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</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">“Melting” first appeared in 1974 in </font><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><font size="3">Orbit 15</font></i><font size="3">.” Melting” is one of my favorite Gene Wolfe stories on the
strength of its marvelous last line: a dismissal of all but the irate ego,
possibly threatening the reader with the dissipation the characters have just
suffered.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">SUMMARY:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">John Edwards attends “the best cocktail party in the world”
in a penthouse apartment with a garden, ruins, and an airship moored to the building.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">There is wine and hashish. To his left is a
British man he thinks looks like the military man Bagnold, and near him are an
ever-auburn haired girl.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">There is another
girl on his right with constantly shifting hair.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">Across from him a Tibetan/Nepalese man seems
to understand mystic powers such as kindling flames from nothing, which he
provides to a being from the Farther Stars, who in turn resembles a washing
machine.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">They discuss the nature of the party; supposedly mankind’s
mastery of time has allowed figures from the past and future to mingle here
through temporal arresters, which can be used to return again after years have
passed in real time.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The girl with shifting
hair tries to get John Edwards to sleep with her in the dark so that she can
slip away for a decade or more into her time and return an old woman after
lovers no longer want her.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">The man from the Farther Stars says that many of them
attending are tulpas, mental projections, and the Englishman identifies John
Edwards as such. The Tibetan here describes the nature of tulpas, mind stuff
that never lived given flesh, and that the practice has been perverted by the
west.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">The auburn hair girl is sick, and Edwards takes her to the
lavatory.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">As she goes to vomit, a cock
crows unheard, and then the “people went out like candles in the wind.”</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">She says she loved him, or at least liked him, and she too
disappears.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">John Edwards ponders how
much all these tulpas cost him, before waking in bed to the sounds of a washing
machine next door, old and gray.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">He
swears that he will do it again, before he vanishes and a heretofore unseen
narrator’s/god’s voice proclaims, “I was tired of him, anyhow. (I’m getting
tired of all of you.)”</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">COMMENTARY</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">There are at least three scenarios that are plausible to
explain these happenings, and we will look at them quickly before dealing with
the many cultural references and coming to a conclusion.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The last line can be read as a metafictional
one: all these characters are but marginal thought forms of the author for a
time given shape, and they now dissolve into nothing, but I prefer to think of
that final voice as a bit more supernatural and powerful one than, say, simply
Gene Wolfe playing a metafictional trick with representation and the written
word.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">Let us look at the opening passage first: </font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">”I am the sound a balloon makes falling into
the sky; the sweat of a lump of ice in a summer river.”</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">Here we have something which momentarily has
a shape losing it as it is assimilated into the vastness of its element: that
melted ice joins the river as more water indistinguishable from the whole, that
air trapped in the balloon is now a part of the air filling the atmosphere,
assimilated completely.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">Spirit or thought
given form can also return to its natural spiritual or mental source.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">A human only has temporary form before the
animating life force is gone in death.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">The book that John Edwards can’t quite make out continues
the pattern from the opening poem: “I am the sound of an owl’s wings, the
heartbeat of a banyan tree.”</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The owl is
notorious for having silent wings – what is nothingness?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">We will discuss the importance of the banyan
tree to Buddhism and Hindu thought below.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">POSSIBILITY 1: TEMPORAL ARREST THROUGH TECHNOLOGY</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">The Tibetan posits one explanation for the party : temporal
arresters through a machine “so subtle it is in a card contained.”</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">One can attend the party, leave back to real
time, and come back after years of living to the moment of departure.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">While this is the SFnal explanation for what
is going on, the ending of the story seems to tear this reading apart a bit,
when the cock crows, the sun rises, and everyone disappears save John Edwards
and the objects.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">They each seem to have a time period, with the Englishman,
the Tibetan, and Joseph Bonaparte being from the past.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The auburn haired girl says she was born
under Aquarius (Jan 20</font><sup><font size="2">th</font></sup><font size="3"> -Feb 18</font><sup><font size="2">th</font></sup><font size="3">) and conceived over
the sign of the Pig and Whistle, an archetypal name for a tavern in England.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">Under this reading, the Tibetan might have actually been pulled
from his time because of his interesting or important status (is he the Dalai
Lama? Why the scars on his chest?) others for their beauty, or others by paying
a high cost (though the Tibetan does not indicate it is necessarily a monetary
cost). </font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The man from the Farther Stars
insists that some of those in attendance are simply thoughtforms/tulpas, and
the Englishman identifies John Edwards as one of these, and the temporal arrest
reading (pulling interesting characters from history now that “Mankind’s
mastery of the laws of Time makes it possible to ask the people of the past to
parties”) does not explain the dualistic pseudo real nature of the physical
objects winking out after the rising of the sun.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">POSSIBILITY 2: TULPAS FOR PROFIT</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">The man from the farther stars, who so resembles a washing
machine, remarks that “many are tulpas … at least ten percent” in a voice that “was
water dashing against stone”.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">A tulpa
in Buddhism is a body made from mental will: a physical form conjured from
thought.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">In Tibetan Buddhism it is
considered a manifestation or thoughtform.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3">
</font></span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">At first the Englishman stresses that John Edwards is merely
a tulpa because of his regular features.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3">
</font></span><font size="3">When everyone melts, John Edwards finds himself wondering how much all
those tulpas must have cost him.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">However,
the statements of the two girls indicate that perhaps John Edwards was
generated for them: “But don’t you understand? I knew him when I was young.” –
this from the girl with the ever changing hair, which is at first made up of caged
birds living but too small to be alive, then of braided coils, and then of a
blond style which seems a bit too young for her.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The auburn haired girl also indicates that she
“loved” or “liked”– past tense – John Edwards, but is now too sick to ask for a
even kiss.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">The Tibetan says that “Certain lamas learn siddhis to flesh
images from mind stuff … [the] same as ghosts, but never lived,” and that this
practice has been stolen by the West.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3">
</font></span><font size="3">Siddhis are more or less magical powers cultivated through
meditation.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">They run the gamut from
power to know the past, present, and future; infinite heaviness or lightness;
unrestricted access to places; being free from bodily hunger; and even dying
when one desires.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">The perversions of the West could very well be for profit,
and it seems that someone could very easily have funded this escape and
populated it with thoughtforms to make an excellent party.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">POSSIBILITY 3: AN ILL, DYING MAN READING UP ON BUDDHISM</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">However, in light of the conclusion and the constant
description of the man from the Farther Stars as like a washing machine, the
most likely explanation for this party is the meditation of John Edwards in his
old age, imagining being wanted by women he has known, populating his party
with interesting people (who the auburn haired girl describes as “terrible”).</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">The man from the Farther Stars, who is like a statue and a
washing machine, whose head moves rhythmically from side to side and whose
voice is water crashing against stone, also indicates that sunspots destroy
tulpas, and that there are “always sunspots on the sun, sun-where”.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">Sunspots are related to solar flare activity
and possibly variations in radiation emitted.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">At the end, “the garden vanished, and the walls of the
apartment rushed in, growing dirty as they came”.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">In the apartment next door the washing
machine goes to its rinse cycle, repeating “sun-where, sun-where, sun-where …
sunspots destroy tulpas”.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">This doesn’t
seem to be the environs of a rich man, and the hair on the back of his arms has
become gray with age.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">Earlier in the
story the younger version of John Edwards responds to the statement “You’ve all
the time in the world.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">If you’ve got the
card,” with “I don’t.”</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">This negation
could just as well be towards having all the time in the world as to having the
card, and it seems unlikely that this poor man living in apartments small
enough to hear the washing machine next door would have the funds to generate
all the thought constructs for his garden party.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">The auburn haired girl wants to kiss him, but she is too
sick and ready to vomit – perhaps this is brought to John Edward’s conscious
attention because he is extremely sick as well, and he can’t even remember “how
old he really was.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">In addition, there is a point during which the Tibetan
speaks “half to the auburn-haired girl, half to the birdcage girl, totally to
John Edward”, which would seem to indicate that they, with their attraction to
the idealized version of him, are simply mental projections/fantasies of
John.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The penthouse is identified as “someone’s
(never mind whose)” and all in all it seems that the old John Edward’s readings
have conjured a fantasy of one last party before he melts into non-existence
through death.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">The book propped on his dresser seems a very philosophical
or Buddhist text, and may have prompted the thought of the Tibetan holy
man.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">“I am the sound of an owl’s wing,
the heartbeat of a banyan tree” are both practically nonexistent.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The banyan tree, because of its beginning as
a parasitic tree which envelops the host eventually, does have some religious
significance.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">In Buddhism it symbolizes
how a temptation or sin can overcome human nature … in Hindu theology the
material world is a banyan tree with its roots upwards and its branches below,
and Krishna identifies himself as the banyan tree in the Bhagavad Gita.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">I think it most likely that “Melting” represents the
thoughts of an elderly sick man influenced by his philosophical reading and his
circumstances to populate his dreams with figures form his past, for the true
form of temporal arrest is in memory.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3">
</font></span><font size="3">Soon his consciousness will be no more, and the party that he swears to “do”
again just a passing whimsy as he dissipates into that narrator’s voice, which
immediately turns to us.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">FURTHER ALLUSIONS:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">There is a slight vibe of Moorcock’s </font><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><font size="3">Dancers at the End of Time</font></i><font size="3">, but those stories of decadent and
eternal partying at the end of everything are fairly contemporary to this work,
starting in 1972, to be considered as a definite influence.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">JOHN EDWARDS AND LORD HARRY (THE DEVIL)</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">While the name “John Edwards” could be a multitude of
literary, political, or scholarly figures, I tend to think that ending invokes
the famous Johnathan Edwards, with his sermon “Sinners in the hands of an Angry
God” – the point is that God can at any time, at a whim, make the foot of the
mighty slide, and that all men are ultimately loathesome to him like a spider,
and that they can be cast into the pit save for arbitrary mercy.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">It appears as though John Edwards arbitrary
mercy has run out at the end.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">John
Edward’s final oath seems to me to reinforce this allusion:</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">“By the Lord Harry … in a day or so – when I’m feeling
better – I’m going to do that again.” He vanishes immediately after.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">Lord Harry is the devil – this final oath,
invoking the devil by another name, also indicates that our main character is
very sick, perhaps to the point of death.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3">
</font></span><font size="3">It is clear he isn’t feeling well, and the parasitic nature of the
banyan tree as well as the idea that the sun eradicates all these tulpas
invokes to my mind perhaps an illness brought on by exposure such as cancer.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">It seems to me that time has run out, and the light of the sun
has snuffed out the old man’s life. Could he be dying of melanoma, sun spots on
his skin destroying him and symbolically melting him away?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">BAGNOLD AND THE LONG RANGE DESERT GROUP</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">The Englishman reminds Edwards of the innovative desert
commander-engineer Ralph Bagnold (1896-1990) who has several claims to fame: crossing
the Libyan desert, innovative WWII dessert raiding strategies, and even a
scientific study on wind and dunes.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The
Englishman’s actual experiences at the hotel Shepheard with a Belgian girl in
Cairo and under Edmund Allenby’s (1861-1936) Egyption Expeditionary Force
probably close to 1917 indicate that he isn’t actually Bagnold (but might be
someone who eventually served on his staff or advised him, such as Archibald
Wavell).</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The German invasion the Belgian
girl’s memory evokes occurred in 1914-1916.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3">
</font></span><font size="3">The Englishman uses the French pejorative to describe Germans – Boche.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font size="3"> </font></span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">No doubt the engineering fame of Bagnold prompted Wolfe to
include him in the story, and Bagnold’s studies of desert wind do resonate with
the people “going out like candles in the wind.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">CONCLUSIONS:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">The theological implication that human identity will one day
vanish and melt into something else, like that ice cube which has temporary
form and assimilates back into the river, equating life with the thought projection
of the deity, seems the most likely explanation for what is going on here, but
that irritated “I’m getting tired of all of you” remains disturbing.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">RELATIONSHIPS TO OTHER WORKS:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">The dying man’s fantasies hold a special place in Wolfe’s
work – his novel </font><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><font size="3">Peace</font></i><font size="3"> is constructed
around just such a conceit, but this one, with the phantasmagorical approach to
reality, really does remind me of “Cues” and “The Green Wall Said” or even “To
The Dark Tower Came” and “Three Fingers” in the somewhat illusory/hallucinatory
nature of the solid and real.</font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><br></div></div></body></html>