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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'><div>If the straightforward interpretation of the story is all there is, several points would need </div><div>to be clarified to satisfy me. </div><div><br></div><div>First, why does Wolfe believe that this story, unlike all the other UFO, black dog, vanishing </div><div>hitchhikers, etc., stories he has read, is <span style="font-size: 12pt;">satisfactory where the others are not? </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div>Second, what does Wolfe mean when he hints that "the frame is the whole story"?</div><div><br></div><div>Third, what would be the point of mentioning the cannibalism of the wendigo or the wendigo at all? </div><div>The story would work <span style="font-size: 12pt;">just as well in the original interpretation without the wendigo. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></div><div>Fourth, in the Introduction to Storeys from the Old Hotel, Wolfe makes special mention of his fondness for </div><div><i>Sasquatch: the Apes Among Us</i> by John Green. This book, though I have not read it, is said to be a </div><div>definitive collection <span style="font-size: 12pt;">of documented Bigfoot sightings up to the time of its publication in 1978.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I think this helps bolster the fact that the story we read is an excerpt from a similar book </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">authored by the narrator on UFOs or such-like. This shows that the "genre" of this story is most</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">certainly that of the Unsolved Mysteries category. Of course, the most famous Sasquatch "evidence"</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">is the old Patterson-Gimlin film of the man in the ape suit ambling away from the camera before </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">giving one last over-the-shoulder glance. Thus we have the firmly established genre of the supernatural</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">myth being taken up by so-called investigators who themselves are fabricating everything but </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the underlying myth. It could be said that the narrator of <i>Sightings at Twin Mounds</i> is engaging</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">in just such an endeavor, with his motives a tad more perverse. In fact, the cannibalism is really not essential</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">to my reading of the story either. The narrator could just as easily have murdered Robakowski</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">without eating him, but that brings us back to my third question, above. That aside, if the narrator just </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">murdered Robakowski to set up his elaborate supernatural hoax, he may have deliberately placed the "modern materials"</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">at the mound. He might then have waited until the materials were discovered to do his write-up of the tale, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">that being the perfect final note for his fabricated supernatural event.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></div><div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fifth, Wolfe states that the UFO, etc.,</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">stories that he enjoys reading and whose style he wishes to emulate</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">in <i>Sightings at Twin Mounds</i> are "supposedly factual". If he is indeed writing a story in that "style" it</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">stands to reason that his story as well would be made up of the "supposedly factual". </span></div></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Finally, Wolfe states in the Introduction that he likes the story. The stories he comes out and says he likes</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">or is proud of are some of his richest works. E.g. <i>Beech Hill, A Solar Labyrinth, </i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>Parkroads -- A Review</i>, to name</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a few just from <i>SftOH</i>. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Again the original interpretation is the one invited by a first reading such that it seems </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">unlikely Wolfe would be so fond </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">of a rather straightforward sf piece that requires only one trip through its pages </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">unless it held greater secrets. He also says that it is an "experiment" which could account for its deviation from </span></div><div>the well established norms of his other prevaricating narrators.</div> </div></body>
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