From: Patri10629@aol.com
Subject: Re: (whorl) Nightside again, chapter one
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 08:18:02 EST

Nice work, Stephen.

In a message dated 12/11/98 8:36:44 AM, LAIDLOJM@hhs.bham.ac.uk writes:

<<Nightside chapter 1 - two things I noticed:

1. the word 'clockwork' is used three times in the first three pages. 
Patera Silk is 'that absurd clockwork figure'<<

Not sure what this means. Perhaps, that Silk, as you say is a puppet of the
Whorl and his church? Or does it refer to his odd tall carriage and somewhat
awkward manner?

 >>in the parenthesis in the second paragraph, and he watches the game
'outside a clockwork 
show whose works had stopped'.<<

Pretty sure this refers to the winding down entropy of the whorl. It has
stopped. But it is also a cue for Silk's Theophany. He is transported out of
time, so to speak, by this Holy Revelation.

This is where Silk has his first theophany (love that word!). The Outsider
gives him an out of body experience and reveals how he is merely a mechanical
creation (figuratively) who does what he has been programmed to do?<<

Silk is a loyal obedient servent of the church. "A good man following a bad
religion," as Wolfe has said.

Then again on p11 at the end of the vision: 'a wind that blew ever 
stronger and wilder as clockwork that had never really stopped began 
to turn again'. This then suggests that all is artificial, created - 
the wind is unnatural, but guided by the clockwork maker.>>

I take this as something like, "After the theophany, time resumed and the
apparent order of the whorl continued.

I'm wondering how to reconcile this with Silk's assertion later in 
the chapter that the Outside will not help save the Manteion, Silk is 
the help that is being provided.
>>

The clock work imagery, I believe refers to an outdated mode of looking at the
universe--Ptolemy? The old Gods and the constructed artificial whorl. False
gods, false paradigms.

The Outsider is from a whole other realm of being--a transcendent God. Silk
through his revelation is his intervention. Christ, obviously.

Forgive if all this is obvious.

Patrick O'Leary


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