From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: (whorl) [big spoiler] Narrative technique in _Return_, and
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 1956 00:02:39 +0000

on 2/8/01 7:29 PM, Dan Schmidt at dfan@harmonixmusic.com wrote:

> Adam Stephanides <adamsteph@earthlink.net> writes:
> 
> | on 2/8/01 5:21 PM, Dan Schmidt at dfan@harmonixmusic.com wrote:
> | 
> | > Adam Stephanides <adamsteph@earthlink.net> writes:
> | >
> | > | Not quite.  The third-person sections are not written by the
> | > | Homecoming-protagonist, but by the editors of BoTSS, Hoof, Hide
> | > | and their wives, as stated in the Afterword.
> | > 
> | > I thought the Afterword said that they only wrote the last couple of
> | > Whorl chapters (after Horn stopped writing).
> | 
> | No: the editors write: "He [the protagonist] left us no written record of
> | his brief sojourns in Old Viron and the West Pole, but he spoke of them
> | often.  In this volume we have re-created them to the best of our ability,
> | based upon these conversations." (p. 409)
> 
> OK, we're remembering the same text, but interpreting it differently.
> I took that to mean that he did write about his earlier time in the
> Whorl (e.g., meeting Pig and Hound) but the editors picked it up after
> he arrived in Old Viron.  Otherwise I would have expected them to
> write 'the Whorl' rather than 'Old Viron and the West Pole'.

I think that when the editors say "Old Viron," they are including its
territory as well (we are told in the list of "Proper Names in the Text"
that Endroad is subject to Viron).  In any case "Horn" (I will leave off the
question marks in the future) and company arrive in Old Viron proper in
Chapter Ten, long before the end of Horn's account.  I guess it's possible
that Horn had written the third-person sections up to that point and the
editors continued the third-person narrative in Horn's style and
interpolated sections throughout the remainder of Horn's account.  But I
very much doubt it.  For one thing, in the preceding paragraph the editors
tell us what Horn did leave a written account of, and they don't say
anything there about the Whorl.

--Adam


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