(urth) _Edges_ shows "Suzanne Delage" involves memory loss; SD is probably Bram Stoker's _Dracula_

[Gwern Branwen]

One more update:

- I've reorganized the page so the _Dracula_/_Hamlet_ material is more
logically organized and grouped together. It should be much more readable
now - the footnotes and commentary got out of hand, and to help deal with
that...
- Along with my web dev collaborator, Said Achmiz, we've done some nifty
hypertext tricks: each line of SD has a URL now, and so inside each
section, every citation to a specific point/line/paragraph of SD can be
linked and will pop up for immediate viewing.

    So every mention of so-called 'Pie Club' will be a link you can mouse
over to pop up the bit in the story about 'Pie Club'. Pretty neat!

    Preview:
https://gwern.net/doc/design/2023-09-25-gwern-gwernnet-popups-withinpagerangepopups-suzannedelageexample.jpg
- I have read _The Annotated Dracula_, Leonard Wolf 1975: I was amused by
the possibility of consulting Wolf on Wolfe and hoped that it'd clear up
some things. It is a great edition, and it did! Specifically, I think Wolf
clears up Wolfe's textile stuff: Wolf explains that the most striking thing
in the _Dracula_ textile passage is the reference to *Hampton Court*, which
(I did not know this) was apparently a byword for sexual licence & violence
eg. Alexander Pope pointedly set _The Rape of the Lock_ at Hampton Court:
https://gwern.net/suzanne-delage#hampton-court Obviously, that would be an
excellent indirect allusion for SD, similar to the indirect _Hamlet_
allusions.

    Even more interestingly, Wolf's interpretations of _Dracula_ seem to
line up with Wolfe's SD. Given the timing of its publication (just 5 years
before _Endangered Species_), how popular & good _Annotated Dracula_ was,
Wolfe's abiding interest in Stoker and anything named 'wolf', the
parallels, and that Wolf (unlike anyone else) explains the textile scene, I
think that it's entirely possible that _Annotated Dracula_ inspired Wolfe
to write 'Suzanne Delage'!

    See https://gwern.net/suzanne-delage#the-annotated-dracula
- Speaking of 'Pie Club', _Annotated_ provides a possible resolution: what
the Narrator is misremembering is 'the *Pied* Piper', which turns out to be
associated with Dracula in Romania/Transylvania, and Stoker could've known
this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin#Emigration
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57168/57168-h/57168-h.htm#Page_198
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57168/57168-h/57168-h.htm#Page_29

    Who knew? Not me. But apparently Wolf(e). Makes sense: both Suzanne and
the Pied Piper mindcontrol children of an unsuspecting complacent well-off
town, leading the children to their doom...
- also added some more _Hamlet_ material

--
gwern
https://gwern.net
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