From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis@sirius.com>
Subject: (urth) PEACE-ful tangent
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 19:37:15 

GENTLE-men, discussion of PEACE belongs on the Urth list, not the Whorl list.

A-hem.

Right, I'll agree that the librarian is more up-in-the-air as a murder
victim. The icehouse worker, yes, Bobby Black, certainly.

The thing about the worker is this: there is so much going on in the
telling of that story to the reporter, I start to get some strange notions.
For example, the events of the story start happening again (which itself is
a common element of ghost stories, "it was on a night just like tonight . .
." " . . . it's happening again!!") when they can't find the reporter.  But
just before that, Den asks Dan French if he had ever been locked in the
freezer himself (Berkley 232); Dan says "I'm here, ain't I?" (which is both
a negative ["I'm alive, so I couldn't have been"] and a positive ["Why yes,
because I'm the ghost that haunts this freezer"]).

Den says, a bit later, "You remind me of somebody, but I can't recall who
it is . . . . Someone who's dead now.  I can't remember" (234).

Well in PEACE that could be anybody or nobody, sure.  (And if anybody has a
better candidate then by all means, let me know,) But within this very
specific context it sure seems to me (at times) as if Dan French physically
looks like the man who died in the freezer--thus, he is the son, grandson,
nephew, or otherwise male relative of the dead man.  Telling the story to
the killer, like a ghost looking for a confession. (Dan doesn't know, I
don't think; Den avoids figuring it out.)

After the freezer bit, Dan French gives a bit of his genealogy, and whack!
if he ain't a Doherty (who slide like sidhe through the truth and lies of
that town), probably even related to Kate Boyne.

On to the case of Bobby Black.

The thing that gets me about this one, right now, is the way that the
portrait of little Joe, which starts off the whole tussle, it is just so
creepy: like a family curse (just as Joe died so young, so will Bobby die)
as well as a ghostly revenge story (as if Bobby or Bobby's ancestor were
somehow responsible for Joe's death), as well as a weird sacrifice (as if
Joe hungers for blood or company).

Just a few thoughts.

=mantis=



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