(urth) And Now For Something Completely

[Gerry Quinn]

From: Gerry Quinn 
> Pig appears to have carried some of Pas/Silk’s personality, which
> became trapped when he was blinded.
Pigs should be associated with Phaea, but there’s no obvious connection here.  Perhaps Wolfe was thinking of the phrase “a silk purse in a sow’s ear”.
As is generally the case in Wolfe, names are atmospheric, and often tell us something in story context (e.g. the animal-vegetable-mineral naming scheme in Viron) but more abstruse references never tell us anything of significance that isn’t made clear in other ways.   [Perhaps there are exception – I don’t know if this applies to the Soldier series, for example.  But elsewhere Rhea Silvia and Suzanne Delage are perhaps the best examples of very clear and direct allusions, and in both cases they only tell us something we already know.  Chasing vague allusions never leads anywhere important in Wolfe, unless it alerts you to where he has told you the same thing more plainly.]  
- Gerry Quinn
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