From: "Tom Foster" 
Subject: (urth) More on Silk-Horn's eating habits
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 12:18:12 -0000

Following on from my question about this the other day, I have now read the
first 150 pages or so of RTTW. Two passages stood out with respect to the
narrator's eating habits, both of which concern him eating/drinking
enthusiastically. These are just about the only times I can remember that
the narrator feels this way. The two instances occur at the beginning of the
chapter 'Haunting Dorp', in which he enthusiastically describes all the food
that he is brought as "a feast", and in the chapter 'Dark Empty Rooms', in
which he drinks wine several times. One of these instances occurs in his
present, and one in his past. I'm not sure what to make of it all, but it
does seem strange.

I've been reading a lot of conversations in the archives and was interested
to read about John Clute's review of IGJ, in which he apparently stated that
it was fairly evident that the protagonist of the books is an inhumi. There
was some debate about it, but what do people make of it now?  I'm not at all
convinced, though I can see several arguments to support it, as well as
several to dispute it (the obvious ones being the eating/drinking and the
ability to write neatly, though perhaps this could be achieved through being
an inhumi trapped in a human's body?)  One thing that struck me as slightly
sinister is a sentence at the end of OBW. The narrator writes "Brother and
Sister should have made me feel younger, as the girl did. I felt old
instead". It isn't clear who the 'girl' he is referring to might be
(Seawrack?), but I think that one could interpret this statement in several
ways...


Tom


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