From: "William Ansley" 
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 17:30:24 -0500
Subject: Re: (urth) Frank Black

"Seth Lombardi"  wrote:
>Here's a possible GW pop music connection:
>(on the subject of music from a few posts back)
>Anyone listen to Frank Black
[...]
>Anyway, I got his newest, Dog in Sand a few months back. I was dumbstruck by

>one song that, well. . . it reminds me a LOT of the BOTNS. Mainly because it

>has the word "pelagic" in it. It's hard to believe a sci-fi freak pop music

>star could pick that word randomly. 
[...]

Frank Black certainly may be a Gene Wolfe fan, but even if he has never read
Wolfe, his use of "pelagic" could hardly be considered random. The song you
quote (I have omitted the lyrics from my quote of you message, above) refers
to the mid-ocean. To quote Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, pelagic
means:

"of, relating to, or living or occurring in the open sea : OCEANIC"

So Frank Black was merely using an uncommon word appropriately. Since Gene Wolfe
has practically made a career out of this, Black may have been imitating him,
but I find it far from certain, especially since the rest of the song doesn't
seem, to me at least, to have much resonance with TBotNS.

William Ansley


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