From: m.driussi@genie.com
Subject: (urth) Chin gesture of TS
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 97 19:18:00 GMT


[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

Reply:  Item #6846283 from URTH@LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02#

Ron Crown,

I kept meaning to bring up that "touching one's chin" gesture since
it is repeated, it seems to be a culture clue, and it seems somewhat
familiar--maybe ancient Greek?  Yet there's a tricky one to research
without even the culture as a given!

Re: hidden/cryptic origins of Cutthroat.  If this were a story by
John Crowley, we'd see the androgynous amnesiatic offworlder emerge
from the crashed silver sphere craft (THE DEEP); if this were a story
by Le Guin we'd see those Evil Others nuke the heroic anthropologist's
starship (and buddies!) on page one (ROCANNON'S WORLD).

But Wolfe is very often quite secretive about origins, as we all know
and appreciate.

In addition there are multiple layers.  For example, take BEOWULF.  At
the heroic level, it is the story of heroic guy fighting increasingly big
monsters.  This is the surface level.  And yeah, if you want you can
pile on all sorts of Christian or pre-Christian stuff for a religious
reading--it has been read that way, too.  But at another level, beowulf
means "bee wolf," which refers to the animal we call "bear"; and at this
level of submerged or overwritten animal fable, the dragon's gold is
seen to be honey, "going into caves and dying" becomes hibernation during
the winter, etc.  Which leads to all sorts of ancient bear cult stuff
that I personally like a lot, and a level I think that Wolfe taps
into overtly in some stories and some passages (corridors of time
episodes).

But anyway!

=mantis=