(urth) Short Story 81: Suzanne Delage

[Marc Aramini]

I wrote this step in the exegesis just for you, Gerry ;)

1) That an extraordinary event actually could be forgotten, so that he
can’t be trusted to reliably remember it. If he could remember it, then the
premise of the story is invalid. If we do not accept this premise, the
analysis can stop right here – the extraordinary event in his life is that
he never met Suzanne Delage.

On Wednesday, August 6, 2014, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:

>
> On 06/08/2014 01:45, Greg Bates wrote:
>
>> I have never been able to make hide or hair of this story! Someone needs
>> to hold Wolfe down and force him to explain what he was going for with it,
>> beyond an extended riff on Proust.
>>
>
> I think it is a twist on the theme of romantic love.  The narrator
> *doesn't* ever meet the woman who should have been the love of his life.
>  We are told early that he had two brief and insipid marriages that ended
> in divorce; he and his partners bored each other.  His life was lonely and
> dull.  There's a reason we are told these things, and it doesn't seem
> likely to have much to do with potential 'vampire' themes, or whatever.
>
> At the end he sees the daughter of Suzanne Delage, who - we are informed -
> looks just like her, and in his only display of emotional animation, he is
> instantly enchanted by her.
>
> Some malign conspiracy of chance or fate prevented him from meeting the
> woman who should have been his love.  He recognises the oddness of not ever
> meeting a particular small-town contemporary, but doesn't fully realise the
> implications - that is left to the reader.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
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