(urth) 5HoC: The Top Floor of the Library

[jbarach at aol.com]

Richard --

The book about the assassination of Leon Trotsky is Bernard Wolfe's The Great Prince Died (alternatively titled Trotsky Dead).  Wolfe was, for a while, Trotsky's secretary.  He was also a science fiction writer.  

The library shelf would, of course, contain all kinds of literature, but by including three science fiction writers (Bernard Wolfe, Wilhelm, and Vernor Vinge [misplaced]), Gene Wolfe is strongly hinting that we should think of Number Five's (progenitor's) name in connection with science fiction.  By describing Bernard Wolfe's novel the way he does, Gene Wolfe also avoids explicitly saying the name "Wolfe," though by including Virginia Woolf, he does get the sound of his last name in.  Kate Wilhelm's inclusion is probably a tip of the hat to her husband, Damon Knight, who grew Gene Wolfe from a bean (as the dedication of the book says).

As for "Gene," that's derived from Aunt Jeannine's name.  Her brother, Number Five's father, would be Jean, and so that would also be Number Five's name ... but if you Anglicize the pronunciation, you get "Gene."  

Robert Borski worked all of this out in his Cave Canem essay, "Je m'appelle Jean Loup" (http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=CaveCanem.Number5).  

John


 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Simon <gallebuck at yahoo.co.uk>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Mon, Sep 1, 2014 9:49 am
Subject: (urth) 5HoC: The Top Floor of the Library



Thank you, Gerry, Lee and Mark, for motivating me to re-read The Fifth Head of Cerberus. I had hesitated to do so for many years because I found it repellent in many of its details and depressing in its entirety. The details are still repellent, but I found it a little less depressing on this reading, largely because the emotional tone of the second story ('A Story') had altered for me.


Save for one, the books Number Five finds at the top of the spiral in the public library were easy enough to identify and confirm that Five's surname begins with a W. But who is the author of the book about 'the assassination of Leon Trotsky'? And what is the book? Is it a book at all, or something to do with the film of that title?


By the way, I didn't find any specific evidence in the book for Five's first name. There are Wolfe clues aplenty, but though 'Gene' is obviously an appropriate name for a clone, I couldn't find anything to confirm that it really was his name. The author has confirmed that it is, but he did so to someone who had arrived at name by guessing. Anyone have any light to shed?


Also by the way, Maitre's cloning experiments almost certainly eliminate the possibility that the population of Ste. Croix are anything other than Earth-human (well, most of them). Maitre must have gained his knowledge of genetic engineering from Terrestrial textbooks, and unless the mimicry of the shadow-children extends all the way down to the microbiological level (which is surely absurd) it wouldn't have worked if everybody was a shapeshifted nonhuman.


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