Subject: RE: (urth) Marble on NPR
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 15:52:05 -0700
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" 

Crush wrote...

> The easiest and most coherent explanation of what happens=20
> with Marble and Rose is exactly as you describe, that some
> of the attributes/personality of Rose came over with her
> parts when Marble scavenged them.=20

Agreement: I understand/understood this* as based on the
holographic model of memory. In this model, we postulate=20
memories as stored not in a specific "location" but=20
distributed, like the information which constitutes a=20
hologram, throughout the host's neural net/nervous system.

-----
* I mean understanding in the scientific/scientifictional
  sense of "finding a rational/rationalizing explanation=20
  for"; with the Books of the Foo Sun, we also have to allow=20
  for at least the possibility of a "mystical" and/or=20
  "spiritual" explanation, too.
-----

Thus, with a bit of hokey-pokey and handwaving, we say=20
that Rose's "parts," connected for so long to her nervous
system, participate in the holographic storage of her memory.
When removed from her body and attached to Marble's, they=20
carry that holographic store of memory with them, like the
pieces of a cut-up hologram that still show the "whole"=20
picture (albeit with blurred detail: see also Samuel R.
Delany's stories "High Weir" and "Time Considered as a=20
Semi-Precious Stone").=20

I expect that, yes, Rorble/Mase does undergo a great deal of
confusion, leading to the comments you cite. Later, she makes
comments about how she had not fully "integrated" Rose's=20
memories.

The Morsle/Rabe case also sets up (though I do not think=20
it "foreshadows" in the sense that Wolfe probably did not
have the plot of SS in mind when he created this particular
situation) the confusing state of the Narrator of SS.

I can't help wondering, though, whether Wolfe intended a
sly tribute to William Gibson in this. After all, I think
it reasonable to refer to the memories that Marble receives
from her beneficiary as "Fragments of a Hologram Rose."

Scurrying _very_ quickly under the sink,

--Blattid


--