From: Reusch <newsun@freeway.net>
Subject: (whorl) Pike/Quetzal, and other ?s
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 97 21:27:00 


[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Hi everyone.
I've been lurking awhile, sifting through the archives. You people take 
your Wolfe seriously! I've had a lot of fun reading your thoughts, ideas, 
speculations, arguments, jabs. 
One point that I've been having trouble swallowing, though, is the old 
Pike's ghost scenario. I don't buy either argument that's been posted 
here; that it was either Quetzal or a computer image. What would be the 
point of either? I think that there's more to this scene, some tie 
between Quetzal and Pike. I think that it was Quetzal flying out the 
window, and then Silk sees Pike. Wolfe is linking the one with the other. 
Why, I haven't figured out yet.
Mantis, great job witht the Moses link. It's been a while since I've read 
Joseph Campbell, and longer still since I've read the story of Moses, but 
is there any similar event in Moses' story? Was Moses visited by his 
father, mentor, or the devil?
I hate to stir this issue up once again, especially without some better 
answers, but I'm rereading the books with an eye on Pike and Quetzal.
A couple of questions have come up during my reread:

Does Rose have a daughter? We know that she has a son, but what about 
1:69hc?
"At times Maytera Rose, kneeling before her daughter's image,..."

How did Silk kill the white headed one? He was knocked unconscious, 
possibly with a concussion, and then wakes up to find the bird dead.

And what's up with that scene with Urus and the Trivigaunti officer, 
where they rendezvous for a clandestine meeting? And how would Horn have 
known of it to write about it, and why?

May every god favor you.
Vance