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From: "Clifford Drane" <dranec@hotmail.com> Subject: (urth) Tracking Song haunts me Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 21:36:12 CST I keep thinking about the story "The Tracking Song", enough to search the Urth lists for insight. This seems to be one of the most obscure Wolfe tales - I have an idea that doesn't exactly explain many details, but might be a start of another way of thinking about the story. I tend to shoot from the hip, get excited about a theory (see my infrequent posting) to then see it shot down. I submit myself to the firing squad once again. :) I think The Tracking Song could be a story about the origins of an aborigine myth, not told in the way an elder tells a youngster a story to explain Creation or somesuch belief. But told as if the myth truly happened, from the first person WITHOUT completely reducing the magic to science (that's the key). I recall Mailer's Ancient Evenings, and the very detailed retelling of the main story behind the Egyptian mythos - how details were told without destroying or explaining away the magic. Also, if any of you saw the animated version of Watership Down - the brilliant prelude which tails the tail of Creation from the standpoint of rabbits (ok, so who got that pun?). The "realities" in each of those stories were interwoven with the myth - and I think we're encountering Gene's version of this with the typical omitted-detail-method-of-telling-a-story-by-not-telling-a-story that is his calling card. I think Tracking Song could be taking us inside a world that still lives in the mythological. I also think trying to find an American Indian (or other culture) parallel myth is a red herring. Blindfold, please. :) CCD ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/