It is always such an incredible delight to hear Marc on Wolfe, I am so glad you had him on. His reading of the symbolism is extraordinarily compelling, as always.
I had one (possibly stupid) question — for Glenn/Brandon, or for Marc, or anyone else. Marc seems to be assuming that Aunt Jeannine is an abo (on the assumption that Veil's hypothesis is true, and that the inhabitants of Sainte Croix are all abos). The only argument for that — which, IMS (although I haven't gone back to recheck), is introduced first as a possibility and then becomes simply asserted towards the end of the episode — seems to be the idea that she is an outcrossing, like David. (She does, it is true, implicitly compare herself to David — "your father has a sister, why wouldn't you?" — but then, at the time she assumes David is Number 5's half-brother ("he must have used one of my girls")). But surely the evidence that she is *not* is greater? Number 5 says she looks like his father; she herself refers to Maistre as her brother. And of course her name — Jeannine — is presumably the feminine of "Gene". (Actually, is there any other evidence for Number 5/Maistre's first name? There's a lot of evidence about "Wolfe" — the library, the name of the house, etc — but the only bit of evidence I can recall that the first name is Gene (apart from the name of the author, which I don't think is quite enough) is the name of Aunt Jeannnie. If she's an abo, that evidence is no longer valid.) I assume the story is that Maistre's father tried a female clone, as well as the usual clone, and that Maistre himself, trying something different, tried an outcropping instead.
Relatedly, I am not convinced that David is an abo — or, at least, more than half abo — even assuming that Veil's Hypothesis is true. It simply seems to make more sense for Maistre to be testing a half-brother rather than some random person (who would then, in fact, be an abo). Now, if he did, as Aunt Jeannine speculates, "use one of my girls", then, if Veil's hypothesis is true, David would presumably be half abo. But I think that I've not seen any evidence to persuade me that he isn't, as the surface reading is, Maistre's son. (There is the comment about finding no proof of David's kinship — but I read that as simply a reflection that Maistre, breeding with one of his own sex-slaves for the purpose of creating an experiment, is hardly going to register the birth or anything like that. Would they use genetic testing? Well, if the story was written today, it would be a question; but the notion of genetic testing is raised nowhere in the story, and wasn't (AFAIK) a common notion in 1972, so I suspect the only evidence consulted was legal.)
I, for one, am not yet convinced, just from the first novella, that Veil's Hypothesis is true. (I did like the speculation in the episode, which got inadequate consideration I think, that the abos might have replaced the French colonizers but not the subsequent American ones. Worth further pursuit, I think.) But I suppose more evidence will be forthcoming in my upcoming reread of the last two novellas, plus the episodes recorded.
By the by, I don't see why you are being coy about what novel you are talking about — I get that it's SS2. I'm curious — possibly for another forum — precisely which part of your theory about IGJ that GW confirmed. I was always under the impression he dodged questions about his work from just about everybody, refusing to confirm or deny anything. (He even let Pamela Sargent publish something wrong about The Fifth Head of Cerberus in her afterward to the ace edition... which to be honest I found rather cruel: it's one thing to let someone not know informally, but if someone is kind enough to write an afterward for your book, you might prevent them from making dramatic interpretive errors in it!) So I'm interested he commented on your theory at all. Can you share precisely what he said?
Marc: I don't think it's quite fair to say that it's not taking Veil's hypothesis seriously simply to doubt if the otherwise true hypothesis applies to Jeannine! But that aside, you do add a lot of reasons to think that she, too, is an abo. I will mull it over (as I continue to reread with the podcast). One question: is your reading that there was an (actual, clone-derived) Aunt Jeannine whom the present (abo) Aunt Jeannine replaced? I assume there would have to be, or otherwise how could Maistre (who is human in your reading, right?) think of her as and refer to her as his sister.
Also, the key explanatory moment for me is Jeanine floating in the middle of the helix and looking at Number Five the whole way, who is his father's image. That's how the abos imitate and why she looks like him. Perhaps there was another Jeanine once, but there is no evidence that David is actually Maitre's child at the end; Jeanine winds up occupying the same position as Phaedria will when she returns with the child in the final page of the first novella. the symbolism of the floating staircase scene IS my reason. The novel isn't important, but once Wolfe told me something about one of his books that most people disbelieve. The primary textual evidence of that is this passage:
When [we] were real little we used to play in the pools up above your mill. … One time we found a really pretty one, that had a lot of pretty little fish in it, and spotted frogs. Green with blue spots, I think. … Well, while we were looking at them we saw this one leech, a red one. It was pretty big. It was swimming right at one of the frogs, and me and [my brother] yelled for it to look out. … Only the frog didn’t pay attention, and just about the time it opened its mouth I figured out that it thought the leech was a fish, and it was going to eat it. … The frog got it in its mouth and spit it out, and it swam around in back where the frog couldn’t get at it, and fastened onto the back of its head. When we came back there was a dead frog, only the leech was gone. What I was thinking of was they don’t look enough like fish, not really, to fool us. But that one fooled the frog, he thought it was a little fish, and it probably fooled the fish, too. [A woman in the text] fooled me the same way until you told me. I thought there was two women in the house, an old one and the young one, but they were both her.This passage is the primary expository means that Wolfe "explains" that a red planet in the plot with parasitic life has taken the place of a green satellite. This is a metaphorical expansion on what happened to the solar system in that novel. I won't explain that here, but that is the upshot of a textual detail directly revealed to me by Wolfe. In comparison, the genetic strand of the helix staircase in Fifth Head is downright overt: Number Five is natural, Jeanine's inheritance is based on looking at him and does not involve the typical use of the genetic helix. Aubrey's name means elf queen. She has the inutile legs and the avaricious natures of a species that sees no problem in taking identities wholesale as it serves them. The butterfly and larva imagery of the girls and streets in Port Mimizon are also, in my mind compelling. It is not random, nor is the name of the city and its structure. Why haven't there been new buildings in 200 years? I'll tell you why with certainty.
The greed of Phaedria and Aunt Jeanine are something I mention in the episode (I believe) - they are bound and determined to get Maitre's estate and money in general. Phaedria has a cast on her ankle when we meet her, and the legs of Aunt jeanine, long, thin, dangling things, resemble the staff-thin legs of the girls and the heron legs of the abos as described at least once in a story as Sandwalker and his lookalike stride. The elderly population in VRT keep being described as crippled, immobile - one "guy's" grandfather stopped walking but then would go out once again towards the end of his life. I do not think these are different in kind. Jeanine's dangling legs are not a contraindication at all. Female abos are simply stricken more quickly; whether only men can put down roots and develop a barklike carapace is never clear, but the description of the legs as lombardy poplars and the planting of the legs of Sandwalker's mother to get nutrients from the sun and soil would suggest women can do it too.
I know you are suspicious of apophenia. I approach these texts holistically and with the idea that every detail must fit. Readings that do not take the possibility of Veil's hypothesis seriously are not using the material directly stated in the text.
What it really boils down to for me is using the most possible details from the text. One of the street names is translated as Street of Maggots. While this might suggest rot and death, when coupled with the imagery of "many pink butterflies" and the idea in a story of a larval stage (we were long and lived in the branches of trees) suggests an adult form that is like a butterfly. Nerrisa, Phaedria, etc are named after such moth or butterfly-like creatures. Port Mimizon (suggesting mimicry) and its hand-like structure are not explained, nor are the strange street names, unless we assume that the abos have actually proliferated. I suggest an entire life cycle. My readings have to take into account every name, from Bloodyfinger to sweet mouth to cedar branches waving, and make sense of cryptic details like the burying of Sandwalker's mother's feet in sand to soak up the nutrients and the lack of mobility of the female abo (seven girls waiting?) compared to Sandwalker. The legs of jeanine are long narrow useless protrusions; the abo girl seven girls waiting stumbles around and says that it will not come to Sandwalker until he is old (immobility). Basically, Veil's hypothesis is like Checkov's gun. My reading uses it. It uses all of the names in a story, the tree imagery, the leg association with abos, explains why the men who arrest Marsch in the third novella have the same face and have scars on their foreheads (certain abo groups are scarred ritually), and it explains the dystopia of Port Mimizon as well as its name and the idea that the streets are named after maggots and the girls with odd legs after butterflies. I'm sure you have access to my entire writeup using the central novella in my book, but here is a link to my video on Fifth Head and the essay. https://youtu.be/esAjkChAy7M, https://www.youtube.com/redirect?v=esAjkChAy7M&event=video_description&redir_token=HB8E3V4oAmI2Hrtag3TMFuimAe18MTU1NjAwNDQ2MEAxNTU1OTE4MDYw&q=http%3A%2F%2Fultan.org.uk%2Fvariance-reduction-techniques%2F
Marc: I don't argue with Wolfe's use of symbolic patterns. I would, however, argue that since those are so easily read into a story, they need to be particularly strong to overcome a strong surface reading.
Now, I think you are conflating in your answer the question of A) whether the *other* people in Port Mimizon being abos, and B) the question of Aunt Jeannine specifically being either an abo or simply a female clone of the Gene Wolfe line (since you admit there are some genuine humans on the planet, number 5 specifically, that could be true even if Veil's hypothesis is (largely) true). Point A, as I said, I'm not yet convinced of; but I can see why one would think so, and would like not to argue the point. But I assume that some of your evidence — e.g. the lack of new buildings — addresses only A, not B. Wht is the evidence for A narrowly? That you've cited, there's her floating, the black queen line, her lack of legs which are associated with other girls, the the dream of abos, the irony of an abo asserting Veil's hypothesis. I guess I'm still not convinced by this — enough to counter the fact that she's said to look like #5's father, that the notion of a female clone is a very logical outcome of the story, and that she provides a key piece of evidence for one of the key jokes in the story (GW"s name). Particularly since a lot of what you cite can be read otherwise — surely it's just as possible that #5 dreams of abos after meeting Aunt Jeannine because she brings up Veil's hypothesis as the fact that she's an abo? If the other girls are defined by their legs, but they are (by hypothesis) abos, then doesn't that argue that Aunt Jeannine, who lacks legs, is not like them, i.e. not an abo? And he doesn't say she replaced a white queen, just that "Black only as distinguished from some White Queen I was never fated to encounter." Anyway, I am finding the argument thin. No reason you have to try again, of course, but I would be interested if you cared to.
(Also the issue of David, which strikes me as a third separable issue from both A) most of the population, and B) Aunt Jeannine)).
Hi Stephen. I think Wolfe provides closure through symbolic patterns. When you see the legs of these girls and of the Abos in a story as one of their defining characteristic and the floating down the staircase Jeanine does while looking at Number Five as a symbolic representation of her manner of genetic maturation, it is also useful to think of Five’s certainty that she is a black queen who has replaced a white queen he will never know in one description; in parallel structure as soon as she meets him, five dreams of Abos. There is a causal relationship there. her assertion of veil’s hypothesis is ironic because it is literally true: this is Wolfe’s favorite kind of irony. An abo who doesn’t realize she is an abo WOULD come up with that explanation As a Joke. Also, the no new buildings in 200 years, the scars on the heads of the people in port mimizon who arrest marsch, the name port mimizon being based in mimicry, and the shape of the city as a hand when we are looking for useless hands are all overwhelming indicators to me. That’s how Wolfe provides narrative closure. five Is human. in The final episode with Glenn and Brandon I will go into the myse en abyme symbolism of the central novella which include shadow children riding marshmen and the switching bite, but in that sandwalker is associated with his legs and stride and eastwind with no testicles.