(urth) Mythic Women in BOTNS

[James Wynn]

By the way...

There is an alternate universe where stories taking place on the High 
Seas are as popular as stories about boy wizards are in this one. In 
that universe, Wolfe is a literary god.

u+16b9


On 1/28/2011 9:56 AM, James Wynn wrote:
>
>> Do you see this story as having anything to do with the _Sun_ cycle? I
>> feel it should have, as there are three stories called 'The * who *
>> the Sun', and the other two are certainly connected. But if so, it's
>> hard to make out.
>
> No. Well, not directly. Wolfe is tilling in the same mythological soil 
> as the Sun cycle. But by the same token he is tilling in the same soil 
> as The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Pirate Freedom, and (my favorite Wolfe 
> short story) "Counting Cats in Zanzibar". That is, it is a 'Flying 
> Dutchman' story (if you kill the Flying Dutchman you become the Flying 
> Dutchman).
>
> And, also, the horror story "Hunter Lake" (collected in "Starwater 
> Strains" is a Flood story with a Flying Dutchman theme. The thing is, 
> "The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun" is just a very Wolfean story.
>
> Incidentally, the collection "Strange Travelers" is sort of a 
> companion to "Innocents Aboard". Once could well imagine them being 
> happily combined into a single volume.
>
>>> Unfortunately, that story revealed that Wolfe is capable of major
>>> mistakes in literary references.
>> Can you expand on that?
>
> On reviewing my evidence for this, I'm inclined to take it back. That 
> is, I suspect Wolfe was right based on the reference text he was 
> probably using. Let me explain.
>
> The monkey is from the ancient Egyptian cosmological work "The Book of 
> Am-Tuat". The whole ending of the short story is that in that book, 
> the image of the monkey and only the image of the monkey has a little 
> "star" over it. But when I checked it out, my source showed the same 
> star over multiple characters in the Tenth Hour of the Night and in 
> other hours of Am-Tuat. When I had my copy of 'Innocents Aboard' 
> signed, I confronted Wolfe on this subject and he just shrugged "Huh, 
> well you know more about it than me. I thought there was only one". 
> Since I really like this story I was disappointed in that answer.
>
> However, after looking for online references to answer you, I now 
> believe that Wolfe was using as a source, EA Wallis Budge's "The Gods 
> of Egyptians".
> http://books.google.com/books?id=xBtLAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA198&ots=ZOQlT_aWIh&dq=monkey%20%22with%20a%20star%20over%20his%20head%22&pg=PA197#v=onepage&q&f=false 
>
> It is a classic and seminal 19th century reference. And in the 
> drawings of that work, I see that only the monkey has a star over his 
> head.
>
> Incidentally, I personally believe Wolfe was smarter than his sources 
> and correctly deduced that the "star" is the Sun...that is, the that 
> gods portrayed are stars and star groupings along the ecliptic. To me, 
> this is seems like a good bet from the more recent images. So, good 
> for him.
>
> u+16b9
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