clearly as
>possible.

 

I hear you Andrew. It just doesn't work for me, literarily. Sort of like Chekhov's gun.

We are told of a deep secret in "chapter 1" but in "chapter 3" after a very long wait 

and a dramatic build-up we get- "inhumi are what they eat"? Such an anti-climax. Something 

we already know.  Why would an author choose to do this? Why would Wolfe break the writer's 

rules he has said he is bound by? You can't get your audience hungry for steak then give

them crackers. Maybe in the middle, but not at the end of such a long story.