From: "Robert Borski" <rborski@charter.net>
Subject: (whorl) Re: Pig as godling
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 17:01:44 

Patrick O'Leary having written:

<3. Pig is not a godling. Think of difference between the two: One an
artificial being (a combo of
chem and Super Talus, I'd say) and a three dimensional human character. If
the godlings' mission is to proclaim the will of Passilk to the whorl does
it make any sense for them to speak in an strange difficult to parse dialect
like Pig, or the slow, easily understood child speak of the godling.
Structurally, think of how awkward it is to have TWO godlings in the same
place (Blood's
palace).  It lacks all the elegance and engineering soundness we find
continually in Wolfe's fiction. It
makes no sense to me.>

If I read you correctly, Patrick, you seem to be denying the possibility of
even small godlings in general, whereas Wolfe at least mentions them twice.

The first comes in OBW: "It may be that our gods did not come among us
except by enlightenment and possession because they were too large to do so;
even the godlings that they send among the people now are, *for the most
part,* immense." [Italics mine.]

The second mention is more implied than cited, but comes courtesy of the
corn farmer and his wife. When the former suggests that the source of Horn's
wounds may be a godling, the latter avers that "a godling would have killed
him," only to have her husband further amend this to, "*Big one* would've."
[Ditto.]

Think Chekhov's gun here. Why have two differently-sized godlings if you're
not going to use them? It belies the very elegance and engineering soundness
you cite. Or do you have another candidate in mind for a smaller godling?
Only Pig of all the characters we meet is intermediate in size, if scaled to
more human dimensions. And I can't see Wolfe being this coincidentally
sloppy.

As for Pig's dialect being too difficult to parse for a godling, you're
being too parochial. There are many dialects and tongues on the Whorl.
Surely, the godling who's sent among, say, the Whorl equivalent of Dorp
would communicate in the fractured yoda-speak they use. Pig--who claims he's
been on the road for over a year and is thus far from home--might therefore
be quite easily understood in cities and towns that speak his same dialect.

Robert Borski








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