(urth) Free Live Free

[Marc Aramini]

*Uncle Sam'l “Free” Whitten as America and Its Dream and the Mad
Electro-Magnetic Darkness of the Modern World: Free Live Free*

Marc Aramini

In between Gene Wolfe’s labyrinthine New Sun series and the equally
complicated Latro novels, settings so far removed from the present that any
critique or endorsement of modern society was at best second hand or
indirect, *Free Live Free* represents a marked departure, at first
depicting a world contemporaneous with its composition. *Free Live Free,
There Are Doors, Castleview, *and *Pandora by Holly Hollander* are fairly
unique in their approach to realistic modern settings in Wolfe. The earlier
*Peace* avoided the seedy day to day qualities of the opening of *Free Live
Free* by granting its narrator the ultimate power of the memoir – he was
free to jump from time to time and suppress any memory or fact with which
he did not want to face. The characters in *Free Live Free* are afforded no
such luxury during the obstacles they face, with the omnipresent third
person narrator peering into all their weaknesses and failures. Yet
even in *Free
Live Free*, an unrelenting look at adult powerlessness in a hostile, cold
city, it is revealed that Ben Free, too, has jumped from time to time and
suppressed and eradicated past, imperfect versions of himself. Urban
fantasy isn’t even a great attempt to define exactly what *Free Live Free *is
– a naturalistic exploration of ordinary, low mimesis characters in the
first two thirds of the work almost echo the story “Forlesen” in a much
less fantastic set up. Urban allegory is perhaps a better description.

While it is a contemporary novel, with most of its action occurring over
four days at the end of January in 1983, the mission Free sets in motion
for his boarders reveals that the entire social system in the novel is a
natural outgrowth of several pivotal moments and shifts in United States
history when mankind, and America in particular, finally achieved the power
to destroy on a sufficiently grand scale to threaten its own existence,
forever and ironically rendering the majority of humanity powerless,
trapped, and completely insignificant. Only in Whitten’s ability to
transform himself from “Uncle Sam” into Ben Free and eradicate past
versions of himself do we see the thrust of the novel: the American dream,
and individual desires in particular, may fail, but the mutable, ever
changing nature of that dream can, or should, embrace, empower, and
liberate that which has been cast out and scorned.

While critics and reviewers have mentioned that both Severian and Latro
appear to be at times nothing but pawns working in a vast system they
cannot understand, their powers in combat, in cheating death, and in
altering the destiny of armies and nations place them somewhere near mythic
representations, and I have always felt naming them as powerless was a
basic misprision of their mythic status. The four protagonists in *Free
Live Free* do not enjoy these powers at first: beset by debt, poverty,
desperation, and disappointment, they can expect to have no impact on their
society or even make a mark on the vast city in which they dwell. For the
majority of the novel this remains true. An obese prostitute, a short
unlicensed private detective, an arrogant and mystical gypsy, and a poor
salesman have all reached the bottom of society, but they are given an
opportunity to live their life long dreams over the course of the text.
With the exception of Madame Serpentina, our main cast is about as ordinary
and every day as one could expect in a work of realistic fiction, with very
real flaws.

The very ordinary struggles they undergo all culminate in equally
appropriate scenes of “temptation” in which their dreams come true: Stubb
is actually wanted by an employer, and with his wits easily solves this
case, but a small distraction causes his failure; the concupiscent Barnes
gets his date with a lovely tall woman, stands on stage for a comic
introduction of a musical group, and has his clothes torn off by lustful
strippers before being apprehended in his nudity; Candy gets her sweet
john, who stuffs her with all the candies and attention she could desire
even though she is drugged; and Madame Serpentina is lead by the Egyptian
gods to a mystical unveiling that turns into a mockery.

Before these disappointments, each tries to save the house with their
ingenuity and the means they have, whether that involves calling up
salesman or politicians, using sneezing powder, greasing up a corpulent
body and refusing to move, proving that even these outcasts can still be
formidable, though they are doomed to failure. Perhaps the most bizarre and
thematically confusing portion of the text involves the Belmont Asylum and
the widespread darkness that results in city riots on a frigid night – the
realism of the text frays at this point when just about every minor
character introduced in the text also converges there, picked up for
insanity. Before we delve into the symbolic nature of this mad darkness
through which the characters emerge (without ever speaking to Sergeant
Proudy again – the ostensible reason that they go to Belmont in the first
place), we should look at the other dominant symbol working in the text –
that of Uncle Sam and Ben Free.

*Uncle Sam B. Whitten, Lewis & Clark, and the Manhattan Project*

As an allegory, Free Live Free is much more understandable. While the
character Whitten grows up rich and serves his country patriotically in
World War II before defecting to an earlier ideal, his symbolic
identification as Uncle by his daughter Kip and his dialog clearly indicate
that he is the symbol of America itself, Uncle Sam. Furthermore, his
ability to jump backwards in time, eradicating the present version of
himself and becoming stronger, shows how the idea of what America is
completely changes over time. In a rather neat trick, the older version of
Whitten will hold the ideals of the older frontier version of America, and
the younger version treasure the newer, repressive ideals, so that old Ben
Free represents old America and younger Whitten represents the new status
quo of the nuclear age, both ultimate hero and ultimate villain in the
story, just as the American Dream has both raised up many and crushed many
under its cogs. Beyond this, Whitten's name resonates with some of the
words Serpentina lectures about early in the novel: “*Wit* meant knowledge
once. To *wicken* was to enchant, only a thousand years ago. To
*wikken*was to prophecy.
*Wih* meant holy. … *Wikken *sounded much like *wicken*, *wit* like *wih*.”
(Wolfe Tor 30) These resonate with Whitten's name as well (Of course,
rather ironically his name means “a person from White's town” - his
maturation as a character leads him to expand his idea about what an
American should be). The dialog between the four roomers and the man in the
duffel coat (Whitten at his most status quo) reveal this:

“Our country was founded on the destruction of the wild by the civilized …
Those Indians represented civilization. The beavers felled trees and built
lodges, but the Indians killed beavers and skinned them.”

Barnes said, “Then the whites came and skinned the Indians.”

“Precisely. But the frontiersmen who destroyed the Indians and their
culture were destroyed themselves, with their culture, by the settlers who
followed. Those settlers lost their farms to the bank, and the banks sold
them to companies who have brought the advantages of corporate existence –
immortality and amorality – to agriculture.” (Wolfe Tor 353-4)

He goes on to posit that the chain stores represent the chains of slavery,
and they discuss what it means to be an American:

The Indians used to be Americans - that's what an America was. Then the
trappers were Americans, the Americans of their day. Then the farmers, with
their buggies and low horses and white clapboard houses Even today when you
look at a picture of Uncle Sam, you're seeing what those farmers were like
dressed up to go to the county fair. Only farmers aren't real Americans
anymore. Neither are Indians. … The trappers are gone, and pretty soon
you'll be gone, too. … You aren't Americans, either.” (355)

Of course, Free will change his mind and realize that these four are
actually very much every day America. Indeed, knowing that his attempt to
save the building that he calls his house, they will become his symbolic
house: “hlp sv hs” - the name Stubb implies a room, Garth a garden, Barnes
a barn, etc. While at first some of the statements Madame Serpentina makes
seems to imply that symbolically Free is the house (when the tile falls,
for example), in a sense they have become Free's house, which expands
beyond the limit of a building or a freeway.

Free has planted inside his house the means of escape from the ordinary.
The well documented morning glories outside the back door of his kitchen in
chapter 6, while snow surrounds the front door, reveals exactly where Free
has concealed the gizmo, the singularity induction coil, that has allowed
him to transcend time – clearly the backyard is in a different time. At one
point it seems that the house is actually Free, since he exerts some
control over the environment by making the tile fall from under
Serpentina's feet. Serpentina believes him to exert power over that
environment, and when Stubbs asks “You see the body?” Serpentina replies “I
walk into it now.” (74). Yet her understanding of Free's actual symbolic
resonance is incomplete. He is much more than the house. Barnes will
discover the “ticket” to freedom beneath the sign painted Free Live Free.
Free reveals to Stubb, “If we can keep the walls standing, that's all the
help I need.” (23). Since Whitten knows that Barnes will choose to go back
through the normal door instead of the gizmo at the end of the novel to
save his son Little Ozzie, the frontier version of Free is replaced mid
conversation in Chapter 7: “In a Wall” to give Barnes more advice.

There is a reason that Whitten is so impelled to explore with Lewis and
Clark – the first exploration to traverse to the West coast in the United
States, called the Corps of Discovery Exploration – this is the
establishment and exploration of America's physical borders through the
untamed wilderness and foreign territories. The Manhattan Project is an
equally pivotal moment in American history – harnessing the power of the
atom forever changed the global landscape and to some degree fully
catapulted humanity into the modern age. In this age, poor decisions made
by one nation or another could for the first time in history result in
absolute annihilation. For all its necessity or justification, it is
America that first uses this power. This ultimate power proves mankind's
powerlessness at the hands of governmental decisions and whims. This then,
is the young, angry Whitten: a post nuclear repressed soldier who champions
a very strict idea of what “Americans” should be. Our four roomers have
fallen between the cracks of their rigidly socio-economic society and, to
that version of Whitten, are not even worth being considered Americans
because they don't fit in – the problem of the modern world.

Yet the novel shows that the American Dream is not dead even if it must
change. All of the characters get to reach towards their desires: “The
message I left for the general I used to be … said you should get you
greatest desires. I did it because I've learned we all have to get them
before we can have better ones” (398).

Serpentina herself states the dramatic theme of the problem with America

Wealth and power we have already too much of--we suffocate. Longer life? We
outstay the lion and elephant. Hardly a day passes that we do not meet some
man or woman who should be dead, who has outlasted his own time by
decades...As for healing, it is not we who require it but the world, which
requires to be cured of us. Serenity would indeed be a benefit, but we do
not seek it; if we did we might find it required us to abandon wealth and
power, and we love them too much. No, what we require from whatever Powers
may be entitled to give it is some indication of how far we may go...we do
not know what is permitted to us, and that ignorance paralyzes those who
might otherwise refrain, while the worst of us kill every living thing and
ruin all they reach (Wolfe Tor 317).

This final sentence reinforces how powerful mankind has become – but that
power forever renders the vast majority of humanity helpless, stuck in mind
numbing and dispiriting situations from which there seems no escape.

*The Mad Darkness*

At the center of each character's arc, a strange scene occurs in the
Belmont. Almost every character in the text, from Phil Reeder, Nimo,
Proudy, the gypsies, Dr. Makee, to even the cops, converge at the asylum.
It strains credulity that Proudy, Reeder, and Nimo would all be detained
simultaneously, and for this reason the scene must be looked at for its
allegorical power. EVERYONE in the novel is living in an insane
environment, detained, and without true freedom. They might as well be
institutionalized. The Belmont shows that lack of freedom – living in the
modern world creates a paranoid suppression that cannot be escaped. Some
try to create alternative identities, like Richard Chester, calling himself
the clown Nimo (perhaps related to Nemo – no one) and suppressing his name
and identity. Stubb notes the similar numbers between Proudy's room at the
Belmont and at the Consort: 717 and 771. While 7's proliferate throughout
the text, (and they resonate with rather large aircraft such as the 747's
which are noted as being able to land easily on a wing of the High Country)
this does create a direct relationship between the rooms of the hotel and
the rooms of the institutionalized.

I do not like to think of the novel as one large crazy hallucination – it
is too realistic in its efforts. Yet that scene where the lights go out
over the entire city shows a symbolic descent into madness – stripped of
the external perceptions and orders imposed by society, what is left? A
squawking madhouse. Riots ensue outside the city, and the insanity
contained and bottled up escapes rather easily. Sandy Duck is reaching for
an elevator when the power goes out, and her hand does not encounter what
it expects to find.

The most surreal scene of the novel involves everyone sitting in the dark,
the mad and sane alike, where even identity cannot be established. Multiple
people claim to be Candy Garth (though thanks to the rules of the time
folding, where the newcomer absorbs the current person, we know that they
cannot all be her). In this scene, someone keeps calling out that they are
the Page of Wands. In Tarot, this character represents change and new
beginnings as well as desire. His creativity is nascent, and thus it is
appropriate that in this darkness the characters can begin to actually
select what they want to be, when modern civilization and its expectations
are stripped clean and no one can see them. It is in this way that Free
Live Free is intrinsically different than other naturalistic texts: those
crushed by society can actually chose to define themselves in Wolfe, and
become something larger, once their visible position in society is finally
robbed of its power to hold them in place. In the culminating scene of the
novel, they are even given the choice to achieve a kind of personal
apotheosis through the gizmo or return to life as it was. Barnes is the
only one who selects to return, because his duty to his son has not been
fulfilled.

Interestingly enough, given talk of the magnetic properties surrounding the
High Country, it is perhaps a similar magnetic property that causes the
large city wide blackout. This EMP like effect could resonate with not only
the “turning off” of civilization but that great nuclear power that lurks
in the background, ready to send mankind back to the dark ages.

*Mysticism and the Text*

Serpentina strays to the mystical explanation for everything, and
identifies Free as an acarya, a guide or instructor in religious matters
(or a highly learned man). During her little chant in Chapter 8, which is
her attempt to defend the house, her little green screen proceeds from
nonsense letters to “AMRTET ALGAR ALGASTNA”, “ADAM ALCAR DAGERAM,” matching
her pastel inscriptions of ADAM TE DAERAM and AMRTET, ALGAR ALGASTNA –
these are actually from a Rembrandt painting at first called “The
Practicing Alchemist” and then “Faust in his Study”. What is missing from
Serpentina's invocation is the center inscription: the cross and INRI. In
many ways all of these characters will re-enact Faust's story: getting what
they want at the cost of being betrayed by those they trust and their own
desires. The arrangement depicted in the picture was said to be used on
amulets for protection in battles. (McHenry)

Her chants beginning “Bagabi laca bachabe” is supposedly from a
13thcentury story of the sorceror Salatin conjuring the devil and
“Palas aron
ozimonas” from a miracle play in which a character named Tervagans yields
his soul to the devil. Interestingly enough, even though these are from
different sources, they both appear on page 109 of de Givry's *Witchcraft,
Magic, & Alchemy*, as does the mention of Rembrandt's painting. In other
words, I believe that de Givry's book was Wolfe's original source for this
scene. These chants are still extent in witchcraft and devilish
incantations but they are not truly translatable.

However, later, when Serpentina curses her captors and escapes a straight
jacket like a serpent, her words “Marear enkranken tober malade ammalarsi”
(254) can be translated from various languages: to fall sick or sicken. In
the original Ziesing addition, Free mishears the word whores and answers,
“No Horace here.” – I normally don’t like sound connotations, but Horus
happens to be the god of vengeance, sky, protection, and war, and happens
to resonate with the renamed first chapter: Four Roomers of War, and the
later floating High Country. Horus' designation with the falcon and as “The
one who is above, over” is interesting. During her divination with the
mirror, “an airplane droned far overhead” (106) presaging the High Country,
so her magic does seem tied to the flying fortress above. This divination
results in her prophecy, which will be discussed in further detail below.

Finally, the poser Illingworth, who is over 70 in 1983 but claims to have
been with Aleister Crowley in both Smyrna and the Himalayas (making him
very, very young at that time) does mention a few figures whose mystical
philosophies resonate with the text. In addition to Crowley, he mentions
Dion Fortune, born Violet Mary Firth, and both Crowley and Fortune believed
in the Secret Chiefs – those with transcendent cosmic authorities.
Serpentina has prophesied of these secret masters herself. Crowley's
mystical history involves an aeon of Isis, Osiris, and Horus which might
also be mapped onto many of Wolfe's texts. Isis involves primitive worship
of the mother goddess, Osiris the idea of a sacrificial and paternal dying
god, and Horus a time of the child's spiritual growth and development.
Certainly the transition from the aeon of Osiris to Horus can be traced in
the spiritual journey of the characters in *Free Live Free* as Free
sacrifices himself for their spiritual development.

*NAMES:*

Serpentina, in discussing her prophecy, says that something would be lost
in translation such that someone named John Smith might be referred to as
the beloved disciple, son of the iron smiter, and for this reason it is at
least worthwhile to examine the patterns in the main characters' names.
This is the part of Wolfe analysis I usually find the least worthwhile, but
I feel at times it is necessary because there are very real patterns in the
meanings of this casts names involving fields, houses, and properties.

James (he who supplants/beloved disciple) Stubb – tree trunk, nickname for
a short stout, man, though Barnes indicates that he feels Stubbe with an e
means room.

Catherine (Innocent) Margaret (Pearl) Garth -Keeper of the garden”

Marie/Serpentina – her real name implies beloved, star of the sea. The
serpent is obvious, as is her later identification as the good witch,
Glinda.

Cassius Illingworth – Madame Serpentina’s breakdown of the name is
different than the official one, saying at one point that she defrauded one
who was named after someone with influence below (Cassius is in Satan’s
mouth after betraying Julius Caesar in Dante's *Divine Comedy*), and his
last name bodes the ill that he is worth despite his boasts. However,
Illingworth would actually refer to a fenced area or “worth” fortified
against a battle.

John B. Sweet need scarcely be mentioned for its obvious connotations as
far as the prostitute Candy goes.

Phil (loves horses) Reeder – someone who thatches cottages. I suppose he is
across from Barnes because … horses are kept in a barn? And it is at this
point that we must move on, for we have already mentioned the relationship
between Nimo and Nemo.

*REVISIONS*

Free Live Free also gives us a look at revision in Wolfe, with the Zeising
version representing a penultimate draft. While the differences are not
extreme, there are a few noticeable ones beyond word choice which have
interpretive connotations that we will explore here. The cumulative effect
is to show Free folding backwards and becoming more portentious and to
change both the character of Stubb so that he is less lecherous. The very
first chapter is retitled from “Selling Weather” to “Four Roomers of War”.
This markedly different chapter title shifts the theme from Barnes'
optimistic view of the sales situation even though he is destitute to one
showing a conflict in which these four are clearly to some degree victims.
There are two other significant changes in this chapter: the policeman who
comes to shake down Candy for money asks specifically for Candy here and
then strikes her, dissatisfied with the amount she gives him. This is
clearly a pay off so she is not arrested. This policeman, Norris, is
completely eradicated in the Tor version and is replaced with Proudy, the
Sergeant who will later suffer a head wound and be institutionalized at the
Belmont Psych Ward. Thus Proudy is a bit more sympathetic in the Zeising
version. In the Tor version, he comes specifically looking for “Bernard”
Free and shaking down Candy for money is incidental when he recognizes her
voice upstairs. The scene where Norris goes upstairs has different dialog:
“'You let whores stay here, sir?' 'No Horace here,' the old man said.”
(Wolfe Ziesing 6) After some other slightly altered statements about
forgetting to collect rent or even giving the boarders the money, Norris
goes upstairs. The television is designated as merely having sounds. In the
Tor version this is replaced with a discussion about time:

“You got to be out tomorrow, understand that's all the time you got.”

“Used to have a lot more. … All of it. I'm not going. Going to die here.”
The sounds of the television are described as “rotary-engined fighters
warmed up on the deck of a black and white aircraft carrier.” (Wolfe Tor 7)

This presages the High Country Plane much more effectively, where
Reagan's *Hellcats
of the Navy*, on the TV here, will be referenced again. The other movie
mentioned during this introductory chapter is of course *The Wizard of Oz.*

The interaction between Stubb and Free in Chapter 4 is also significantly
altered, especially after Free mentions that he never sees rabbits, bears,
or dear. The scene ends like this:

“People don't know how poor they are.” He straightened up, squaring
shoulders that were still wide, and went out.

Half a minute later, Stubb heard the door of the master bedroom close and
the click of the bolt. He took off his glasses and produced an almost clean
handkerchief from his hip pocket. When he had wiped the lenses thoroughly,
he took a notebook and an automatic pencil from his shirt pocket and,
twisting his face in a laborious grimace, wrote a note in his minute hand.
(Wolfe Ziesing 31)

After speaking of the animals in the Tor edition, Free declares:

“You people don't know how poor you are.” He straightened up, squaring
shoulders that were still wide.

“The creatures are all gone now, Mr. Stubb, as I soon shall be. Murdered.'
Stubb leaped up By the time he reached the door, the parlor beyond it was
empty. So was Free's bedroom.

Returning to the kitchen, he removed his glasses and produced an almost
clean handkerchief. When he had wiped the lenses thoroughly, he took a
notebook and an automatic pencil from his shirt pocket and, twisting his
face in a laborious grimace, wrote something in an almost microscopic hand.
(Wolfe Tor 25)

Free declares precognition of his murder and vanishes in the Tor scene
here, making him much more mysterious. As Stubb walks to the cafe later, an
interplay with another cop of the seventeenth precinct is taken out of the
tor version, in which the cop asks Jim where he is going and jokingly says
that his Sergeant tells how Jim and the Sergeant play bridge together, and
then declines to give Stubb a ride: “This ain't a cab.”

Chapter 7 represents the most important revision because a different Free
shows up to warn Barnes in the Tor version:

The candle went out. “You're wrong, Barnes.” The voice was Free's and yet
not Free's, as though a new and different Free had come suddenly with the
dark. …

“Your trying to ask me where I put my gizmo, and what it is. A way to make
me tell you what I hardly know myself about something you don't understand.
Well, I put it where I told you. In a wall. I could have put it someplace
else, but it was a wall I chose.” (Wolfe Tor 45)

In the Ziesing edition, there is no talk of a different Free coming here,
and the dialog does not change from the informal frontier style:

“You're tryin' to figure out how you can ask me where I put that thing I
had. What I call my treasure, and what it is. Some way that'll get me to
tell you what I hardly know myself about somethin' you're not even close to
understandin'” (Wolfe Ziesing 56-7).

This revision indicates that a different Free has come back, possibly
immediately after the scene at the end of the novel, to give Barnes the
extra bit of information he needs to find the gizmo under the Free Live
Free sign in the epilogue. The Free dialog before this point maintained the
same informality of the original Ziesing text throughout, indicating this
narrative space as a conscious folding point Wolfe added in the final
draft, changing Free's voice as a clue to this replacement. The candle
presages the darkness of the asylum as well and the loss of power
throughout the city.

Several scenes involving Candy are changed in the Tor version, eliminating
her mention of the cop who took her money once they arrive at the Consort
hotel and also getting rid of a bird like description to describe her
taking a drink. The scene in which the bell hops bicker over the money due
them by Joe Majewski, who has been cheated by Madame Serpentina with her
prestidigitation, is slightly extended. In the elevator with Candy, the
bellhop Fuentes offers to do whatever Serpentina needs more cheaply than
Joe, and warns Candy that Joe cannot be trusted until he returns the
seventy dollars he owes Serpentina. This is excised from the Tor version.

In the Ziesing edition, when Serpentina visits her gypsy family, Rose says
that she is her mother though she is not really her mother (ie -
stepmother), and the King ends the chapter by saying “Is this how a
daughter speaks to her father?” This relationship is brought up again by
Rose when she infiltrates the Belmont looking for Proudy. The Tor edition
merely hints that Serpentina is a princess of the gypsies and is less overt
in this implication. During the interrogation at the Belmont, Barnes gives
his age as 41 in the Ziesing edition and 34 in the Tor edition, but in both
versions his age is given at 35 in the opening scenes when he responds to a
lonely hearts ad. Either way he lies about his age, slightly or extremely.

Chapter 29 also has a significantly different introduction. Rather than
passively look at the building and note an unidentified man's tracks in the
snow as in the Ziesing edition, Stubb mutters “In a wall” and begins to
actively demolish the walls with a hammer, noting that the foot prints
belonged to Barnes and Serpentina.

After Barnes gives his comedic introduction to Binko's band, the Tor
edition has an entirely new section in which Sandy Duck picks up Osgood
Barne's son (Wolfe Tor 325-6). The Ziesing edition completely omits this
section, ending with the words, “KILROY WAS HERE.”

In addition, Chapter 43 of the Ziesing edition is completely excised,
entitled “Monkey Bars.” In this chapter Candy complains that police would
do little to defend a sandwich shop but that looters dare not attack a bar,
and that there are two types of businesses she designates as regular and
“monkey” businesses. Movies, TV, bars – these are all monkey businesses
meant to keep the majority of the people entertained, drunk, and docile,
fed on illusions. She tells of a fellow prostitute who met a college film
major since she always went to romantic movies after her tricks. The film
student and the prostitue developed a relationship, but rather than elevate
her to respectability, when he found out he started pimping her out as
well, but would only let her see good movies. This chapter changes Stubb's
character quite a bit because in it he keeps thinking as he is helping the
inebriated Candy around that he should have taken advantage of her when she
was drunk in the opening scenes, helping her up the door. Cutting out this
chapter makes Stubb seem slightly more chivalrous in the Tor version and
avoids the condemnation of the entertainment and bar industry for keeping
the people as satisfied sheep.

During the chapter in which Serpentina meets Illingworth, he expresses
curiosity about her powers.

“I'm also a fairly good medium, particularly with unhuman spirits –
elementals, that sort of thing.”

“Demons?”

The witch hesitated, then nodded slowly. “occasionally, yes.” (Wolfe
Zeising 362)

In the Tor version, she replies:

“I am also a fairly good medium, particularly with the nonhuman spirits –
elementals and so forth.”

“Demons, Mademoiselle?”

The witch hesitated, then nodded guardedly. “They have other, and better
names; but occasionally, yes” (Wolfe Tor 288).

This somewhat alters the supernatural state of the novel.

Finally, the chapters Murder Mystery (Chapter 50 in both versions) and
Serving the Country (49 in Tor Version and 51 in the Ziesing version) are
switched so that Stubb's dramatic “desire” chapter is last – this shows us
Free's death at the hands of his daughter Kip, so the effect of having
Candy drugged after this does not seem to have the same rising urgency. The
Tor placement is superior for dramatic tension.

Outside of word choice and connotation in a few other places, these
represent the major differences between the two versions. The Tor version
represents a final draft insofar as the folding back of Free and the
frequent mention of airplanes creates a slightly more complete subtext, and
the excised portions seem either unimportant, or, in Stubb's case, a slight
change to his character.

*Proudy,* *Oz, God, and the Hotel Call *

	In many ways, Proudy's madness hints that he has some understanding
of what the future will hold for these four characters.  Whether this
is the result of “folding” backwards through the gizmo or simple
insanity is elided from the text, but judging from Madame Serpentina's
mirror divination and Proudy's statements.  According to Serpentina:
	“The greatest event of the coming decade will be the quadrumvirate.
Four leaders, unknown today, shall unite to take politial, financial,
artistic, and judicial power.  They shall create a revolution of
thought. Many who are now rulers shall be imprisoned or exiled.  Many
who are now powerless shall rise to places of great authority.  The
rich shall be made poo, and the poor rich.  Old crimes, long concealed
shall be made public, and their perpetrators given to the people as to
a pride of lions.  The four shall be hated and idolized, but their
rule will not end within the period specified by my prediction.”
(Wolfe Tor 111).
Proudy believes that the people he watches from his hotel room are those four:

“I know about you. … You don't think I do, but I do.  You don't think
anyone knows, do you.  Well, I do. … I know more about you than you do
about yourselves.  … What could I say? Quit? Your boss wouldn't allow
you to quit.  … Confess and bargain with the Prosecutor's Office for
police protection?  They wouldn't believe you any more than they would
me. Kill yourself? That wouldn't work either now would it? … We'll
fight it out, you people and me.  I got a hand tied behind me: I got
to work inside the law, or pretty much.  You can do as you damn
please. There's four of you with God knows how many millions or
billions behind you, and only one of me. … That's okay, too.” (139).
While not extremely problematic given the ability of the gizmo to fold
back time for Proudy to be somewhat aware of what will happen, it
still seems to me that this scene follows the allegorical pattern
established by Wolfe with Uncle Sam/Ben Free.  Proudy's name, so close
to pride, seems to be what the four must struggle with in order to
overcome their limitations. Seeking for proud Proudy in the asylum,
there is the sense that he is very important but their actual
interaction with him is curtailed and limited.  This is the strangest
aspect of the narrative – Proudy's failure to return in the final
scenes given his exaggerated importance early.  It is quite clear,
however, that he does NOT see clearly, mistaking a lighter for a gun
and assuming that the bellhop who entered the room must have been
killed by the four when he merely went a different way.  The vision
problems of Stubb and Barnes (one with a fake eye that pops out and
the other with the glasses that dominate his face) might resonate with
this prideful inability to see truly important things and distort
their dreams to the lowest level.
	Putting aside pride for an instant, previous commentary on *Free Live
Free* has made much of the Oz associations. These scenes usually
involve Candy or her observations in one form or another, make me feel
that it is Candy who is most obsessed with that dreamlike escape.
However, there is one more disturbing elision that hangs over the
character of Candy involving the phone call she receives at the start
of Chapter 20 – a phone call whose entire dialog from her side is
repeated again in the novel: “Hello … Yes, it's me … I'm staying with
her … Okay.  It was real nice hearing from you, you know? We thought
something might have happened to you.  (129)  When questioned about
it, she responds to “You didn't tell somebody from the hotel you were
staying with Madam S.” with “Huh uh.  It wasn't from the hotel … It
was for me, all right?  I answered it.  I got the message.  It was my
business.”  Later, Serpentina asks about it, and slightly misremembers
the conversation as “It was real nice hearing from you again, you
know? (147).  Candy indicates that it is Joe Majewski who called her
at this point, but this does not jive with her previous claim that it
was no one from the hotel – and she has never actually met Joe in
person, merely heard about him from the other bellhops.  Both Stubb
and Serpentina think that it might be Free calling, but why would
Candy be reluctant to admit this?  Stubb also believes that she was
incarcerated by the police before returning to the Free House – is
Candy working with Proudy or one of the other policemen?  The male
suspects for making the call are limited to Free, Dr. Makee, Proudy,
another policeman, or Joe, but it is very difficult to discern who
would actually have an interest in calling her at this point in the
story with the knowledge of where she is.  Is Candy lying here at her
entrance into the pact?	This is perhaps the least clear part of the
text, so let us move back to our examination of Candy's infatuation
with Oz. Of course in the very opening scene Candy indicates that she
loves when the *Wizard of Oz* is on, and after escaping the Belmont,
she thinks that the clown will begin singing the infamous movie song,
which little Ozzie actually breaks into.  In the opening chapters when
Stubb makes a deduction, Barnes jokes that he has been taking lessons
from the Wicked Witch of the West.  By the epilogue, Serpentina is
identified with Glinda the good, her opposite.  Osgood's name is
shortened to Ozzie, and in the scene on the High Country, when the
lighting makes Serpentina flash different colors, Candy declares,
“It's like that *Wizard of Oz* movie … whores of a different color,
remember?” (Wolfe Tor 384) In the Ziesing edition this is at least the
second pun on whores.  Since it is mentioned at the beginning and at
the end,many have tried to map the characters exactly with the
Scarecrow, the Lion, the Tinman, Dorothy, and Toto,and I will here
quote an old post on the Urth List by James Jordan:


 The four main characters each have a besetting sin. These seem to link
with four of the Seven Deadly Sins (Pride, Greed, Envy, Anger, Lust,
Gluttony, Sloth). Fat Candy - gluttony. That's a no-brainer. (Her name
links to this also, of course.) Ozzie (Osgood = Oz-Good) Barnes (the
salesman) - lust. I think his marriage broke up because of unfaithfulness,
though this is not stated. Stubb (the detective) - pride. He thinks he can
handle everything, and has a "little man complex" or "Napoleon complex." As
a short man consumed by being short, he's a "stub." Madame Serpentina -
witchcraft, perhaps greed as lust for power (the sin of the Serpent,
Satan). Also, as a gypsy pickpocket she's "greedy." (Note that her name
originally was Marie, Mary, but that she has fallen from this "Christian"
name into serving Satan as Madame Serpentina.) Each is trapped by his/her
sin just before being offered a new life. “ (for his complete and
comprehensive post, please examine
http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0030/0313.shtml)

This corroborates information from Wolfe's interview with Jordan himself:

GW: ... One of the things that I was trying to say was that America is not
free and is becoming less so. And that we have to realize it and we have to
resolve within ourselves to be free and to oppose the forces that are
enslaving us. … I tried to give the four borders, I tried to give each sort
of a besetting sin. Madame Serpentina, it's pride. Candy, it is gluttony.
Stub, I forget now. Osgood Barnes, sexuality of course ....Envy, envy I
think is Stubbs. And I wasn't trying to write allegory. I wasn't saying he
was a personification of envy. I wanted to show men and women who were
actually beset by these sins. Trying to, given an opportunity to become
something bigger and better than they had been by defeating the sin to some
degree. Candy of course gets what she wants. She stuffs herself to the
point that she can't stuff herself no more. And finds that this is not
really paradise, it is not heaven, even though she has achieved it. Osgood
Barnes comes to see sex as something more than the physical act. He comes
to see the possibilities of love and sacrifice and so on. That is what I
tried to do at least. (Jordan)

Of course, despite these words, while they are realistic characters through
the majority of the novel, they veer into strange and idealized archetypal
patterns by the end of their character arcs: Serpentina becomes Glinda,
Barnes becomes Popeye, Stubbs transforms away from the furtive and shifty
Elijah Cook Jr identification, and Uncle Sam transforms into “Free” - these
all have very obvious allegorical connotations. Which leads me to identify
Free Live Free as a strange blend of low mimesis realism and mythic
romanticism – a naturalistic urban allegory.

This realism transformed into allegory is further exacerbated by the
strange little patterns that develop around certain characters. Also on the
Urth List (accessible at http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0030/0321.shtml),
William Ansley noted several passages that seem to indicate the relatively
minor Dr. Makee is God-like:

	"Do I look like God?" the old doctor said. "I don't know." As a
matter of fact he did look 	like God. He was a small, elderly man who
sported a little white beard and an even 	whiter	mustache; the collar
of a tattersail shirt--an almost infallible sign of the presence 	of
deity--peeped above the collar of his overcoat. (Wolfe Tor 69)
This is echoed again later:		Barnes shook his head.
  	"She said, 'God, you gotta take care of Baby Phil because he won't
never	take care of himself.' I wasn't there, but Bubba was, and he
told me. God	has to get me out, and you're his chosen instrument."
  	"Instrument, hell. I never even met Him!"
  	Dr. Makee chuckled and nudged Barnes with an elbow. "Don't be too
sure." (Wolfe Tor 	241-2)
 Ansley concludes that Free becomes a symbolic son of this God like figure:
The old doctor began to pump the blood pressure cuff. "He was my son,
you know." Barnes stared at him, and he chuckled again. "Not my actual
son--Tommy died a long while ago, and I think Ben was really a few
years older than I am. But we used to pretend that way and we had a
lot of fun. (Wolfe Tor 206)
I think that this interplay here at least riffs on the idea that
America , at least as far as the English colonization, was established
on principles of religious freedom.  The freedom to choose the highest
possible dream in *Free Live Free* leads to a literal apotheosis,
forever separating the novel from any naturalistic roots and creating
that strange dichotomy between the day to day failures depicted
through the novel and the ticket to transcendent freedom offered these
four characters on the High Country.

*Works Consulted*

de Givry, Grillot. *Witchcraft, Magic, & Alchemy*. Courier Dover
Publications, 1931.

Jordan, James B. “Gene Wolfe Interview.” Paul Duggan. 1992. Web. 21 May
2014. http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html

McHenry, Deni. “Rembrand'ts 'Faust in His Study' Reconsidered: A Record of
Jewish Patronage and Mysticism in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam.” *Yale
University Art Gallery Bulletin* (Spring, 1989). 9-19.

Wolfe, Gene. *Free Live Free*. New York: Tor Books, 1985.

Wolfe, Gene. *Free Live Free*. Willimantic: Mark V. Ziesing, 1984.

The Urth Mailing List Archive V 30. Urth.net. Moonmilk.
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