"Peace" by Gene Wolfe

[p.falk]

This is my 2nd time reading this book. The first time it went way over my head, though beautifully written and on the surface still an enjoyable book.

I recently listened to an interview with Gene Wolfe where, quoting Chesterton, he states, "“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits." (he states physicist instead of logician in his relaying the quote).

And it got me to thinking about re-reading Peace. That, this time I won't struggle so much to understand all of the hidden bits.

The book starts with the main character, Alden Dennis Weer (Den), being pulled from his slumber:

"The elm tree planted by Eleanor Bold, the judge's daughter, fell last night, I was asleep and heard nothing, but from the number of shattered limbs and the size of the trunk there must have been a terrible crashing. I woke - I was sitting up in my bed before the fire - but by the time I was awake there was nothing to hear but the dripping of the melting snow running from the eaves. I remember that my heart pounded and I was afraid I was going to have an attack, and then, fuzzily, thought that perhaps the heart attack had wakened me, and then that i might be dead."

Eerily enough, you later learn that Eleanor Bold tell Den that she's going to plant a tree over his burial spot once he dies.

So an old man "wakes up" and starts reflecting on his life, visiting past memories. Funny the book is called "Peace" when there seems to be little peaceful about some of his ramblings... hopping from one to another. The first, main memory he goes to is being a small boy (5 years old?) at a birthday party for him, at his grandmothers. A scuffle breaks out between him and his cousin, Bobby Black. The chapter, or Den, is vague as to what happens during the scuffle. We just know that Bobby is coming upstairs while Den is standing at the top of the stairs. According to Den he states that Bobby was going to mess with a painting of a young relative who died in his youth. And Den was going to prevent this from happening.

Gene Wolfe's ability as a writer is something else... in that first chapter, describing his aunts he mentions one aunt:

Her sister is radiantly blond, slender and flexible as a willow - too much so for the other women, for to them a physical pliancy implies moral accommodation..."

Even if all of the mystery escapes me, I'll still enjoy his prose.

[p.falk]

**Spoilers**
Chapter 2

The first chapter involves a young Alden Dennis Weer, at the top of the stairs, struggling with his cousin Bobby Black. That includes this description:

At last we close, grunting, each grasping the other's pudgy body like wrestlers, red-faced and weeping. For a moment we sway.

And that's it. No conclusion, in the 1st chapter, as to what happened during that struggle.

Well, the first sentence in chapter 2 answers it:

Bobby Black died, in time, from the spinal injury he suffered on my grandmother's stairs. Shortly after his funeral, I went to live with my aunt Olivia. I was then (I think) eight or nine years old. The Blacks were - understandably, no doubt - bitter and troubled, and the social situation must have been quite tense. My parents decided to spend half a year or more touring Europe...

Huh... This story is all told from the perspective of an old (more than likely, dead) man reflecting on his life. Still no admitting that it was his actions that led to the death of Bobby Black. The struggle occurred when they were 5.... he died 3 or 4 years later due to the spinal injury. That must have been some intense suffering during the interim. And the parents, uncomfortable with the "social" fallout, decide to visit Europe leaving their son behind?

Then there's this haunting section. He starts talking about how he can't believe that now (in the present time) his aunt Olivia is actually dead. The entire chapter 2 is Alden living with his aunt. But he reflects on the fact that she is now dead. But how it's hard to grasp someone dying because some things are just "contrary to everyday experience". Alden goes on talking about things that are contrary to the mundane day-to-day: child birth, marriage... but not sex. "Male-female coupling is everyday: mature men and women in hotel rooms and motel rooms and their own apartments and homes..."

From here he talks about a particular sexual liaison between a Melissa (Lisa) and Ted Singer who, during their "encounter" becoming

four-legged two-backed four-armed (oh, be forewarned!) two headed Ted and Lisa into which each less-than-half had vanished more or less utterly, and (though the monster is not completely indissoluble still) never to reappear. And this does not happen every day.

And here's the disturbing part that immediately follows:

Nor death, but only once. We talk of strong personalities, and they are strong, until the not-every-day when we see them as we might see one woman alone in a desert, and know that all the strength we thought we knew was only courage, only her lone song echoing among the stones; and then at last when we have understood this and made up our minds to hear the song and admire its courage and its sweetness, we wait for the next note and it does not come. The last word, with its pure tone, echoes and fades and is gone, and we realize—only then—that we do not know what it was, that we have been too intent on the melody to hear even one word. We go then to find the singer, thinking she will be standing where we last saw her. There are only bones and sand and a few faded rags.

It's hard to not take this as him murdering, possibly Melissa/Lisa, someone. The monster she and Ted formed would never reappear. Alden knows waaaaay too much about what they became during this intercourse of theirs. Even the fact he knows that it happened. He would have to had followed them and watched.

But that last paragraph. Some woman is thought to be strong. But he finds out that it's not actually strength, but courage. Sounds like an attempt at flattery. Unless you're a psychopathic murderer who wants to test that strength only to discover that "oh, it's just courage. Impressive enough, but not enough to stave off death." And the sounds of the courage "echoing among the stones"??? Well, if someone is pushed past their strength but they're still courageously fighting back that courage would be expressed in their valiant effort for self-preservation... to stop whoever is trying to end them. The psycho, able to appreciate that courage and the vocal expression of that particular "song" waits for the next note, but it never comes. The courageous one has fallen. He goes back to the place of that "singer" and all that's left is dust and bones.... and a few faded bits of clothing.

I might be wrong. I haven't heard anyone comment that that section is referencing the death/murder of someone. But it's hard to not see how it all connects.

[gherkin]

Gosh. So far, I'm not becoming super interested in reading this book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[p.falk]

**Spoilers**

Chapter 3 is titled "Alchemy".

In it you meet a character Julius Smart who's telling a story about how he found his first job as a pharmacist.
He's traveling parts of the country (but not out West nor on the eastern states). He gets a job with a Mr. Tilly. A very tall man who almost appears to have no chest. While Smart is first meeting Mr. Tilly a woman with hands that grow right from her shoulders comes into the pharmacy to purchase something. As much of an oddity as she is there is a man in the car waiting for her who is very large and very muscular, beyond normal measure. Kind of an oddity as much as the woman and as much as the height of Mr. Tilly.

Smart gets a free room at Mr. Tilly's house, he just has to keep house and entertain Mr. Tilly. The first evening Smart makes a meal for them. It includes oranges. Mr. Tilly at one point takes an orange, asks Smart to find a syringe, and then Mr. Tilly injects the orange with water. He shows how you can only tell he did that when he pulls the orange apart and you see that one of the slices has a bulbous water-lump from the injection. Cryptically enough, Mr. Tilly comments about how you can't do this with an egg... apparently because the egg will show that it has been tampered with.

These oddity (people), the injecting water into the orange, the chapter title called "Alchemy".... reminds me of an interview with Gene Wolfe where he's talking about gene manipulation. And how people will be able to superimpose their reality onto the world with the manipulation of genes. He mentions a unicorn... how, genetically (and eventually in time) you'd be able to make one with the right gene manipulation.

He's not saying this stuff as if it's good... that, humanity with that power can start to conjure up (via science) that which they want to be in the world.

This chapter has this interview floating in the background of my mind providing a potential narrative filter.

[p.falk]

The writing is so enjoyable to read.
Wolfe has a way of haunting one that even horror writers can't compete with.

Den, in talking with a librarian he just met (Chapter 4), named Lois Arbuthnot, discuss the Indians who no longer inhabit their town (Cassionsville).

Den states that "from time to time" it feels like his head is being turned up by an archeologist. This in the context that Den is more than likely already dead.

Lois states:

You shouldn't feel dead before you are, Mr. Weer.

Den:

That's the only time you can feel it. You're like the people who tell me I talk too much - but we're all going to be quiet such a long time

[p.falk]

The 2nd to last paragraph of the book is so well written.

Weer, reflecting on some of the last living days of his life, (given that the whole narration has been done from the vantage of him as a ghost... and (possibly) well past the point of any humans living) asks one of his employees, Dan, to tell him an Irish tale.

Dan asks if he means an Irish joke to which Weer clarifies, "No, a story. The kind of one Irishman tells another, or woman tells her child. Not something someone wrote in New York for television."

Dan tells the story of the sidhe. Something like fairies but not quite. But a thing that predates man. The sidhe were dying off and one, a father, looked at his 3 children and wished that they would live forever. He sees the geese that come year after year to Lough Conn (a lake in Ireland). And thinks that though a goose may die, the flock never dies.. but lived "beautiful and wild and free."

So the father calls the 3 children (an older daughter, named Deidre, and two sons) and gives them up to become geese, "Then at once there were no longer any children there, but geese too many to count." And they all flew off... but returning every summer to Lough Conn, even long after their father died.

Man hunted the flock of geese and their numbers did started to dwindle:

In this way, in time, the flock which was the children of the sidhe dwindled until at last only a single goose remained.

The sole goose wondering how can it be that she is the only survivor of the flock when it was her father's desire that they should live forever "beautiful and free"... yet when she dies the flock will be gone.

She flies over all of Ireland and eventually goes to the cottage of a hermit. She lands there and puts her question to him.

And this is the poignant part:

"Little there is that I can do for you", the hermit said. "why did you suppose your father, who could not save himself, could save you?
The time of the sidhe is long past, and the time of geese is passing. And in time men, too, will pass, as every man who lives long learns in his own body. But Jesus Christ saves all." So saying, he dipped his hand into a bowl that stood upon the table by him and touched her head with water, making her think, for a moment, of the clam sweetness of Lough Conn, and then of the wild sea. Then he said, "I thee baptize, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost," and when he had said these words there stood before him Deirdre and her two brothers; but time had had his way with them, and they were bent now and old, and though their cheeks were red as apples, their hair was white as frost, for they had far outlived their time.