(urth) Sightings at Twin Mounds

[Marc Aramini]

let me just address point 2 specifically first: the frame is the story
because it is culled together from second hand sources: we never actually
see our Wendigo/victim before he is pulled backwards to become a folktale
in his death except through "frame" accounts.

Third: he is mistaken as a monster in the past because, if I am not
mistaken, that is a cultural myth of the Indians - he is their bogey man.
A man from the future who inexplicably appears is named as a Wendigo
because that would be one of their few explanations.  Like us seeing
someone appear in the closet and labelling him the bogeyman.

The genre could certainly be unsolved mysteries.  Your reading is a modern
murder with no real supernatural elements.  The "modern guy gets sucked
back by his proximity with aliens or fairies to become a local myth" is a
supernatural story of the possily unexplainable.

I'm not saying I don't like your exegesis, but I wish their was at least
some hint of our narrator finding people tasty looking. Yum.



On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Robert Pirkola <rpirkola at hotmail.com>
wrote:

>  If the straightforward interpretation of the story is all there is,
> several points would need
> to be clarified to satisfy me.
>
> First, why does Wolfe believe that this story, unlike all the other UFO,
> black dog, vanishing
> hitchhikers, etc., stories he has read, is satisfactory where the others
> are not?
>
> Second, what does Wolfe mean when he hints that "the frame is the whole
> story"?
>
> Third, what would be the point of mentioning the cannibalism of the
> wendigo or the wendigo at all?
> The story would work just as well in the original interpretation without
> the wendigo.
>
> Fourth, in the Introduction to Storeys from the Old Hotel, Wolfe makes
> special mention of his fondness for
> *Sasquatch: the Apes Among Us* by John Green.  This book, though I have
> not read it, is said to be a
> definitive collection of documented Bigfoot sightings up to the time of
> its publication in 1978.
> I think this helps bolster the fact that the story we read is an excerpt
> from a similar book
> authored by the narrator on UFOs or such-like.  This shows that the
> "genre" of this story is most
> certainly that of the Unsolved Mysteries category.  Of course, the most
> famous Sasquatch "evidence"
> is the old Patterson-Gimlin film of the man in the ape suit ambling away
> from the camera before
> giving one last over-the-shoulder glance.  Thus we have the firmly
> established genre of the supernatural
> myth being taken up by so-called investigators who themselves are
> fabricating everything but
> the underlying myth.  It could be said that the narrator of *Sightings at
> Twin Mounds* is engaging
> in just such an endeavor, with his motives a tad more perverse.  In fact,
> the cannibalism is really not essential
> to my reading of the story either.  The narrator could just as easily have
> murdered Robakowski
> without eating him, but that brings us back to my third question, above.
>  That aside, if the narrator just
> murdered Robakowski to set up his elaborate supernatural hoax, he may have
> deliberately placed the "modern materials"
> at the mound.  He might then have waited until the materials were
> discovered to do his write-up of the tale,
> that being the perfect final note for his fabricated supernatural event.
>
>  Fifth, Wolfe states that the UFO, etc.,stories that he enjoys reading
> and whose style he wishes to emulate
> in *Sightings at Twin Mounds* are "supposedly factual".  If he is indeed
> writing a story in that "style" it
> stands to reason that his story as well would be made up of the
> "supposedly factual".
>
> Finally, Wolfe states in the Introduction that he likes the story.  The
> stories he comes out and says he likes
> or is proud of are some of his richest works.  E.g. *Beech Hill, A Solar
> Labyrinth, **Parkroads -- A Review*, to name
> a few just from *SftOH*.  Again the original interpretation is the one
> invited by a first reading such that it seems
> unlikely Wolfe would be so fond of a rather straightforward sf piece that
> requires only one trip through its pages
> unless it held greater secrets.  He also says that it is an "experiment"
> which could account for its deviation from
> the well established norms of his other prevaricating narrators.
>
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