From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey@stic.net>
Subject: (urth) Re: Kevin Malone
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 02:01:59 

Tony Ellis wrote:

>
>There -is- no relationship between Kevin and Betty Malone. Once you
understand
>that it all falls into place: Kevin Malone -thinks- Betty Malone and the
elder Mr
>Malone were married, -thinks- that he was their child in the lost Eden of
the
>house in its heyday. But if the names are just coincidental, and
there -was- no
>child, that cuts his whole fantasy off at the root. In which case,
where -do- his
>childhood memories of the big house come from? And the longing to recreate
that
>lost world which has driven his whole life?
>
    I hope these questions were not rhetorical. :-)  If there was no child,
then who is Kevin Malone? Where did (does) the money come from to buy and
maintain the estate? If any of the testimony of the narrative is to be
trusted, then a maid named Betty Malone was murdered and someone, who may or
may not have been the murderer, committed suicide in consequence thereof.
Why was she murdered, and by whom? What bearing does that have on Kevin, or
the current "young couple"?
    In this story, again, there are two Wolfe characters - the narrator and
Kevin - who are misogynists.
    And what about the "young couple"? Why does Marcella remain?
    As far as "spoilers" go, in the archives I believe it is stated that all
readers of this list are presumed to be familiar with the corpus of Wolfe's
work. Is that not so?

>
>Think about that, and think about the narrator wondering in the very last
line of
>the story, if it might be possible "for a man, even a very rich man, to be
>posessed and not to know it."
>

    Possessed by whom or what? Spoil it for me, by private e-mail if you
wish.

Roy







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