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I too want to delurk for a few minutes to say thanks for inspiring yet another re-read of 5HoC. I'm not quite confident enough in my own interpretations to share them, but here's a couple of passages i found rather more interesting on this re-read.<div><br></div><div>Regarding Number Five's unspoken name, there's this in " 'A Story', By John V. Marsch."</div><div>===========</div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"Chew harder," Sandwalker told him, "and you won't believe that." And then, because he was sorry to have hurt a friend at such a time he added more kindly, "which one are you – aren't you the one who showed me what it is you chew?"</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"Wolf."</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Lastvoice had begun his chant. Sandwalker said "Your Old Wise One told me last night your names were Foxfire, Whistler, and something else I forget – but there was none of that name."</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"We have names for seven," the Shadow child said, "and names for five. The names for three you have heard. My name now is the name for one. Only his name, the Old Wise One's name, never changes." (p. 140)</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">============</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">It's been postulated that the Number Five clone line may be the only actual humans left in the St. Anne/St. Croix system. Might Wolf being the name for a single Shadow child be a significant textual support for this, or some other interpretation?</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Also, this, in "V. R. T." </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">============</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">My problem, then, is to learn all that there is to be learned about some very primitive people who have left almost no physical traces at all (as far as anyone knows) and some highly embroidered legends. I would be disheartened if it were not that the parallel with those paleolithic, Caucasoid Pygmies who came to be called the Good People (and who survived, as was eventually shown, in Scandinavia and Erie* until the last years of the eighteenth century) were not almost exact. (p.157)</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">===========</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Page numbers from the 1981 printing of the Ace edition. I believe *Erie to be a typo. Not as significant as the he/they editing difference that's been discussed on the list, but i assume that the correct word is actually Eire. I searched the archives for the phrase "Caucasoid Pygmies" and found two hits, neither of which was more recent than 2003, so i'm not sure if i'm the only one who wonders about this paragraph.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Googling the phrase "Caucasoid Pygmy" returns exactly 3 hits, none of which i feel comfortable linking to. So, what exactly does Gene Wolfe, who never wastes a word, mean by the phrase "as was eventually shown"? When i first read 5HoC in my twenties, i thought it was a fantasy, and assumed he was making a leprechaun analogy. That's pretty clearly not the case. I think he may be saying that the person who wrote this journal entry may not be the scholar he presents himself to be, but i'm definitely open to other thoughts.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Also, and i don't know why, but i never made the connection between the Bernard Wolfe who wrote the Trotsky book and the Bernard Wolfe who wrote Limbo, which sits next to my Gene Wolfe 3 foot bookshelf. I may need to re-read that one this winter.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Once again, thanks for the stimulating conversation.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Barry</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></font></div><div><div>On Sep 1, 2014, at 5:19 PM, <a href="mailto:urth-request@lists.urth.net">urth-request@lists.urth.net</a> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">5HoC: The Top Floor of the Library</font></p> </blockquote></div><br></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Thank you, Gerry, Lee and Mark, for motivating me to re-read The Fifth Head of Cerberus. I had hesitated to do so for many years because I found it repellent in many of its details and depressing in its entirety. The details are still repellent, but I found it a little less depressing on this reading, largely because the emotional tone of the second story ('A Story') had altered for me.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Save for one, the books Number Five finds at the top of the spiral in the public library were easy enough to identify and confirm that Five's surname begins with a W. But who is the author of the book about 'the assassination of Leon Trotsky'? And what is the book? Is it a book at all, or something to do with the film of that title?</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">By the way, I didn't find any specific evidence in the book for Five's first name. There are Wolfe clues aplenty, but though 'Gene' is obviously an appropriate name for a clone, I couldn't find anything to confirm that it really was his name. The author has confirmed that it is, but he did so to someone who had arrived at name by guessing. Anyone have any light to shed?</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Also by the way, Maitre's cloning experiments almost certainly eliminate the possibility that the population of Ste. Croix are anything other than Earth-human (well, most of them). Maitre must have gained his knowledge of genetic engineering from Terrestrial textbooks, and unless the mimicry of the shadow-children extends all the way down to the microbiological level (which is surely absurd) it wouldn't have worked if everybody was a shapeshifted nonhuman.</div></div></body></html>