<div dir="ltr">As I said, I think the theme is that the sins of the past come back to bite you, but that the ability of humanity to repress things is infinite and extraordinary. </div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 5:45 PM, Greg Bates <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gregory.a.bates@gmail.com" target="_blank">gregory.a.bates@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">I have never been able to make hide or hair of this story! Someone needs to hold Wolfe down and force him to explain what he was going for with it, beyond an extended riff on Proust.</div><div class="gmail_extra">
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Marc Aramini <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:marcaramini@gmail.com" target="_blank">marcaramini@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid"><div><div class="h5">
<div dir="ltr">
<p style="margin-bottom:0.14in"><br></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.14in">“<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">Suzanne
Delage” was first published in Edges in 1980 and is reprinted in
<i>Endangered Species</i>.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">SUMMARY:
As the narrator is reading a book, he is struck by the idea “<i>that
every man has had in the course of his life some extraordinary
experience, some dislocation of all we expect from nature and
probability, of such magnitude that he might in his own person serve
as a living proof of Hamlet’s hackneyed precept</i> – but that he
has, nearly always, been so conditioned to consider himself the most
mundane of creatures, that, finding no relationship to the remainder
of his life in this extraordinary experience, he has forgotten it.”
</font></font>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">He
then ponders how boring his life is and comes to the conclusion that
his extraordinary event is simply that living all his life in a small
town he has been dimly aware of a woman his age's existence but
claims to have never met her. After reviewing his basic history,
that he was married twice and bored both his ex-wives as they bored
him, that he was a second string football player in highschool, and
that he then searches his yearbooks to find that either she was not
pictured or the pictures were cut out for collages or to attain the
individual pictures. In others she is not pictured because of an
epidemic of some kind which the narrator thinks is Spanish Influenza
took place. </font></font>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">He
reveals that their parents were great friends and searched for quilts
together, which were then displayed at the discoverers house for
everyone to come look at. Despite these parties, he believes Mrs.
Delage was never welcome because of a bitter old woman across the
street who would despise them if Mrs. Delage came over. There are
several other creepy ruminations about coming to love and hate
Suzanne if he had met her, and the story culminates with him
recollecting that a few days ago he ran into someone who had known
him all his life, the wife of a friend, in the town. They see a
beautiful 15 year old girl, and his reaction to her is very strong,
noting her pale skin and dark hair and imagining his hands encircling
her thin waist. The friend says the girl is the very image of her
mother, Suzanne Delage.</font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">COMMENTARY:
</font></font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">If
someone were to attempt to create an infinite speculation device,
they might very well begin with the premise of “Suzanne Delage”:
extraordinary and special events, removed from everyday existence,
are forgotten. Given the vast breadth of ideas which have been put
forth around Suzanne Delage, I think there are a few guidelines which
are provided through thematic analysis and through blatant
metatextual instruction to the reader. For this reason, I will not
present every possible analysis of Suzanne Delage in its entirely,
which, given the elided nature of the central event, could be almost
anything if we do not adhere to certain rigid patterns created
throughout the story. </font></font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">I
believe that “Suzanne Delage” is perhaps the most protean of
Wolfe’s realistic stories – it is not an almost inscrutable
literary myth in the manner of, say, “The God and his Man”, “To
the Dark Tower Came”, or “Cues” – we have low mimesis
characters in a fairly believable American setting here with fairly
straightforward action (or inaction, as the case may be). Here, a
sound conclusion must be based on <i>theme </i><span style="font-style:normal">analysis,
and the theme of the details mentioned in the story seems to indicate
that extraordinary repression of unwanted or painful memories is not
only possible but has happened over and over throughout history.
Occasionally these repressed memories will come back involuntarily,
sometimes to cause great upheaval, but occasionally just to make us
re-evaluate who we are, or even show that we are incapable of that
re-evaluation.</span></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">I
accept several principals at face value from the narrator as general
guidelines: </font></font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-left:0.5in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">1)</font><font size="3">
</font><font size="3">That an extraordinary event actually could be
forgotten, so that he can’t be trusted to reliably remember it. If
he could remember it, then the premise of the story is invalid. If
we do not accept this premise, the analysis can stop right here –
the extraordinary event in his life is that he never met Suzanne
Delage.</font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-left:0.5in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">2)</font><font size="3">
</font><font size="3">When he says, “there has, in fact, been one
thread of the strange – I might almost say the incredible, though
not the supernatural – in my own history,” I take him at face
value. To be honest, never meeting a girl is not that incredible. I
see this as the metafictional statement that must control our
interpretation – incredible things are possible candidates for
elision because they have suffered oblivion, but supernatural things
are not. In other words, elves, demigods, and aliens probably don't
play a part in the best analysis of the story. </font></font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in">
<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">3)</font><font size="3">
</font><font size="3">The narrator will only lie or be inaccurate in
the suppression of a very particular memory, and this must be a
repetitive or discernible pattern or related to the suppressed event
– so that he is only unreliable regarding the remembrance of that
event.</font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It
is conceivable that “Hamlet's hackneyed precept” might be “To
be, or not to be”, but I think it is more likely that the narrator
speaks of the observation, “There are more things in Heaven and
Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” This quote
would tie in slightly better with the theme of many historical forces
at work subjectively ignored by the observer. In particular,
forgotten or unknown things might exist in the world and have
consequences, but been rather remarkable relagated to oblivion.</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">INACCURATE
OR CONTRADICTORY DETAILS:</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">If
the story were completely unreliable and our narrator a thorough
liar, then nothing could be ascertained. However, if he is
conclusively unreliable on one or two related topics and it is
possible to establish that, then we can assume he is only, but still
utterly, unreliable on that topic. In this case, every claim he
makes about Suzane Delage falls under suspicion for the following
reasons.</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
story begins “last night”, when the narrator starts to think
about extraordinary events, and after pondering for what seems like
forever, he says, “I have been dimly aware of the existence of a
certain woman without ever meeting her or gaining any sure idea of
her appearance.” At the end of the story, we get a graphic,
strange, and obsessive depiction of the young girl on the street,
which took place “a few days ago”: </font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in">
<font face="Times New Roman, serif">Her hair was of lustrous black,
and her complexion as pure as milk; but it was not these that for a
moment enchanted me, nor the virginal breasts .. nor the little waist
I might have circled with two hands … to the woman beside me I
said, “What a charming child. Who is she?”</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.49in">
“<font face="Times New Roman, serif">Her name? … I can't think of
it. But of course you know whose she is, don't you? She's the very
image of her mother at that age – Suzanne Delage.” </font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
meeting had this eerie impact, and even after this almost
ephebophiliac description, he <i><span style="text-decoration:none">still</span></i>
forgets about the oddity of it until he ponders and ponders for hours
over his book. He knew exactly what she looked like before the text
even started, according to his own description, but did not think his
reaction to the 15 year old girl was at all extraordinary, and did
not even mention it until the long, discursive review of his life,
then claims he has no idea at all what she looks like.</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">There
are further inconsistencies, claiming that “(though I fear most of
us here have always pronounced it 'Susan')” (note the parentheses
there) and that he has no idea which groups she associated with,
though he states of the year book pictures, “I seem to recall that
these were torn out and cut up to obtain the individual photographs
many decades ago. My own face is among those missing, as well as
Suzanne Delage's; but in another section, one devoted to social
activities, a girl's club (it was called, I think, the Pie Club) is
shown, and one of the names given in the caption is Suzanne's.”
Notice the vague verbiage here: he <i><span style="text-decoration:none">seems</span></i>
to think they were obtained for individual photos (why would he or
his mother cut out the picture of a girl they never met?) and that he
<i>thinks</i> it was the Pie Club, again in parentheses, though he
has the yearbook right in front of him. He later claims “whether
Suzanne Delage had entry to one of more of [these little coteries] I
do not know,” despite the fact he knows of her involvement with the
Pie Club. This haze concerning Suzanne seems like an extreme
inability to retain memories concerned with her. </font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">He
even says only a few of the girls, the “really promiscuous ones and
the dazzlingly beautiful ones whom we, in those naïve times, called
'queens' – were known to everyone,” but he seems to think that
the young girl is dazzlingly beautiful, and the lifelong friend also
just assumes that of course he knows exactly who the girl is, for he
must have known Suzanne Delage. Why would she make that assumption?</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This
particular narrator seems especially faulty when saying “I think”
and “seem” - and when he thinks about why she was unable to be
photographed, he says, “there was an epidemic of some kind (I think
Spanish influenza)” just at the time the pictures for the annual
were to be taken. Suzanne is listed as one of those “unable to be
photographed.” Like everything else that he associates with
Suzanne Delage, the memory is hazy. However, anyone who actually
lived through the Spanish Influenza would not be likely to identify
it as “an epidemic of some kind” which is incredibly only
recalled to our narrator when “on one of the closing pages a
woebegone roll of names reminded me of something I had forgotten for
many years” - (see the theme section below for more details on its
destructive and terrible effects, but since World War I was about to
escalate, it was somehow historically less known that other
destructive pandemics in history like the Bubonic Plague or the Black
Death). How could he have forgotten this, if it devastated the
school and community during his adolescence? He isn't even certain
that it is Spanish Influenza.</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
mothers even seem to be close friends who leave town together all the
time. The primary impediment to the mother's sharing the sheets is
the old woman across the street, a widow who would have become
enemies for life if Mrs. Delage was invited over, and the narrator
states, “I believe my mother's friend died while I was at college.”
However, it is unclear if the friend referenced is the widow, who was
never referred to as a friend, or Mrs. Delage, who was so identified
earlier: “Mrs. Delage, who became my mother's friend.” This
seems like a rather nebulous excuse as well.</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Almost
every claim he makes about Suzanne consciously is subject to
question, but a few of the speculative ones are almost suggestive:
“It would therefore have been entirely logical for Mrs. Delage to
have been our frequent guest, at least for tea; and for her to have
brought, occasionally, her little daughter Suzanne, whom I would no
doubt have soon come to both love and hate.” This is a strong
statement about someone whom one has never met – assuming that love
and hate would simply occur naturally based on the concept of simply
knowing her. Here there seems to be some subconscious truth – the
narrator loved, and hated, Suzanne Delage, but repressed it, as the
excised yearbook pictures (do we cut out pictures of people we never
met?) and the vague memory of everything associated with her
indicates. The fantasy meeting even involves a dance: “It is even
possible I danced with her – but I do not really believe that, and
if, indeed, it happened the years have so effectively sponged the
events from my mind that no slightest trace remains,” which is
probably exactly what happened.</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">There
is one more odd disjunction that occurs at the start of the story,
where our narrator claims, “I have never made an effort to meet
[Suzanne Delage], and I doubt that she has ever attempted to meet me,
if, indeed, she is aware that I exist. On the other hand we are
neither of us invalids, nor are we blind. This woman … lives, or at
least so I have always vaguely supposed, on the eastern edge of our
little city I live on the western.” The mention of being blind is
very odd indeed. Why mention this at all? We do know that an
epidemic which prevented people from being photographed hit the city,
though the narrator is not certain which it was. One disease that
does leave people blind is Small Pox, and there is an interesting
connection with the disease and quilts of just such types as the
mothers collect that is discussed below – specifically, in an
attempt to eradicate Native American populations, quilts infected
with small pox were distributed. Assuming that our narrator has
suppressed the memory of a terrible event, one in which he comes to
love and hate Suzanne Delage and then represses everything about
their relationship, it is not unreasonable to assume that they were
lovers and that something disastrous happened. </font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">We
have details in the text of a denial of blindness, of her living on
the western edge of town, of his complete lack of knowledge of her
appearance, and his claim that his life is completely boring, but
underneath these details, especially parenthetically, there at least
seems to be some strong emotional certainty involving Suzanne Delage
and her image, through the daughter, has a profound affect on him at
the end. If they indeed made love on the quilts collected by their
parents and spread the disease through the town as a result,
destroying families and perhaps one of them even going blind, then a
reason for the repression materializes.</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">While
this involves a huge speculative scene (Suzanne and the narrator
possibly consummating their juvenile relationship on an infected
quilt and then devastating the town before completely suppressing the
memory), the details of epidemic, the denial of blindness, and the
strange conviction that he would come to love and hate Suzanne
otherwise make very little sense – why are they present, especially
the denial of their mutual blindness? Our narrator is metaphorically
blind, but perhaps the smallpox has made Suzanne literally so.</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><br><br>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">THEME
AND LITERARY ALLUSIONS:<br></font><br><br>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In
this case, the primary literary allusion at work is also the one
which must control the theme: Proust's <i>Remembrance of Things Past</i>
or <i>In Search of Lost Time</i>. We must decide if it is a simply
situational reference or if the entire idea behind Proust's giant
work is being invoked. The start of the novel involves the narrator
awakening involuntary memories of his childhood which were forgotten
through the same taste he experienced as a child, changing his
perception of his current life through all those memories coming
back. This would fit with the theme of repression of the incredible
or painful – things we cannot deal with or understand are simply
shoved to the bottom of our minds forever and we go about our lives,
but sometimes they can pop up again. The alternative, single scene
reference is as follows.</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">The
title character is named after a scene from Proust’s <i>Remembrance
of Things Past</i>, probably first noted by Michael Andre-Driussi.</font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in">
<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3">She
spoke to me of myself, my family, my social background. She said:
"Oh, I know your parents know some very nice people. You're a
friend of Robert Forestier and Suzanne Delage." For a moment
these names conveyed absolutely nothing to me. But suddenly I
remembered that I had indeed played as a child in the Champs-Elysees
with Robert Forestier, whom I had never seen since. As for Suzanne
Delage, she was the great-niece of Mme Blandais, and I had once been
due to go to a dancing lesson, and even to take a small part in a
play at her parents' house. But the fear of getting a fit of giggles
and a nose-bleed had at the last moment prevented me, so that I had
never set eyes on her. I had at the most a vague idea that I had once
heard that the Swanns' feather-hatted governess had at one time been
with the Delages, but perhaps it was only a sister of this governess,
or a friend. I protested to Albertine that Robert Forestier and
Suzanne Delage occupied a very small place in my life. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in">
<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3">"That
may be; but your mothers are friends, I can place you by that. I
often pass Suzanne Delage in the Avenue de Messine. I admire her
style." Our mothers were acquainted only in the imagination of
Mme Bontemps, who having heard that I had at one time played with
Robert Forestier, to whom, it appeared, I used to recite poetry, had
concluded from that that we were bound by family ties. She could
never, I gathered, hear my mother's name mentioned without observing:
"Oh yes, she belongs to the Delage-Forestier set,"giving my
parents a good mark which they had done nothing to deserve. (from
Proust’s The Guermantes Way, Chapter 2).</font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">That
relationship is straightforward enough, but there are other
“forgotten things” at least hinted at in the text. In our
narrator's world, the mothers actually are acquainted, and
nonsensically seek for quilts together and then proudly display them
at parties (why would they display them in our narrator's house if
Suzanne's mother were not permitted to come over?) If the text only
refers to this portion of Proust's work rather than the entirety,
then the analysis in the section above loses some of its thematic
validity.</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Spanish
Flu: considering the manner in which the Spanish influenza, the 1918
flu pandemic, is treated by the narrator, as an epidemic of some kind
which he thinks was Spanish influenza, it seems like something one
would remember: it infected 500 million across the world and killed
perhaps almost 100 million of them “three to five percent of the
world's population – making it one of the deadliest natural
disasters in human history” (“1918 Flu Pandemic”). It was
unusual in that it killed previously healthy young adults because of
their strong immune response:</font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in">
<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en">In the United
States, the United Kingdom and other countries, despite the
relatively high morbidity and mortality rates that resulted from the
epidemic in 1918–1919, the Spanish flu began to fade from public
awareness over the decades until the arrival of news about bird flue
and other pandemics in the 1990s and 2000s. This has led some
historians to label the Spanish flu a "forgotten pandemic".</span></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en">The
infestation of small pox in quilts seems another fact that for many
years would be forgotten by the general populace – it is shameful
and probably evil, and the disregard for human life from the
civilized portion of American society paints a fairly vile picture
that is uncomfortable to look at and might be repressed. Perhaps
forgetting this past sin comes back to haunt the community, and the
ghostly presence of Suzanne at the end serves as a symbol of this
theme for our narrator's life.</span></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"> <font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">PROBLEMS
WITH THE SMALL POX THEORY:</font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">The
quilts take up a fair amount of time, but the women desire 18</font><sup><font size="3">th</font></sup><font size="3">
century quilts, though usually find ones of the earlier part of the
19</font><sup><font size="3">th</font></sup><font size="3"> century. The
quilt which belonged to “the wife of a major in a fencible Zouave
regiment” is mentioned in particular, and is spread over the sofa.
While the name Zouave is usually associated with French forces in
Africa, but there are non-French Zouave regiments, even American
units during the Civil War and until the 1880s when they transformed
into something like the National Guard. The dating of the quilts they
attained seems off, but note the use of parentheses and “I think”
this quote: “(it was their enduring hope, I think never well
satisfied, to find a piece from what they called 'American revolution
times' - by which they meant the eighteenth, even such dates as 1790
or 1799)” Our narrator is notoriously bad at thinking, especially
in parentheses, which always seem to contain some pertinent detail.
If they did attain their desire, then it might have led to something
disastrous, as we can see from the history of 18</font><sup><font size="3">th</font></sup><font size="3">
century American quilts:</font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in">
<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><span lang="en">On
June 29, 1763, ... Bouquet was preparing to lead an expedition to
relieve Fort Pitt when he received a letter from Amherst making the
following proposal: "Could it not be contrived to Send the Small
Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this
occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them."</span></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0.5in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en">Bouquet
agreed, writing back to Amherst on July 13, 1763: "I will try to
inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their
hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself."
Amherst responded favorably on July 16, 1763: "You will Do well
to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to
try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execreble
Race."</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0.5in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en">As
it turned out, however, officers at the besieged Fort Pitt had
already exposed the Indians in just the manner Amherst and Bouquet
were discussing. During a parley at Fort Pitt on June 24, 1763,
Captain Simeon Ecuyer gave representatives of the besieging Delawares
two blankets and a handkerchief from the smallpox ward "out of
regard to them" after the Delawares pledged to renew their
friendship. While the exact meaning of his phrase was unclear, a
later invoice appears to clearly establish the purpose was
transmittal of smallpox.</span></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in">
<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><span lang="en">Indians
in the area did indeed contract smallpox. Some historians have noted
that it is impossible to verify how many people (if any) contracted
the disease as a result of the Fort Pitt incident; the disease was
already in the area and had reached the Indians through other
vectors. ... The smallpox epidemic that had occurred during Pontiac's
War ... killing as many as 400,000-500,000 Native Americans during
and years after Pontiac's Rebellion. (“Seige of Fort Pitt”)</span></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">His
claim that the sheets were never used is also in parentheses – they
could have been used by a teenage couple quite easily.</font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">The
strange old widow across the street is another oddity in the text,
but I think that the narrator's claim that the Delages lived across
town is another one of his mis-remembrances … maybe she lives right
across the street. </font></font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">The
age of the narrator is a problem if we assume the girl is his
daughter, even though he retired “much sooner than most men” -
for him to be the father, he would have to probably be in his early
or mid 30s, unless the relationship with Suzanne lingered longer than
in high school, and if it did, that would certainly have prompted his
lifelong friend to say something more damning than that. Retiring
“much sooner” is an understatement there. Perhaps the girl is
not his child, but the relationship of her mother and the narrator
probably goes much deeper than he can remember.</font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">It
seems that his claim of Spanish Influenza hitting the town is wrong,
but it is difficult to determine if his childhood is set in 1918 or
even the 1950s, as its depiction of small town groups seems fairly
generically rural or suburban America. </font></font>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3">OTHER
INTERPRETATIONS:</font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3">In
light of the eerie description of the young girl and the difficulty
in getting a handle on the time line of the work if the girl at the
end of the story is his daughter from a high school relationship (is
our narrator really only in his early 30s?) there are several other
explanations which fit a few details but not all. One is vampirism:
the lack of pictures of Suzanne and her milky complexion as well as
agelessness creates a kind of immortal mind fog lurking over the
town. Yet she is in some of the pictures which were cut out and
excised, and this does not explain many of the other strange details
of the text.</font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3">Borski
asserts in </font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><i>The
Long and Short of It </i></font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3">that
Suzanne is another name for “Lily” and draws the parallel with
the mention of queens with the bitter old woman across the street as
the villain of </font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><i>Snow
White </i></font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">and
the apple of the story with Suzanne's presence in the Pie Club.</span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><i>
</i></font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">Thus
the girl at the end is in some way still the original Suzanne, but
our narrator proved to fail as the prince to awake her from her
slumber.</span></font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">Gwern.net
has several other reactions to the story, referenced below.</span></font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">Both
of these seem to fail in holistic explanations of why all these
inconsistencies occur in the narrator's memory and why he has cut out
the yearbook pictures, if not in a kind of deliberate but forgotten
suppression. They don't serve the theme of forgotten things
returning quite suddenly and unexpectedly, occasionally with
disastrous consequences. The suppressed relationship, making love on
the quilts, and the spread of smallpox through the town makes use of
the majority of the details in the text if we accept the premise:
extraordinary things sufficiently removed from every day life can be
repressed and forgotten, even if they were a huge important part of
history (such as the disastrous but forgotten Spanish Influenza,
which devastated the world but was relatively forgotten, or the
spread of disease infested quilts in an attempt at genocide).</span></font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">CONNECTION
WITH OTHER WORKS:</span></font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">Since
I favor a “realistic” interpretation of this story (part of the
details show that extraordinary suppression of unwanted memories
happens, even if, for example, 1 in 20 people in the world die or are
affected by it), the strain of realism in Wolfe is actually
relatively select. There are </span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><i>possibilities
</i></font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">of
realism under science fiction or fantasy (</span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><i>The
Sorcerer's House</i></font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">
or “The Ziggurat”, for example). “Beech Hill”, “The
Recording”, perhaps “The Flag”, “Pauls Treehouse”, and “The
Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” are all perhaps realistic
fiction, but just as in those stories and others close to our
reality, the strangeness lurks beneath the surface – if not in the
supernatural or spiritual, then in the extreme unlikeliness of the
situation.</span></font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">This
story is important for its almost sublime ordering as a palimpsest –
almost any interpretation can fit the premise, but in cases such as
this in Wolfe's fiction, his modernist, engineering mindset should
lead us to look for patterns of theme and in the unreliability, or we
will be lost amid infinite speculation. The published criticism on
Wolfe has shown that this is a very real possibility.</span></font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">The
most important feature of this story is the use of the parenthetical
asides, ostensibly extra information, revealing everything that our
narrator treats as extra irrelevant information to his story of
himself. Ultimately, he will never understand his life until he
reincorporates the relevant but separated and isolated information
into his life.</span></font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><br><br>
</p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">For
the purposes of this write up, only a general assessment of the
historical references was necessary, and thus the following sources:</span></font></font></font></p>
<div style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in">
<font color="#000000">“<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">1918
Flu Pandemic." Wikipedia, Th Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 5 Aug. 2004. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.</span></font></font></font></div><div style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">B</span></font></font></font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">orski,
Robert. </span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><i>The
Long and the Short of It: More Essays on the Fiction of Gene Wolfe</i></font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">.
Lincoln: iUniverse, Inc. 2006.</span></font></font></font></div>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in">
<font color="#000000">“<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">Seige
of Fort Pitt.” </span></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><i>Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia</i></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 11 May 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.</span></font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in;margin-left:0.5in">
<font color="#000000">“<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">Suzanne
Delage.” </span></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><i>Gwern.net</i></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3"><span style="font-style:normal">.
22 June 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.
<a href="http://www.gwern.net/Suzanne%20Delage" target="_blank">http://www.gwern.net/Suzanne%20Delage</a></span></font></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height:115%;margin-bottom:0.14in"><br><br>
</p>
</div>
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