(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: new _Peace_ edition & afterword?

[Andrew Bollen]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:

> https://twitter.com/mxpalmieri/status/269198900693434368
>
> > The new edition of Gene Wolfe's PEACE is in da house, with a new
> afterword by @neilhimself. Available 12/11!
>




The Neil Gaiman thing annoys me. In my opinion he's a forgettable, mediocre
genre writer & having him constantly endorse Wolfe is very
tail-wagging-dog-ish.

Whatever. I read PEACE again for the first time in many years a few weeks
ago, after the Kindle version came out. I hadn't really gotten into it when
I was a young'un - too many old people, too musty - but now, good lord,
what a wonderful, mysterious book it is!

The biggest mystery for me, right now: Why did Olivia marry Julius? He's
short, deformed, half-educated, church-ish and not apparently wealthy at
the time of the marriage. Why him?

I think the wizard in the princess & her suitors story must be identified
with Julius. The wizard is also deformed, and said to "live exclusively on
tea", burlesquing Julius' teetotalism. Anyway, it would make a good story
for the wizard to win the princess' hand in the end, perhaps shedding his
skins and deformed guise to reveal a young prince, or something. But in the
absence of any details about *how* he won her hand that doesn't shed much
light on Olivia's decision.

Weer's dream of the walled garden is surely a dream of Olivia's soul, in
some sense, at the time of her death when he was about 25. It is a very
poignant image - Olivia maintaining high walls against the outside world
and ordering herself within them in beautiful, tranquil symmetry. The
resonance with the princess in the tower is clear, and the three objects
Weer sees - the bird, the troll and the paper lantern blowing in the wind -
link to the suitors in the princess' story: the troll for the gnome prince;
the merchant prince's bird; and the air prince's windiness. Olivia let
little bits of Peacock, Macafee and Blaine through her wall - but just
little bits, no more than litter really.

There is nothing in the garden to suggest that Julius was ever let inside,
and to some extent that's the answer, I think. Julius was a man she could
marry (in a time and place where it would be far more conenient to be
married than not) without emotional demands, without having to let him into
her garden or leave her tower. He's in his basement laboratory, she's
upsatirs in her bath or out enjoying assignations with her lovers,
protected from any risk of serious entanglement by her married state.

But still ...  I also wonder if perhaps Julius used some kind of potion on
her ...
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