(urth) short story 7: The Green Wall Said

[DAVID STOCKHOFF]

________________________________
 From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> 
Sent: Thursday, April 5, 2012 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) short story 7: The Green Wall Said
 

 
From: David Stockhoff  
> Just read the story, and of course Gerry's summary is almost 
verbatim.
 
Well, Marc’s is more verbatim: I have added interpretations, i.e. I think 
it is reasonable to assume they are indeed in a flying saucer.

---I agree.

> 
Assuming everything the wall says is literally true, the aliens are exactly as I described: presumably biological, but FUNCTIONALLY as close 
> to robots as they could be. And yet at the same time they are also---again, FUNCTIONALLY---as close to classic 
> 
fairies-in-need-of-mortals as they could be. Plain as day.
>
> 
Naturally, there isn't a "fairy vibe," whatever that means, because as is usual with Wolfe, when he makes his themes this obvious---hidden in 
> 
plain sight---he does not exactly put up a sign.
 
I wasn’t being snippy with you when I said I didn’t get a fairy vibe.  
I was just saying that the aliens in the story do not remind me of fairies, as 
(for example) the Neighbours do to some extent. 

---The aliens don't really give much vibe or any kind at all, do they? We don't see them and they only type in all caps.

 
That said, I do have an issue with this sort of blithe 
identification.  Suppose that instead of what happened, the aliens had 
anally probed the humans just for the lulz.  Then they would have been 
functionally close to classic 
fairies-that-play-cruel-and-mischievous-tricks-on-mortals, would they not?

---No, that would have put them firmly in a different mythical tradition, that of alien abductions. This story is on the surface an alien abduction story and, in that context, a "probe joke" could be made (but was not, thank god---I don't think that trope was around at the time). But let's face it, it was written by someone whose brain is steeped in fantastic literature of all kinds. (Note there is no literary tradition of alien abduction.) So it's not really blithe, but necessary to guess what kind of "master story" Wolfe dressed up in the superficial clothing of flying saucers. I see it, so I see what Wolfe sees.

 
So what is the explanatory power of identifying a given race of aliens with 
fairies, if the identification is only in the form of ‘they do this, so they are 
like the-kind-of-fairies-that-do-this?’  Can we predict anything that is 
foreshadowed by the identification with fairies in such a case?

---Literary criticism is not science. I can't design an experiment to elucidate a law to help predict an outcome. I can only point out patterns---and Lee and I and others, including yourself I believe, were just recently discussing this very pattern of similarities/differences of robots and fairies. As it happens, you saw the master story without seeing the many other correlations I saw, so my observation is not needed to reach the conclusion you reached. But other readers might need it, and it certainly deepened my appreciation of Wolfe as master pattern-shifter/dressmaker.

 
In ‘A Cabin on the Coast’, as a contrasting example, the identification of 
fairies with saucer aliens is explicit and strong, and once you observe it (and 
Wolfe *does* put up big neon signs) the end of the story is foreshadowed, among 
other things.  Does that apply to ‘The Green Wall Said’ - and if it 
doesn’t, what is the benefit in making it?

---That's a modernized Silkie tale. As you say, the identification is quite clear, and you know the protagonist will get screwed in the end. In the story we are discussing, very little happens. But once you see the deep story, you can read the chatter of the humans and speculate on whether the saucer fairies will get what they need from the humans. The end is left open but doubtful. To me, the question of what random, unmet aliens want is as meaningless as it is to the humans. But the resonance I get with the master story available to me makes me care.
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