Wolfe Wiki-Discuss-Peace

  • Altered to match the alterations to the story template.
    Also, added one simple bit of interpretation, partly to let me ask here the key question: interpretations themselves often contain spoilers of one sort or another. I'm beginning to think that we need to simply admit that spoilage is unavoidable in a site like this, and not worry so much about it.
    The alternative (as I see it) would be to set up a detailed set of standards for what pages can and can't contain spoilers, and what constitutes a spoiler anyway, mark all links to spoilers-permitting pages as such, and police it. This strikes me as a lot of work. It seems better to me to just put a warning at the front of the site that this whole thing is spoileriferous and that you should probably go read Wolfe's texts before you read about them. --Sturgeons 20070811
    • I guess this is difficult for us to answer now, as atm all the contributors are (presumably) familiar with Wolfe's work so immune to spoilage. It won't become an issue until we have Wolfe neophytes arriving at the site.
      Maybe a tactic might be to have a definitively spoilerfree area, consisting just of a "why you might want to read this book" sort of thing for each book, linked from the newcomers' introduction page (these pages to live in a separate "Spoilerfree" or "Newcomers" group, so it's obvious when editing them) -- and accept spoilers as natural on the entire rest of the site? -- Mo 20070810
      • Having a spoiler-free page for each novel (which I assume would be very short in the case of "Peace") sounds like a good idea. It also might not be too much work to set these up initially, as the simplest option would just be to copy the parts of the front page which don't contain spoilers; we could use this as a starting point and then improve them. Amazingly some people seem to read "Peace," enjoy it a lot, and never realize that the narrator is a ghost. --StoneOx 20070810
        • Including me, the first time I read it, aged 18 ;-) -- Mo 20070810
        • Me too -- and I was nearly 30. I wound up writing a long essay about how I thought the whole thing revolved around the counterfeit books Mr. Gold creates -- the "books of Gold," thus suggesting a link to tBotNS. Oy! --Sturgeons 20070810
          • I hope you kept that essay and intend to post it on here... Mo 20070813
            • No, long lost, and I'm just as glad. It was very bad. I sent my only copy(!) to Jeremy Crampton who was at the time editing the fanzine "The Book of Gold;" as it happened, no further issues of TBoG ever appeared, and I just hope that I didn't help to kill it! --Sturgeons 20070813
        • And I nearly missed it ... I was lucky enough to spot the connection between the tree planted by Mrs. Porter (three-fourths of the way through the book) with the tree that fell in the first paragraph. But I didn't have a clue before that. --StoneOx 20070810
          • Exactly. Until that penny drops, it seems like ... what did Neal Gaiman say? Ah, yes. "Peace really was a gentle Midwestern memoir the first time I read it. It only became a horror novel on the second or the third reading." Just so. There are murders, and greed, and at least one ghost, but until you hook up this elm tree over here with that one over there, none of them is obvious. Then they start oozing out of the text, and is there any end to them? --Sturgeons 20070813
  • I added a spoiler button. The formatting came out acceptable, but it could be improved. Also, it seems like we could have one spoiler button that reveals all the spoilers on a page (although I haven't tested it. UPDATE: apparently it doesn't work.). We should decide whether we want to do it this way or not. --StoneOx 20070816
    • I think I would prefer a separate button for each -- but it's not a strong preference, so not fussed if other people like it the other way -- Mo 20070816
    • I like it! Also, agree with Mo - with modification: anywhere it makes sense to group spoilers together, one button for the group, but when spoilers are in different places on the page, let's give them their own buttons. --Sturgeons 20070816
  • Speaking of Borsky (which you were doing over on the Dr. Island page), we should link to his "The Devil his Due" essay from the main Peace page. Is there a standard place to put links like this yet? I've stuck it in what I think is the obvious place. --StoneOx 20070817
    • That works. It's a interpretation. If it were (say) a page on onomastics it would go better in the "Comments" subsection -- etc. These will often be judgment calls.
  • Stoneox et al: Thanks for all your work on Peace, and keep it up! This is the one major work by Wolfe I haven't read even once, and I look forward to using these pages as a resource when I get to it. (Incidentally, I have heard that the Tor edition is very difficult to read because of small and/or fuzzy print. Those of you who have this edition, can you confirm this? I don't want the extra frustration of eye strain in reading a Wolfe novel, so if there's some older edition with larger, crisper print then I'd like to get that instead.)
    • As for the size, you can look at the preview page at amazon.com to judge whether it's too small. I think it's fine. And the preview page has really fuzzy print which my actual physical book doesn't (although I admit it's not quite as sharp as some fonts). Maybe some copies were defective, or maybe amazon scanned it in badly, and that's the source of this complaint. By the way, I've found the amazon.com search within this book to be a really useful concordance. --StoneOx 20070819
      • Peace may have fuzzy print because the Orb paperback is a facsimile of the first edition. --StoneOx 20080112
      • The UK Chatto & Windus 1985 ed seems to be too. But it's not so fuzzy it's hard to read -- Mo 20080212
  • It seems somewhat strange that Wolfe makes this reference to "Titania's votaress," where Shakespeare is talking about pregnancy, in the princess in the tower story, when this story is about Olivia, who died childless. Could this be some kind of subtle hint? What about, though? -- StoneOx 20080112
    • May be significant that in the story it's not the princess who bellies out like Titania's votaress, but (the sail of) her supply boat, ie. this is a thing that her father is sending to her? -- Mo 20080212
      • Another possibility is that since we have two references to Act II, Scene 1, of Midsummer Night's Dream in Peace, maybe we should look at this scene? Would Wolfe give out hints this way? -- StoneOx 20080116
  • Could we maybe have a rule that spoilers are allowed on the pages devoted to that particular book only. What I mean is that we shouldn't for instance put a Castleview spoiler on the PEACE page because someone may have read PEACE but not Castleview. -- Crom 20080304
    • Yes, I think that's a good idea. Best would be if people put such spoilers under a link along the lines of "spoiler if you haven't read Castleview" -- Mo 20080305
  • Having said that I've got some ideas on PEACE so here goes. The book starts with a reference to the tree planted by Eleanor Bold (the judges daughter) being blown down in a storm the night before and that it woke Weer in the night. He thought it might have been a heart attack. Could it have been the actual heart attack that kills him and he doesn't know he is dead? He then goes off in search of his penknife and starts writing his memoirs without realising he is a ghost. I've got loads more ideas on PEACE but I've got to go now, I'll be back very soon folks. -- Crom 20080304
    • That's great, thanks for contributing! Just one thing though, I've edited your comment to look like ... -- Crom 20080304 which is the standard style on here -- can you please do it like this in future? Nothing wrong with the way you had it, it's just that eg on a big page with lots of comments it makes it easier to see what's what if everyone does it the same way.
  • Does anyone know why Napoleon is always seen with one hand tucked into his jacket and why this is relevant in PEACE? I haven't managed to find out myself yet.
    • There was quite a bit of discussion of that on the Urth discussion group, and nobody ever came up with an definitive answer. If you figure it out, I'd love to know. StoneOx 20080305

What about that business with Louis Gold and his faked books? When Weer went to confront him about it, Gold's wife went to great lengths to tell Weer what a genius Gold was. Louis Gold seemed to be hinting in their conversation that although the books are written by him, their contents are actually true. There is what seems to an extract from the Kate Boyne diary that describes the visit paid them by William Quantrill, I don't think it's an extract from the faked diary though, it reads more like a story than a diary. I think Weer wrote that bit because he knew it to be true, (why shouldn't a ghost be able to look back in time beyond its own lifetime?) I think Gold had some special talent for writing books that had never been written but that were still true (he could probably get you a copy of the book of Skelos). If I'm right this would mean everything in the Kate Boyne diary is true (even though she never wrote it) and there really was a fortune in gold in the dry creek bed. Weer disarmed Lois Arbuthnot (somehow) after she pulled the gun on him and killed her, he probably buried her right there in the creek. Did he inherit the Orange juice Company from Julius Smart or did he buy him out with Quantrill's gold? Crom20080305

  • Welcome! It'll be good to have somebody new adding to the wiki. I have always assumed that Weer tried to take the gun from Lois, and it went off during the struggle and killed her. I don't see any indication of intent to murder on his part. Also, in an interview Wolfe, in response to a theory similar to yours, said that there was no buried gold, and Weer inherited the OJ company from Smart. (He also refused to answer the question of whether Weer killed Lois, which I take as evidence in favor of his having killed her.) Here's the reference: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0008/0685.shtml Stoneox 20080305
  • Thanks for that, I've just read the article and it sheds much light on things, fantastic. I'm going to see what I can find out about Napoleon. Crom 20080307
  • Here's a link to an Urth.net article that has some interesting ideas. http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2009-July/013673.html Crom 20090818
    • Mm, that's worth linking from the main article page I think -- Mo August 18, 2009, at 06:48 PM
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