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<DIV>Urthlings --</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I'm in the midst of <EM>Innocents Aboard</EM>. I read "Wolfer" last
night and "The Eleventh City" this morning, and I have a few questions about
each of them. I didn't find either of them mentioned when I searched the
Urth archives, so if I've missed a discussion of them, please point me to
it!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>WOLFER</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>(1) "Wolfer" starts with a discussion of the meaning of names, a subject
that evidently interests Wolfe very much, given his name and the similarity that
it has with the name of the protagonist, Janet Woolf. That suggests to me
that all the names (or at least the last names) in the story are likely
significant.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>On the other hand, when I try to figure out the significance, I don't get
very far.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"Granstrom is my name," says the big man who gives Janet the wolves, and
that way of putting it seems to me to tie what he says to the way the story
begins. So what does his name mean? Well, a quick look at one
webpage (<A
href="http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Granstrom-name-meaning.ashx">http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Granstrom-name-meaning.ashx</A>)
indicates that it's a Swedish "ornamental name" from <EM>gran</EM> ("spruce")
and <EM>strom</EM> ("river").</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The person to whom Janet is supposed to give the wolves is named Larry
Ventris. Ventris is Latin and means "belly" or "womb" (as in the line
from the "Ave Maria": <EM>benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus</EM>:
"blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus").</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The ranger toward the end of the story is named Jerry Baumgarten.
According to this site ((<A
href="http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Baumgarten-name-meaning.ashx">http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Baumgarten-name-meaning.ashx</A>), Baumgarten is
Germanic and means "orchard" from <EM>baum</EM> ("tree") + <EM>garte</EM>
("enclosure," hence "garden"). The name would have been given to someone
who owned, lived by, or worked in an orchard. It was also the name of
several villages, so someone from one of those villages could have had that
name. It also appears as a Jewish (Ashkenazic) ornamental
name.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>On top of that, I'll add the names of the two Scotties: Kyoto and Wasabe,
who both have Japanese names. The former is a place name; the latter an
alternate spelling of wasabi, a kind of Japanese horseradish. Oh, and
(perhaps in keeping with the discussion of Barnes and Noble?) the gun is
frequently identified as a Smith & Wesson, but I don't know that there's any
significance to that (a smith is, of course, a blacksmith; "Wesson" is an
alternate form of "Weston," which indicates someone from the western town or
settlement, so there's no imaginary link as the lecturer proposes there is
between B&N).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Those are all the last names. But are they significant? The
opening of the story certainly sets us up to expect significant names.
Margaret Bishop is treated as if she has a significant name ("Let us pray," she
says once, and doing work for her leads Janet to what she takes to be a vision
of Christ [?]). But what about the rest of them? Or am I barking up
the wrong tree here?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>(2) In some ways, the story seems straightforward (which in Wolfe is
probably a tip-off that it isn't really)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>At a lecture about the meaning of names, a woman named Janet Woolf (who has
been thinking a lot about the meaning of her name) flips out a bit and ends up
meeting Margaret Bishop, who gets her involved in a plot to bring wolves into a
park in Michigan. The woman picks up the wolves, tries to deliver them but
can't, and so takes them to the park herself, where she's confronted by a ranger
who doesn't seem to mind. She drives off, has a vision which she takes to
be divine blessing on her work, and plans to do more of this sort
of thing in Texas.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And yet ... there are a few elements of the story that aren't so
simple:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* What's the significance of the opening discussion of the meaning of
names?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* What's the significance of Janet's own last name "Woolf," and why is she
so adamant that the lecturer isn't right about her name but that instead she's a
servant and friend of wolves? That makes sense in the rest of the story,
but why is Janet convinced of that already at the beginning?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* What's the significance of Janet's divorce and return to her maiden
name? Are there any hints of what her married name might have been?
(I don't think so.) Is the divorce and all the stuff related to it --
e.g., having to borrow the SUV from her ex-husband -- more or less
irrelevant? If so, why are they there at all? They make the story
longer, but do they add anything to it? Why couldn't Janet herself have
been single or married or (at any rate) an SUV owner herself? Why does she
have to borrow it from her husband? What's the significance of her being
divorced?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* What's the howling that Janet hears? Wolves, obviously, but what's
it all about?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* Are we to take the various things that Kyoto and Wasabe and the wolves
say as Janet's own projections? Or are we to believe that they really do
communicate to her?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* Is there any significance to "Suicide Road"?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* Why does Jerry Baumgarten simply let her go?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* What's the vision all about at the end?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>THE ELEVENTH CITY</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Again, this story appeared quite straightforward. It didn't entirely
work for me. I would have preferred, I think, to have it end with Cooper
in some danger or somehow actually involved with the events described.
Instead, we get the story, as it were, at arm's length. I wonder
why? Am I missing something? Are we supposed to feel a sense of
foreboding as we come to the end? Or is it just Sam Cooper passing on an
odd incident, as it appears on the surface to be?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A couple more questions: </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* What's the significance of the title? It clearly refers to the
passage from the Gospel of Mark which Cooper quotes in his letter. The man
who had the legion of demons (which were cast into the swine) then proclaimed
what Jesus had done in "Ten Cities" (which is the region of Decapolis, across
the Sea of Galilee from the region of Galilee). </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Those were "ten cities," but the title refers to an "eleventh." Which
is it? The city where Cooper is? If so, what's the
significance? I suppose Cooper is "publishing" (the word for proclamation
used in the version Cooper quotes) the news of another exorcism wrought by
Jesus, by means of the blessed sacrament, in this letter to an eleventh city,
Lincoln, Nebraska, and he's asking whether he ought to publish this account in
his book.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Of course, technically, it was the man who had the demons who then
published abroad what Jesus had done. Here, it's Sam Cooper asking whether
he ought to publish this account. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Anything more? I ask because the title pushes us to wonder about "the
eleventh city."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* Why did Jacinta throw stones at Sam Cooper? I notice that later he
says "I was stoned by her," which calls to mind the stonings practiced in
various stories in the Bible. (In fact, it makes me wonder, because Dell
makes a point of saying that Jacinta was a loose woman, but, even now, she isn't
the one who is stoned; rather she does the stoning ... of Sam Cooper.)
What's going on here?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>* What does the postscript really add to the story? I suspect it
does add something, but I'm just missing it.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Now it's your turn. Thanks in advance!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>John</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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