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I can only add to this that the depth of research needed for this
little OMG-I'm-the-ghost ghost story is remarkable. It's not <i>entirely
</i>convincing, because of the little Orientalist "footnotes," but
the sheer legwork to get us into the peasant's mind---banter of
women, jungle species succession, the croc's chimney, if true (I
can't confirm it)---is commendable. <br>
<br>
Incidentally, the croc is known as the "mugger" crocodile and does
lie in wait for prey
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugger_crocodile">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugger_crocodile</a>). However, the manner
in which it actually killed the peasant sounds more like the "death
roll" described for the saltwater croc
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_crocodile">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_crocodile</a>). One would need
to delve deeper than Wikipedia to sort it out further, but the
conflation works, if conflation it is. <br>
<br>
On 3/26/2012 2:16 AM, Craig Brewer wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:1332742581.57391.YahooMailNeo@web121002.mail.ne1.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times
new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt">
<div><span>Nicely done on this one. And you're absolutely right
about the prose. 14 years makes quite a difference!</span></div>
<div><br>
<span></span></div>
<div><span>Just a few things. The Brahmin is described in the
beginning as *outside* the house and emaciated from fasting.
It's a huge contrast to the bloated bodies *inside* the
magar's den waiting to be eaten. That comes back to the
relationship with "maya" he's playing with, I think. Also,
when he's describing how he can see when he wakes up, he
mentions that he can "examine the edges [of his vision],
where the ghosts of the newly dead and the more material
demons flutter away from man's view." Materiality here is
associated with the demons, with the magar, with eating and
putrefaction, etc. Even sex is mixed up with that in the way
he eyes the other woman's dead but still nicely curvy (from
necrotic gasses? shudder) body. And he has that moment where
he feels that he's in the magar's den *and* lying in bed at
home beside his wife -- he says he feels this "without
contradiction," and it further emphasizes that here, it's
not just "bad spirits" that are un-divine, but everything
"worldly." Even the ghost "limps" in that between world, so
he's affected by "physical" injuries even though he's
immaterial. And all of the strength and health that the
peasant has only serves to let him scream loudly before he
dies.<br>
</span></div>
<div><br>
<span></span></div>
<div><span>So I'm not so sure that there's much judgment here
for being a good or bad man in life. To me it seems more
like Wolfe is playing with the notion of maya as illusion
full on: everything about life, from happy supportive
marriage to the magar "demon" is equally low and illusory.
The passivity in death (a death in the water and the
submission to drowning...where have we seen that before?) is
something that the narrator quips could be cultural, but
it's actually the right thing for this guy to do in that
"gnostic" system. It's his not having fully let go that
leads to the Brahman having to intervene and cast a spell
(or whatever) to free him. The Brahman even suggests that
anything he says (or thinks) must be wrong ("It is seldom
good to hear what they [ghosts] say."), and the "Name,
dissolution, and release" are good things.</span></div>
<div><br>
<span></span></div>
<div><span>So maybe the magar has returned because they are too
much "in the world"? After all, the grandmother laments that
people are going to die, rather than accepting illusion like
the Brahman. There's also that weird comment that the
peasant and his friends, "ignorant of the comparative
religion of the schools, would have killed the magar if they
could." So it sounds like killing the magar isn't the right
response to his return. The Brahman is trying to
"propitiate" him at the beginning, which is more like
acceptance than driving him away.</span></div>
<div><br>
<span></span></div>
<div><span>There is the comment about the jungle having been cut
down for lumber 50 years ago and now growing back. That
might be something different.<br>
</span></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times,
serif; font-size: 12pt;">
<div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times,
serif; font-size: 12pt;">
<div dir="ltr"> <font face="Arial" size="2">
<hr size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b>
Marc Aramini <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:marcaramini@yahoo.com"><marcaramini@yahoo.com></a><br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a> <br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b>
Sunday, March 25, 2012 1:05 PM<br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b>
(urth) Short Story 4: The Dead Man<br>
</font> </div>
<br>
The Dead Man<br>
<br>
This was first published in 1965 in Sir!, and while
thematically it is similar to the 1951 work of Wolfe,
especially “The Grave Secret”, the prose is far more precise
and articulate. Gene’s progress, of all the truly great
writers, seems more “made” that born. <br>
<br>
SUMMARY: Taking place in a Hindi river setting, for the
first time in generations the river seems unsafe. The main
character’s sister-in-law has been taken by a Magar
(crocodile, but Urdu/Hindi for “water monster”) 9 days
previously. His wife has been bitten on the foot by a
jackal and it has reacted badly when she tried to distract
it away from her young son, so her husband, called the
peasant, must perform the womanly task of getting water from
the river since his own mother is too old.<br>
<br>
He rises early, but there is an old Brahman already on the
step sitting outside his door, who has cast Marigold wreaths
into the river to placate the Magar and other river
spirits. The man retrieves the first jug and returns to his
hut where his wife moans and stirs before he goes back with
his second, chipped jug for more water. He grows careless,
and his foot slips. As a result, the Magar snatches him by
the leg and he passively accepts his fate. He awakens in
the lair of the crocodile, next to a blackbuck and a woman
whose body seems familiar. He escapes through the “chimney”
of the lair and makes his way back to his family (the limp
is implied from the injury to his leg during the croc
attack). He stands before his house and looks first and
last at his wife. <br>
<br>
The Brahman is seated inside his house and says, “Do not
address it. It is seldom good to hear what they will say”
before casting saffron powder from a brass bowl into the air
to bring the dead peasant release.<br>
<br>
COMMENTARY: Once again we have a dead man unaware of his
condition. However, we must address the moment when he
returns to awareness after the attack. “When next he came
to know our world – maya, that which is not God – it was a
small circle of pale blue far above his eyes.” In hinduism,
Maya is like an illusion. Along with matter and activity it
creates a trifecta through which man “exists”, but he
experiences matter and activity through Maya. Thus dualism
is taken to an extreme degree – the real world as an
illusion, that which is separate from the reality of the
divine. Maya is also somehow linked to the act or actors
involved in the creation of the physical world.<br>
<br>
The Brahmin is someone who has come to experience knowledge
of the self, BUT it is a bit suspicious that he is sitting
there waiting outside the man’s door when he leaves, then is
not present the first time the man returns … but the wife
moans and stirs in her bed. Since the description is of a
very old man I will not posit that the Brahmin had a vested
interest in the wife. <br>
<br>
However, the peasant’s half-brother’s wife, which is
probably the corpse rotting in the den of the crocodile,
also evokes the feeling “A drugged and whirling concourse of
surmises rushed through his mind, until simultaneously an
without consciousness of contradiction he felt that he lay
in the palace of a scaled river-spirit and asleep beside his
wife.”<br>
The crocodile has teeth that are ill suited to eating the
man, so it has to wait for food to get appropriately soft
and rotten to consume it, in its little cooking den with a
chimney to prevent the noxious rotting gasses to poison the
den. The man escapes through this.<br>
<br>
POSSIBLE AMBIGUITIES: Is the Magar there for judgment? Why
has the river been safe for so long? Was the man having an
affair with his half-brother’s wife – is that why they both
shared the river-spirit’s attention? Was the Brahmin
innocent or complicit, being there before the man left and
then present at his final return to dissolve his
consciousness, but not there upon his first return, when he
heard the moan of his wife? Also, is the woman that he
recognizes his sister in law? It would seem to be, but has
she rotted enough for 9 days? It does not seem to be another
fresh victim that he “knows”. <br>
<br>
ALLUSIONS: Besides Weird Tales, we have Kipling and The
Jungle Book here! The crocodile is called by Magar just as
Baloo is a bear. Hindi religious systems seem to be treated
seriously, especially that separation of real world as
illusion from the actual reality of the divine – the Dead
Man has unknowingly fallen between those two.<br>
<br>
RELIGIOUS CONNOTATION: We should look at The Brahman as
someone who is aware of his own spiritual state and maya as
that which is separate from God; interesting concepts,
because the main character, like many of Wolfe’s, is able to
accept his fate but not understand it (so he is not very
"Brahman").<br>
<br>
Also, there is a subtle difference between Brahmin and
Brahman, and Wolfe usually employs the "a" spelling.<br>
<br>
FUTURE ECHOES: As Gerry said of “The Grave Secret”, it
seems clear that “The Other Dead Man” will be related to
this, and I would also liken it to the stories where
indigenous myths are given power and treated seriously (even
the Latro books would fall into this category – Egyptian
gods in Egypt, Greek gods in Greece, etc). The idea of Maya
as an illusory real world seems to permeate Gene’s work,
though I would normally ascribe it to “Gnosticism”.<br>
<br>
Also, we have ANOTHER leg injury, and besides a possibly
broken vertibral column, the most obvious source of
discomfort to the peasant when he "awakens". This wound was
given at the time of translation between life and death, or
between maya and that which is beyond illusion.<br>
<br>
The next one will be "Mountains like Mice" - I need a day or
two to get that one prepared.<br>
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