Michael Andre-Driussi's Blog, page 6
December 6, 2022
My latest Chapter Guide recommended in Washington Post
(Don't get distracted by the risque photo of Princess Margaret on holiday in Italy!)
Critic Michael Dirda mentions A Chapter Guide for the Long Sun & the Short Sun in his Washington Post article on Books to give this holiday season.
Hooray!
Critic Michael Dirda mentions A Chapter Guide for the Long Sun & the Short Sun in his Washington Post article on Books to give this holiday season.
Hooray!
October 26, 2022
Global Specific: Crowley’s “The Deep” (1975) and Wolfe’s “The God and His Man” (1980)
WARNING: Spoilers Ahead for Crowley's The Deep, Wolfe's "The God and His Man," The Book of the New Sun, and The Urth of the New Sun.
Begin with an overview of John Crowley’s first novel: the Visitor, an android sent by a higher power, is damaged shortly after landing on the flat world, resulting in him having amnesia regarding his purpose and mission. In the end, at the Edge of the World, he realizes that he failed, and he goes off in a ship to confront his cosmos-sailing creator (the unnamed brother of Leviathan). While there is ambiguity as to how that meeting will go, his guide, the assassin Nod, shoots at the eye of the god Leviathan.
Compare with a summary of Wolfe’s short story: a god/ship abducts a man of Urth, takes him to the planet Zed, and tells him what to do. The man follows the instructions and reports back. The god tells him what to do next, and instead the man kills him.
By chance accident or design intent, Wolfe’s story looks to be the “anti-Deep,” in that it resolves the central story in a way that Crowley’s novel shies away from.
But notice how closely Severian’s narrative tracks The Deep: Severian is aware that he is being directed by a higher power, but the mission details are being kept from him, and in the original end he goes off in a ship to negotiate with the gods. The Book of the New Sun is the “long-Deep,” being four times as long, but arriving at essentially the same cliffhanging end.
Then The Urth of the New Sun does its number, making Severian’s narrative the “super-Deep,” with the Deluge, the mass extinction, and all that.
Begin with an overview of John Crowley’s first novel: the Visitor, an android sent by a higher power, is damaged shortly after landing on the flat world, resulting in him having amnesia regarding his purpose and mission. In the end, at the Edge of the World, he realizes that he failed, and he goes off in a ship to confront his cosmos-sailing creator (the unnamed brother of Leviathan). While there is ambiguity as to how that meeting will go, his guide, the assassin Nod, shoots at the eye of the god Leviathan.
Compare with a summary of Wolfe’s short story: a god/ship abducts a man of Urth, takes him to the planet Zed, and tells him what to do. The man follows the instructions and reports back. The god tells him what to do next, and instead the man kills him.
By chance accident or design intent, Wolfe’s story looks to be the “anti-Deep,” in that it resolves the central story in a way that Crowley’s novel shies away from.
But notice how closely Severian’s narrative tracks The Deep: Severian is aware that he is being directed by a higher power, but the mission details are being kept from him, and in the original end he goes off in a ship to negotiate with the gods. The Book of the New Sun is the “long-Deep,” being four times as long, but arriving at essentially the same cliffhanging end.
Then The Urth of the New Sun does its number, making Severian’s narrative the “super-Deep,” with the Deluge, the mass extinction, and all that.
October 25, 2022
A Cult Meeting in the Woods: Crowley’s "The Deep" (1975) and Wolfe’s "The Claw" (1981)
Here is something I did not include in my chapter guide to the Urth Cycle
In chapter 2.2 of The Deep, the young woman assassin “Nod” slips away from her proletarian job in the city for a walk in the woods. She threads her way along secret paths. Once inside the fortress without walls, she meets another cultist, a boy who looks like her. They breathe the smoke of a herb and engage in drugged fornication. Then Nod has an audience with the cult leader, a hermaphrodite called the Neither-nor. This leader does a fortune-telling card reading which gives Nod her next target for assassination.
The corresponding sequence takes a number of chapters in The Claw of the Conciliator. Chapter 9 has Severian and Jonas taken by the secret path into the forest; in chapter 10 they are given their first assignment; in chapter 11 they must take the drug and eat the flesh that makes them merge into a hermaphrodite entity.
The ordering is a little different, but I am highlighting the similarities: the castle without walls; the drug and fornication initiation/repetition; the hermaphroditism; the job assignment.
I don’t know if Wolfe was responding to Crowley; it is likely that both were drawing upon medieval legends of the Order of Assassins as well as the more recent actions of the Charles Manson cult. Both Crowley and Wolfe are clearly aware of alchemical signs and symbols. Both might be responding to Le Guin with Similarity to Le Guin and Contrast to Le Guin that ends up making Crowley and Wolfe incidentally on the same page here.
In chapter 2.2 of The Deep, the young woman assassin “Nod” slips away from her proletarian job in the city for a walk in the woods. She threads her way along secret paths. Once inside the fortress without walls, she meets another cultist, a boy who looks like her. They breathe the smoke of a herb and engage in drugged fornication. Then Nod has an audience with the cult leader, a hermaphrodite called the Neither-nor. This leader does a fortune-telling card reading which gives Nod her next target for assassination.
The corresponding sequence takes a number of chapters in The Claw of the Conciliator. Chapter 9 has Severian and Jonas taken by the secret path into the forest; in chapter 10 they are given their first assignment; in chapter 11 they must take the drug and eat the flesh that makes them merge into a hermaphrodite entity.
The ordering is a little different, but I am highlighting the similarities: the castle without walls; the drug and fornication initiation/repetition; the hermaphroditism; the job assignment.
I don’t know if Wolfe was responding to Crowley; it is likely that both were drawing upon medieval legends of the Order of Assassins as well as the more recent actions of the Charles Manson cult. Both Crowley and Wolfe are clearly aware of alchemical signs and symbols. Both might be responding to Le Guin with Similarity to Le Guin and Contrast to Le Guin that ends up making Crowley and Wolfe incidentally on the same page here.
October 7, 2022
Talking with the Dead about John Crowley's "The Deep"
Maybe it is just the autumnal mood coming over me as the calendar advances to Hallowe’en, but I find myself talking with Alice K. Turner about John Crowley’s first novel.
I recently re-read The Deep and “the mystery of the moons” stirred up memories. Alice wanted to solve the moons, and I said it was a bridge too far.
The situation is this: Crowley establishes that there are Seven Powers that seem sort of like the Seven Sins of the flat world. These seven are named, and their traits are given. The Seven become more important when we learn that off-world androids sent to cause change on the flat world are each based upon one of the Seven (the given case is that the first Neither-nor, who founded the assassin cult of the Just, was “Chalah,” the one of Lust). Crowley also has seven “Wanderers,” planet-like objects that are really moons, since they orbit the flat world. While described by their colors, these moons are never named, yet in a passage or two they seem to have some sort of influence upon the people.
It is probably this “unnamed yet important” detail (similar to the novel’s biggest mystery, “What is the name of Leviathan’s brother?”) that drove Alice to attempt pinning down the powers to the moons.
And here I go.
As risky as it is, I will apply orbital science. The “sun” orbits the flat world in 24 hours. The moons are said to be between sun and earth, so they are of shorter orbits. I claimed they were unnamed, but back at the beginning of the novel, one of the Endwives “looked up to where the Morning Star shone steadily. The home of the borning, as the Evening Star was of the dead” (hardcover, 3).
You see, this is why I refused. Crowley is such a trickster, and here he is openly playing on the inherent mixing of “star” and “planet.” Today I am locking down that they are moons that do not transit across the sky: one rises and sets in the east, the other rises and sets in the west. They do not orbit the flat world, each orbits a different geosync point in space.
Crowley is clever enough to know that the minds of the ancients expect such oddities as Morning and Evening Stars, and he brushes aside our modern understanding of such phenomena to assign “home of borning” to one and “home of the dead” to the other.
So then, we have these “bookend” moons, one at east, one at west, and five moons that transit the sky. The text gives an ordered list of the Seven Powers, starting with the one for Lust and ending with the one for Death. Death again. Yes, it seems to form up into something like Birth, the Five Ages of Man, and Death.
But Alice wants to know which of the Seven Powers invests our hero, the android Visitor. I think the text is Crowley-clear that the Visitor is the avatar of Death.
For Alice
“Bang! Zoom! You’re Going to the Moon!”
I recently re-read The Deep and “the mystery of the moons” stirred up memories. Alice wanted to solve the moons, and I said it was a bridge too far.
The situation is this: Crowley establishes that there are Seven Powers that seem sort of like the Seven Sins of the flat world. These seven are named, and their traits are given. The Seven become more important when we learn that off-world androids sent to cause change on the flat world are each based upon one of the Seven (the given case is that the first Neither-nor, who founded the assassin cult of the Just, was “Chalah,” the one of Lust). Crowley also has seven “Wanderers,” planet-like objects that are really moons, since they orbit the flat world. While described by their colors, these moons are never named, yet in a passage or two they seem to have some sort of influence upon the people.
It is probably this “unnamed yet important” detail (similar to the novel’s biggest mystery, “What is the name of Leviathan’s brother?”) that drove Alice to attempt pinning down the powers to the moons.
And here I go.
As risky as it is, I will apply orbital science. The “sun” orbits the flat world in 24 hours. The moons are said to be between sun and earth, so they are of shorter orbits. I claimed they were unnamed, but back at the beginning of the novel, one of the Endwives “looked up to where the Morning Star shone steadily. The home of the borning, as the Evening Star was of the dead” (hardcover, 3).
You see, this is why I refused. Crowley is such a trickster, and here he is openly playing on the inherent mixing of “star” and “planet.” Today I am locking down that they are moons that do not transit across the sky: one rises and sets in the east, the other rises and sets in the west. They do not orbit the flat world, each orbits a different geosync point in space.
Crowley is clever enough to know that the minds of the ancients expect such oddities as Morning and Evening Stars, and he brushes aside our modern understanding of such phenomena to assign “home of borning” to one and “home of the dead” to the other.
So then, we have these “bookend” moons, one at east, one at west, and five moons that transit the sky. The text gives an ordered list of the Seven Powers, starting with the one for Lust and ending with the one for Death. Death again. Yes, it seems to form up into something like Birth, the Five Ages of Man, and Death.
But Alice wants to know which of the Seven Powers invests our hero, the android Visitor. I think the text is Crowley-clear that the Visitor is the avatar of Death.
For Alice
“Bang! Zoom! You’re Going to the Moon!”
September 23, 2022
Making the correction to the guide to the Smithe novels
In this blog back on April 6, 2021, I mentioned the error on the first page of A Chapter Guide to Gene Wolfe's Smithe Novels, said mistake being the detail about Nigel Price visiting the Wolfe household.
When I recently moved to make this correction, and make it in such a way as to preserve the pagination for the rest of the section, I discovered that programs had changed, or something. Not to get too deep into the weeds, but a necessary design detail was no longer supported, so yes, I could preserve pagination, but there would be these annoying eyesores at points throughout the whole book.
You can imagine the amount of time I expended trying to find an easy solution to this, but I found nothing.
As a result, I had to make larger design changes. Removing part pages, used as title pages to introduce the two sections on the two novels, reduced the page count. Reformatting the bibliography further reduced the page count. The content remains the same, only more compact.
September 10, 2022
At Amazon: "A Chapter Guide for the Long Sun & the Short Sun"
This book is a chapter-by-chapter guide to seven volumes by Gene Wolfe, being the four volume Book of the Long Sun and the three volume Book of the Short Sun.
The trade paperback and eBook versions are available now (September 10, 2022). The hardcover will be coming along in a month or two.
link to trade paperback at Amazon
link to eBook at Amazon
The trade paperback and eBook versions are available now (September 10, 2022). The hardcover will be coming along in a month or two.
link to trade paperback at Amazon
link to eBook at Amazon
August 18, 2022
Arabian Nights and The Armiger's Daughter
On the topic of “Foila’s Story--The Armiger’s Daughter” (IV, chap. 13), you will recall my greatest Gene Wolfe discovery (revealed in my chapter guide to The Book), that the tale Foila tells is built from a Japanese poem recalling the traits of the three warlords who strove to unify Japan: Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa:
Surely, that is enough. I should rest on the laurels that fell upon me as if by chance.
But in the course of reading Burton’s Arabian Nights, I found a little something, buried deep, that also seems related to Foila’s Story.
In Burton’s volume 8, beginning on Night 863, is the tale “Ali Nur al-Din and Miriam the Girdle-Girl.” In very brief, Nur al-Din flees from Cairo to Alexandria, where he purchases at an outrageously high price (1,000 dinars!) the Frankish slave girl hight Miriam. After he gets her home to his room, she demands quality food and some basic silk stuff. He goes into debt to do this, but after they party, she knits the silk stuff into girdles for him to sell at market. She’s not only beautiful, she turns “straw” into gold!
Things get complicated, naturally, and she gets kidnapped by the vizier of her father, the King of the Franks. Nur al-Din, while a doofus, follows to France to win her back, but ends up as a slave in a Christian church. Miriam finds him and gives him an escape plan: go through this tunnel to the beach, get on the yacht there. Nur al-Din goes through the tunnel and finds the yacht, but the captain is so fierce he kills all ten sailors and sails off with Nur al-Din alone. Let’s hear what Shahrazad says next:
This tableau captures the success of the third suitor in Foila’s tale: the young man sails with the mysterious brown-clad stranger, who eventually reveals herself to be the armiger’s daughter, and together they travel and trade.
Within Miriam’s tale, the scene is not as important plot-wise, but it is a very surprising twist that raises Miriam into a unique character within the Arabian Nights. Nur al-Din is a doofus, but he is not alone in that category (Abu Hassan is arguably the most famous). Miriam first shows the one special talent, girdle-making, but then she reveals high skill in logistics, disguise, swordplay, and sailing; she vaults from highly competent to super-competent. The Arabian Nights has sorceresses, con-women, naughty women, plucky women, and Amazon-brand warriors, but no other woman like Miriam. I cannot recall a male character in the Arabian Nights who has the skill stack Miriam has, and hers is all the more remarkable since she is a young woman, unlikely to receive training in manly pursuits (later she kills her three brothers in mounted combat).
Rewind to Night 870, the introduction of Miriam to Nur al-Din's story. Miriam is beautiful, yes, but she is also imperious (which might come from the beauty, but turns out she is royalty): she sets her price, and she selects who will be allowed to buy her. So the first we see of her, she is verbally cutting down a greybeard bidder (in salty terms!), then another greybeard, then a dwarfish dandy (whom she promises to murder in his sleep), and so on, until she sets her eye on Nur al-Din.
"Love and War," you say? Sounds like an eruption of a certain Mesopotamian goddess!
Considering shapeshifting within the Arabian Nights, there is plenty of "turned into an animal by someone else" going on, the biggest being the sorceress who turns all the men of a city into fish, down to individual heroes being turned into apes, asses, donkeys, and probably other critters. But voluntary shapeshifting might be limited to Swan Maidens.
Swan Maidens are definitely in the Arabian Nights! Here's a case where she has to put on her magic clothes to transform, rather than using a magical spell. Ho-ho, this matches the armiger's daughter, for being a bird (and perhaps for using the clothes). So maybe there's a touch of Swan Maiden to the armiger's daughter.
Clothed in mystery, she is.
“If a bird won’t sing, kill it.” (Nobunaga)
“If a bird won’t sing, coax it.” (Hideyoshi)
“If a bird won’t sing, wait for it.” (Tokugawa)
Surely, that is enough. I should rest on the laurels that fell upon me as if by chance.
But in the course of reading Burton’s Arabian Nights, I found a little something, buried deep, that also seems related to Foila’s Story.
In Burton’s volume 8, beginning on Night 863, is the tale “Ali Nur al-Din and Miriam the Girdle-Girl.” In very brief, Nur al-Din flees from Cairo to Alexandria, where he purchases at an outrageously high price (1,000 dinars!) the Frankish slave girl hight Miriam. After he gets her home to his room, she demands quality food and some basic silk stuff. He goes into debt to do this, but after they party, she knits the silk stuff into girdles for him to sell at market. She’s not only beautiful, she turns “straw” into gold!
Things get complicated, naturally, and she gets kidnapped by the vizier of her father, the King of the Franks. Nur al-Din, while a doofus, follows to France to win her back, but ends up as a slave in a Christian church. Miriam finds him and gives him an escape plan: go through this tunnel to the beach, get on the yacht there. Nur al-Din goes through the tunnel and finds the yacht, but the captain is so fierce he kills all ten sailors and sails off with Nur al-Din alone. Let’s hear what Shahrazad says next:
When it was the Eight Hundred and Eighty-fourth Night,
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the old skipper had made sail he drave the ship, aided by Nur al-Din, into the dashing sea before a favouring gale. Meanwhile, Nur al-Din held on to the tackle immersed in deep thought, and drowned in the sea of solicitude, knowing not what was hidden for him in the future; and whenever he looked at the captain, his heart quaked and he knew not whither the Rais went with him. He abode thus, preoccupied with care and doubt, till it was high day, when he looked at the skipper and saw him take hold of his long beard and pull at it, whereupon it came off in his hand and Nur al-Din, examining it, saw that it was but a false beard glued on. So he straitly considered that same Rais, and behold, it was the Princess Miriam, his mistress and the dearling of his heart, who had contrived to waylay the captain and slay him and skinned off his beard, which she had stuck on to her own face. At this Nur al-Din was transported for joy, and his breast broadened and he marvelled at her prowess and the stoutness of her heart and said to her, "Welcome, O my hope and my desire and the end of mine every wish!"
This tableau captures the success of the third suitor in Foila’s tale: the young man sails with the mysterious brown-clad stranger, who eventually reveals herself to be the armiger’s daughter, and together they travel and trade.
Within Miriam’s tale, the scene is not as important plot-wise, but it is a very surprising twist that raises Miriam into a unique character within the Arabian Nights. Nur al-Din is a doofus, but he is not alone in that category (Abu Hassan is arguably the most famous). Miriam first shows the one special talent, girdle-making, but then she reveals high skill in logistics, disguise, swordplay, and sailing; she vaults from highly competent to super-competent. The Arabian Nights has sorceresses, con-women, naughty women, plucky women, and Amazon-brand warriors, but no other woman like Miriam. I cannot recall a male character in the Arabian Nights who has the skill stack Miriam has, and hers is all the more remarkable since she is a young woman, unlikely to receive training in manly pursuits (later she kills her three brothers in mounted combat).
Rewind to Night 870, the introduction of Miriam to Nur al-Din's story. Miriam is beautiful, yes, but she is also imperious (which might come from the beauty, but turns out she is royalty): she sets her price, and she selects who will be allowed to buy her. So the first we see of her, she is verbally cutting down a greybeard bidder (in salty terms!), then another greybeard, then a dwarfish dandy (whom she promises to murder in his sleep), and so on, until she sets her eye on Nur al-Din.
"Love and War," you say? Sounds like an eruption of a certain Mesopotamian goddess!
Considering shapeshifting within the Arabian Nights, there is plenty of "turned into an animal by someone else" going on, the biggest being the sorceress who turns all the men of a city into fish, down to individual heroes being turned into apes, asses, donkeys, and probably other critters. But voluntary shapeshifting might be limited to Swan Maidens.
Swan Maidens are definitely in the Arabian Nights! Here's a case where she has to put on her magic clothes to transform, rather than using a magical spell. Ho-ho, this matches the armiger's daughter, for being a bird (and perhaps for using the clothes). So maybe there's a touch of Swan Maiden to the armiger's daughter.
Clothed in mystery, she is.
August 16, 2022
Anime Update: My Favorites in the last 10 Years
True SF Anime
Just a list of a dozen to suggest what I've been liking since "True SF Anime" (2013):
"Uncle from Another World" (2022) series on Netflix right now.
"Cowboy Bebop" live action series (2021). I was very skeptical, but through the viewing I was won over, as controversial as that may be.
"The Way of the Househusband" (2021) series.
"Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!" (2020) series.
"Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai" (2018) series. "Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl" (2019) movie.
"Night is Short, Walk On Girl" (2017) movie.
"Mob Psycho 100" (2016, 2019) series.
"Your Name" (2016) movie. Shinkai's smash hit.
"Space Patrol Luluco" (2016) series.
"Noragami" (2014) series.
"Kill La Kill" (2013) series.
August 9, 2022
Traces of Lewis & Clark in 5HC
Ste. Croix equals New Orleans, nexus of slave trade; Ste. Anne is the tribal territory from Fort Mandan to Lemhi Pass. The unusual “two captains” nature of the Lewis and Clark expedition is mirrored in the three pairs of twins-not-twins in The Fifth Head of Cerberus. The publication history of the Lewis and Clark journals corresponds to certain frame tale details in “V.R.T.” regarding source texts.
Gene Wolfe touched upon the Lewis and Clark exploration (1804-1806) of the Louisiana Territory at least two times in his fiction, by name in Free Live Free (1984) and the inclusion of spiny orange in the opening chapters of The Knight (2004), where spiny orange (osage orange) was first documented by Meriwether Lewis. In Gene Wolfe’s First Four Novels (2020) I made note of Lewis and Clark elements within the “V.R.T.” section of The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972), observing the similar structure of anglophones exploring a francophone territory; that Lewis and Clark were seeking a dreamed-of goal, a northwest passage, nearly as quixotic as seeking fairies; and congruencies between history’s Sacagawea and Wolfe’s Victor.
In this second round I want to mention that planet Sainte Croix equals New Orleans, urban nexus of slave trade, and planet Sainte Anne is tribal territory from Fort Mandan (North Dakota) to Lemhi Pass (Montana/Idaho border), thus mapping the Louisiana Purchase from civilized (New Orleans) to wilderness (the Continental Divide).
“The Fifth Head of Cerberus” is set on Sainte Croix, with repeated reference to its slave market, where the narrator sells slaves of his own clonal creation. While the Lewis and Clark expedition did not visit New Orleans, both captains were slave owners; after the expedition, Lewis was appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory and settled in St. Louis (effectively Ste. Croix).
“‘A Story,’ by John V. Marsh” has a teenage mother, Seven Girls Waiting, perhaps fitting Sacagawea, who joined the party at Fort Mandan, last outpost of semi-civilization. (Note in passing how closely “Seven Girls Waiting” phonetically approximates “Sacagawea.”)
Here is a scene involving Sacagawea and forage through digging:
Lewis noted on April 9 [1805] that ‘when we halted for dinner the squaw [Sacagawea] busied herself in searching for the wild artichokes which the mice collect and deposit in large hordes. this [sic] operation she performed by penetrating the earth with a sharp stick’ (Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, Ch. 18, p. 329).
Compare to a scene with Seven Girls Waiting and forage by digging, where Sandwalker first says, “Before, I was looking for something large, something I could take for a gift. Now I’m going to look for something small, just something for us to eat tonight. Rockmice, maybe” (94), and then,
He ripped up the seemingly solid ground with strong fingers, tossing away the clods; then a clod . . . came up dripping. There was a soft murmuring. He broke the clotted stuff in two, thrusting half into his own mouth, half into hers. She knew, suddenly, that she was starving and chewed and swallowed frantically, spitting out the wax (95).
“V.R.T.” is about events on Sainte Anne, a place which seems like the tribal territory Lewis and Clark passed through. While the two captains were eager to meet Sacagawea’s tribe and apprehensive about encountering difficult tribes they had heard about, ultimately, they were bewildered in not meeting any tribes for over three months of time and nearly the entire width of modern Montana in distance. The experience was like passing through a country of ghosts, as depicted in the following passage dating shortly after the first month:
On May 29 [1805], at the Judith River, there were two vivid marks of Indian life. Walking along the Missouri at a point just above the mouth of the Judith, Lewis counted the fires of 126 recently occupied tepees. Close by, Clark observed the rings of an older tepee encampment numbering some 100 lodges. Once again anxiety about the Assiniboins surfaced as the captains brought Sacagawea some worn-out moccasins from the sites for her identification (James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark Among the Indians, 1984).
The unusual “two captains” nature of the Lewis and Clark expedition is mirrored in the three pairs of twins-not-twins in The Fifth Head of Cerberus (Number 5: Maitre; Sandwalker: Eastwind; Victor: John Marsh). The early, mysterious death of Meriwether Lewis (suicide or murder) matches the deaths of the dying ones in each pair.
The publication history of the Lewis and Clark journals corresponds to certain frame tale details in “V.R.T.” regarding source texts. The long delay (the team returned in 1806, but the first publication was in 1814). The missing entries. The copying of entries, such that it becomes unclear as to which captain wrote the original entry. The interrogation of the surviving captain (Clark) by editor Biddle in 1810, with subsequent supplemental information folded into a paraphrase of the field notes for the first published edition of 1814.
Gene Wolfe touched upon the Lewis and Clark exploration (1804-1806) of the Louisiana Territory at least two times in his fiction, by name in Free Live Free (1984) and the inclusion of spiny orange in the opening chapters of The Knight (2004), where spiny orange (osage orange) was first documented by Meriwether Lewis. In Gene Wolfe’s First Four Novels (2020) I made note of Lewis and Clark elements within the “V.R.T.” section of The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972), observing the similar structure of anglophones exploring a francophone territory; that Lewis and Clark were seeking a dreamed-of goal, a northwest passage, nearly as quixotic as seeking fairies; and congruencies between history’s Sacagawea and Wolfe’s Victor.
In this second round I want to mention that planet Sainte Croix equals New Orleans, urban nexus of slave trade, and planet Sainte Anne is tribal territory from Fort Mandan (North Dakota) to Lemhi Pass (Montana/Idaho border), thus mapping the Louisiana Purchase from civilized (New Orleans) to wilderness (the Continental Divide).
“The Fifth Head of Cerberus” is set on Sainte Croix, with repeated reference to its slave market, where the narrator sells slaves of his own clonal creation. While the Lewis and Clark expedition did not visit New Orleans, both captains were slave owners; after the expedition, Lewis was appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory and settled in St. Louis (effectively Ste. Croix).
“‘A Story,’ by John V. Marsh” has a teenage mother, Seven Girls Waiting, perhaps fitting Sacagawea, who joined the party at Fort Mandan, last outpost of semi-civilization. (Note in passing how closely “Seven Girls Waiting” phonetically approximates “Sacagawea.”)
Here is a scene involving Sacagawea and forage through digging:
Lewis noted on April 9 [1805] that ‘when we halted for dinner the squaw [Sacagawea] busied herself in searching for the wild artichokes which the mice collect and deposit in large hordes. this [sic] operation she performed by penetrating the earth with a sharp stick’ (Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, Ch. 18, p. 329).
Compare to a scene with Seven Girls Waiting and forage by digging, where Sandwalker first says, “Before, I was looking for something large, something I could take for a gift. Now I’m going to look for something small, just something for us to eat tonight. Rockmice, maybe” (94), and then,
He ripped up the seemingly solid ground with strong fingers, tossing away the clods; then a clod . . . came up dripping. There was a soft murmuring. He broke the clotted stuff in two, thrusting half into his own mouth, half into hers. She knew, suddenly, that she was starving and chewed and swallowed frantically, spitting out the wax (95).
“V.R.T.” is about events on Sainte Anne, a place which seems like the tribal territory Lewis and Clark passed through. While the two captains were eager to meet Sacagawea’s tribe and apprehensive about encountering difficult tribes they had heard about, ultimately, they were bewildered in not meeting any tribes for over three months of time and nearly the entire width of modern Montana in distance. The experience was like passing through a country of ghosts, as depicted in the following passage dating shortly after the first month:
On May 29 [1805], at the Judith River, there were two vivid marks of Indian life. Walking along the Missouri at a point just above the mouth of the Judith, Lewis counted the fires of 126 recently occupied tepees. Close by, Clark observed the rings of an older tepee encampment numbering some 100 lodges. Once again anxiety about the Assiniboins surfaced as the captains brought Sacagawea some worn-out moccasins from the sites for her identification (James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark Among the Indians, 1984).
The unusual “two captains” nature of the Lewis and Clark expedition is mirrored in the three pairs of twins-not-twins in The Fifth Head of Cerberus (Number 5: Maitre; Sandwalker: Eastwind; Victor: John Marsh). The early, mysterious death of Meriwether Lewis (suicide or murder) matches the deaths of the dying ones in each pair.
The publication history of the Lewis and Clark journals corresponds to certain frame tale details in “V.R.T.” regarding source texts. The long delay (the team returned in 1806, but the first publication was in 1814). The missing entries. The copying of entries, such that it becomes unclear as to which captain wrote the original entry. The interrogation of the surviving captain (Clark) by editor Biddle in 1810, with subsequent supplemental information folded into a paraphrase of the field notes for the first published edition of 1814.
