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

[Andrew Bollen]

jbatach wrote:

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."

-----------------------------------------

This makes sense, but I've always wondered, why then does Number 5's name
come before David's in Mr Million's little roll-call?



On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 6:13 AM, <jbarach at aol.com> wrote:

> 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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