You knew it was coming: the full rationale for my belief that Mary Pink Butterflies is a typo lies in the edition history. the original Scribner features several obvious typos used in the Orb edition which were corrected in the 1976 Ace edition (perhaps Wolfe submitted his pre-Scribner copy edited manuscript to Ace or actually made changes). One of these areas is the infamous moment in VRT where a huge creature weighs ... fifteen pounds. Marsch struggles with it and wonders how he could get it all on his mount. The Ace edition is the only one that gets that right at 1500 pounds. The ace edition says Many Pink Butterflies. I feel it is the definitive version. also, the abo girls have three names, the first of which is usually an adjective. Seven girls waiting, Cedar branches waving, etc. and while Pink butterflies is slightly different, as we will discuss in our wrap up, I think all men being named John has NO religious relevance, only metatextual Import. The story is about what happened to John V Marsch metaphorically, so of course all men are named John - it is all about him, a veiled personal history as well as a cultural history. Many Pink Butterflies also tells us about something in the first and third novella, the many flesh looking butterflies saturating the text, just as cedar branches waving warns us to look out for the trees, who are clearly doing something. My faith in the ace edition compels me.
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I haven't listened to the 2 podcasts yet (will this next week), so I would guess this was addressed, but I wondered while reading the story if, since all Abo males had the first name "John" (and of course, St. John the Baptist baptized his cousin Jesus by immersing Him in a river, while John Sandwalker murders his brother Eastwind (or vice versa) by immersing him in a river...), whether all Abo females had the first name "Mary" or somesuch name. I like Marc's idea that all males are named John because John Marsh's story is all about him, though. I wasn't aware of the variance, as I am reading my way through the story using the Ace edition, Incidentally, In the 1984 cult science fiction film "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai in the 8th Dimension", all the aliens also have the first name "John" - Lord John Whorfin, John Bigboote, John Emdall, John Parker, John O'Connor, etc. I wonder if scriptwriter Earl Mac Rauch meant this as an homage to Gene Wolfe and this story?
Haha, we did indeed! My inherent need for parallelism keeps me skeptical about "Many" - if there's a name that denotes maleness, I need there to be one that denotes femaleness. But I know it's not a rational impulse.