<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;">Thanks for the feedback on my little proposal. ;)<div><br></div><div>It seems that two of the verifiable clues are ruled out, leaving only Proust and memory and Wolfean narrative inversions in consideration. Sometimes Wolfe does write a fairly straightforward (in the sense of limited to the source genre) homage to a favorite author, such as Dunsany, in which there is barely a sci-fi twist at all. Perhaps there is none here.<div><br></div><div>Again, the rest (vampires, etc.) must be noise and supposition. It's striking, isn't it, and telling, that this relatively simple and slight story can receive such projections. (Not to mock their originators.)<div><br></div><div>I'll have to look at the story tonight. <br><br>--- On <b>Thu, 12/9/10, Gerry Quinn <i><gerryq@indigo.ie></i></b> wrote:<br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255);
margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><br>From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq@indigo.ie><br>Subject: Re: (urth) Suzanne Delage redux<br>To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth@lists.urth.net><br>Date: Thursday, December 9, 2010, 12:39 PM<br><br><div id="yiv612575330">
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<div style="FONT:10pt arial;">----- Original Message ----- </div>
<div style="FONT:10pt arial;BACKGROUND:#e4e4e4;"><b>From:</b>
<a rel="nofollow" title="jerry_friedman@yahoo.com" ymailto="mailto:jerry_friedman@yahoo.com" target="_blank" href="/mc/compose?to=jerry_friedman@yahoo.com">Jerry
Friedman</a> </div>
<div><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><b><span style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold;">From:</span></b> Gerry Quinn <a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:gerryq@indigo.ie" target="_blank" href="/mc/compose?to=gerryq@indigo.ie">gerryq@indigo.ie</a><br></font><br>> Suzanne
Delage is a kind of horror story, but the supernatural element is something we
do not think of as supernatural, because it is > the stuff of every romance
novel - only Wolfe has inverted the story.</div>
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<div>...</div>
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<div>> There is no doubt here - this is the image of the woman he would
have loved. If only he had met her.<br>><br>>By some perverse
conspiracy of chance or fate he did not, and his life has been
wasted.<br><br>I pretty much agree with this--it's "the dislocation of all we
expect from nature and probability"--but I suspect supernatural
intervention. I see no connection to Snow White and greatly doubt the
one to sea urchins. In other words, in the unlikely event that
Wolfe meant them, he didn't put them in the story in a way that helps me enjoy
it.</div></div></blockquote></font></div>
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<div><font size="2" face="Arial">That's a good point about the "dislocation" - I
think it satisfies Gwern's question about "the narrator's promise". I
don't think Kidd's introduction should really guide our
interpretation. So what of the other parts of the story - the quilts, the
photographs, etc. - which seem extraneous to the above
interpretation?</font></div>
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<div><font size="2" face="Arial">To my mind they can be interpreted simply as
setting; they frame the plot and are necessary to support it, but are not
really part of the plot itself, nor do they supply puzzle
clues.</font></div>
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<div><font size="2" face="Arial">I also see no real connection to Snow White, unless
the narrator is Snow White, in which case perhaps the bitter old woman is the
Witch. But there are no dwarves in sight. If the tale is one of
supernatural intervention, though, perhaps it could be looked for
here.</font></div>
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<div><font size="2" face="Arial">The proposed association with sea urchins is
plainly spurious.</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial"></font><font size="2" face="Arial"></font> </div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">- Gerry Quinn</font></div>
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