From: StoneOx17@aol.com
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 21:54:07 EDT
Subject: Re:  (urth) The Coldhouse Prank 

In a message dated 8/23/2002 7:57:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Robert Borski 
writes:

> Stone Ox writes: 
> > Robert Borski argues quite eloquently that Ted Singer's father is the 
victim
> > in the coldhouse prank.  I don't think this can be right, because the 
victim
> > lived in a boarding house, was locked in on Friday, and nobody noticed he 
was
> > missing until he was discovered on Monday.  If the victim had had a wife 
or
> > girlfriend, surely he would have been discovered sooner.

> But look who imparts this information about the weekend tragedy and the
> boarding house connection: Dan French, who, not having been a factory
> employee at the time, is simply repeating the sanitized version of the story
> as it's been spun down through the years and perhaps even through
> semi-official channels, since there's been a coverup. (I do, however, and
> for obvious reasons, like the notion that the victim died on Friday.) He
> doesn't remember the name of the victim and is completly unaware there is an
> even more sinister side to the entire episode, with a lone person being
> responsible for the victim's death. As Den also reminds us earlier, such
> stories have a way of becoming "both faded and embroidered by time," which
> results in a further blurring of the details. And lastly when Dan French
> tells the story of the sidhe, it deviates from the traditional in several
> respects.

> In other words I think there's plenty of reason to doubt his version of the
> story.

When Dan French is telling the story of the sidhe, it's an embedded story, 
and Wolfe has changed, or invented, many (if not all) of the embedded 
stories, so as to shed light on events in the book.  On the other hand, if we 
believe that Weer was the perpetrator of the coldhouse prank, I'd consider it 
part of Weer's own life story, and I'm much more reluctant to believe that 
Wolfe is altering the details here.  But this relates to the whole unicorn 
debate, which I think we could argue about for eternity.
I just had the thought that maybe part of the reason there's been so much 
discussion about Mr. Tilly's story and Doris's story is that it's not clear 
whether they should be counted as embedded stories or not.

-Stone Ox



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