(urth) Babbiehorn?: Was: a sincere question mostly for roy

Marc Aramini marcaramini at yahoo.com
Wed Nov 16 07:02:34 PST 2011



--- On Tue, 11/15/11, Larry Miller <decanus1284 at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Larry Miller <decanus1284 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Babbiehorn?: Was: a sincere question mostly for roy
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2011, 5:40 PM
> I attempted a brief timeline of Short
> Sun during my reread.  This is
> from my notes.
> OBW-flashback-Horn sent to Pajarocou.  Voyage across
> Blue.  Horn
> boards lander.     
>    IGJ-flashback-events on Green.  Horn
> dies and
> is transported to the Whorl inside Silk.
>      
>    RTTW-flashback-SilkHorn in the
> Whorl.  Encounters Pig.
> Leaves Whorl and returns to Blue.  Becomes Rajan of
> Gaon.  OBW-frame
> story- Rajan begins writing his book during war with
> Han.  Escapes
> with Evensong.           
>   IGJ-frame story- Rajan finds himself in
> Blanko and becomes involved with thier war as
> Incanto.  Incanto begins
> astral travels to Green and Red Sun Whorl.  Incanto
> flees Blanko with
> Hide and Jahlee.           
>              
>    RTTW-frame story- Incanto
> and the others head toward New Viron and are captured by
> Dorp.
> Arrives home.  The wedding.  HornSilk leaves for
> the Whorl and
> departs.
> 
> On 11/15/11, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> As a caveat, I admit that I've just read OBW for
> only the third time
> >> and don't recall whether Babbie appears in IGJ or
> RTTW at all. Also, I
> >> note that the narrative seems to follow this
> pattern:
> >>
> >>
> OBWHORN----------IGJHORN----------RTTWHORN?----------OBWSILKHORN----------IGJSILKHORN----------RTTWSILKHORN
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Short Sun is literally a novel meant to be read
> twice, since Silkhorn
> >> is narrating Horn's tale as well as his own. Maybe
> it would be useful
> >> to abbreviate these as OBWS, IGJH, and so on.
> >
> > I went back a bit further and saw that Marc has
> actually done a good bit
> > of work on this general problem. If I understand
> correctly, his idea is
> > that Horn left Horn and perhaps went into Babbie. That
> leaves only Silk
> > (with a touch of Neighbor?). This makes a lot more
> sense than Babbie
> > going into him, and explains why OBWSilk briefly
> relates being Babbie
> > but otherwise forgets Babbie. He never knew him
> anyway. It also explains
> > (sort of) why the narrator (Horn at that point) is
> plainly about to die
> > and then gets up and walks away.
> >
> > Marc, have you ever drawn a timeline of
> narrator/narrative through the
> > SS books? Not down to the paragraph level, of course,
> but chapter by
> > chapter might be possible.

Mine is a bit different.

Horn begins his quest on Blue, dies in the pit (his blood is used to engender the new generation of nieghbors and neighbor Horn, a separate entity).  The island is made up of giant herbs and the maw of the herb is the pit.

Silk has killed himself on the whorl,and Horn goes into him, BUT IT IS ONLY HORN!  Pig has Silver Silk inside him, and Horn gives up his eye to download Silver Silk back into the body.

The main narration of OBW then is Hornsilk, but Horn leaves the body for the most part and flees into Babbie at the end of OBW under the tree.  Then it is Silk in denial that he is Silk the rest of the time, but he doesn't admit until he actually reaches Horn's home.

Babbie is then Horn: he says huh huh huh and gets mad when Horn's son is threatened because he is trying to tell them he is horn.




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