(urth) Pike's ghost

[Larry Miller]

Silks theorising on Mucor and Pike occurs near the end of Lake Ch. 9.
And Mucor is not actually Bloods daughter thus there is no familial
relation to Pike.

On 11/23/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Andrew Mason
>> Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
>> > My feeling, though, is that it?s not so much a ghost as a vision sent by
>> >
>> > the Outsider
>> > Silk he?s on the right track.  But of course, this is something that can
>> >
>> > be both.
>
>> Well, the Outsider can certainly send spirits of the dead. If it were
>> just a vision, though, and not a spirit, one would have to find soem
>> other explanation for Wolfe's remarks about putting a ghost in one of
>> his works.
>
> Yes, but maybe the ghost is not Pike but some other character in some other
> book.  Pike does indeed seem like the best candidate, though.
>
>
>> > I don?t see Mucor?s appearance as a real problem.  She is fascinated by
>> > Silk
>> >  and is clearly following him since the exorcism.  Next day she appears
>> > twice in
>> > the tunnels.  She appears when Echidna possesses Marble, and nobody is
>> > saying
>> > that?s too much of a coincidence and Echidna must have brought her
>> > along.  Even
>> > if Echidna likes her (didn?t she say that sometime?)
>
>> Mucor's appearance is indeed not a problem. I'm treating  that as the
>> basic fact which needs no special explanation, and the other two as
>> consequences of it. The problem is three ghostly appearances at the
>> same time. it seems unlikely they have three separate explanations. To
>> be sure, coincidences do happen in the solar universe, and that's not
>> too surprising in a world which has a providential God, but in this
>> case Silk actually theorises about a connection between Mucor and
>> Pike, which would be an oddly misleading clue if it was just an
>> acident that they were both there at once. (Silk's theory might be
>> wrong, but in the absence of something very clear which confounds it,
>> it seems reasonable to think he's right.)
>
> I don't recall Silk's theorising.  But there *is* actually a connection
> between Mucor and Pike: she is his granddaughter, even if fewer realise it
> than Wolfe expected.  Could that be the purpose of Pike's ghost?
>
>
>> > Oreb is the tricky one.  Silk comes up with an explanation that is at
>> > least rational but nobody believes (maybe that?s a hint from Wolfe that
>> > the ghost is real).  I?m not convinced by your idea that Mucor gives
>> > others
>> > special powers ? I don?t remember any instances of it.
>
>> Well, you might say 'except this one' - which, given Wolfe's known
>> tendency to think things are obvious when they aren't, can't be ruled
>> out. But it doesn't seem too surprising to me - if she can summon
>> spirits of the dead, why might she not also summon spirits of the
>> living - given that the living have spirits which can leave their
>> bodies, as her own case implies?
>
> It's fairly similar to my argument that she might have searched for Silk by
> possessing a bird.  It's reasonably plausible in terms of stuff Mucor can
> do, but there's no other obvious incident of her doing such a thing.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
>
>
>
>
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