Great episode guys. I really enjoyed the insight. I think the reading of Paul's family as some kind of minority is spot on, but whether they're black, jewish, or some other minority doesn't really matter to the story. I think that what matters, like one of you said, is that they're clearly much more apprehensive about the unrest than Russell, and rightly so, because it's ultimately Morris who's the target of the only violence that we actually see in the story.
As far as the violence and the unrest goes, it seemed to me that there were at least three factions in play in the story; the Nazis, the Citizens for Peace, who held the counter protest that was ultimately broken up by Nazis, and the police and national guard. It's interesting to me that the national guard are described as shooting at everything and causing damage. Kent State was still a year away when the story was published, but there was a history of using the national guard to control protests in the late 60s and those events usually ended badly. More interesting though, at least in my mind, is the mention of bikers. I thought that line was significant because at the time bikers were a real thing, and the Rolling Stones show at the Altimont Speedway had just happened a year or two prior to publication. It had probably just happened when Wolfe was writing this story. That event was hugely significant and is pretty much considered the turning point between the peace and love 60s and the violent and frightening 60s that Wolfe is evoking.
Wolfe's choice to make the adults our primary viewpoint in the story and also to convey most of the story through dialogue does a great job of withholding information and also creating tension. We, like the adults, know just enough to know that things aren't right, but not enough to really have any idea of what's going on until it literally smashes our windows and hits us with a chain.
The device reminded me a lot of the old Twilight Zone episode The Monsters are Due on Maple Street, which uses limited information and a very tight setting to great effect.
The only person who really has an idea of what's happening is Paul, who we never hear from at all. I think it's really significant that Paul's treehouse is described as being 50 feet in the air and actually above the roofline of the house. We never leave the backyard, but Paul spends the entire story able to actually see past his yard and out of the neighborhood and because of that presumably knows exactly what's happening around him.
I didn't read Morris and Russell's questioning of why Paul has been in the treehouse and ultimate decision to try to get him out as a parenting decision at all. Instead I saw it as normalcy bias. What I mean by that is that in any extraordinary circumstance most people tend to react as though things are normal until it's too late. Normalcy bias is the thing that keeps office workers in their chairs when a fire alarm is going off, it's what causes people to stick around in obviously worsening situations like mass shootings or the rise of fascism, and in this story it keeps Morris and and Russell drinking scotch and lemonade and wondering why Paul is hiding in his treehouse stockpiling stones.
Another thing that I found really interesting about the story is that Paul is the only character described as being competent with tools. Paul climbed the tree, built the treehouse, and rigged up the elevator. Paul has a radio and a scout knife, he can climb a rope and he cut off the lower branches of the tree.
On the other hand Morris has an old, too short ladder that he can barely climb. Russell has a rusty, dull axe that's falling apart and a ladder that's buried in the back of the garage that's not much better than the axe.
So I don't see this as a story about parenting or the rise of fascism at all so much as a reaction to the social unrest of the late 60s (and by extension today) and maybe an examination of two different reactions to that unrest and fear.
Liam, thank you for these awesome observations. We can see how important the height of Paul's treehouse is when we juxtapose that with the image of Morris's house on the television. Not only is Paul the only one who can see beyond his own block, his father can't even recognize his own house on TV without context. The adults in this story are effectively blind and, as you also point out, incompetent.
Your reading of this as a story about the dangers of normalcy bias lends this piece some immediate relevance to 2017, so thanks especially for that.
I loved your comment about normalcy bias. That idea opens up new possibilities in the story that I hadn't considered, particularly regarding my reading of the Paul's families skin color.
I also liked how you pointed out that Paul is the only one who is competent with tools. There's some some social commentary lurking in the back of this story about how ineffectual the men have become - perhaps as a result of the comfort in their lives. Paul has not yet adjusted to that level of comfort and believes that he will need to learn older survival skills in order to make it in the world he is beginning to experience.
Yes, and I think there is something here about the different perspectives that children and adults have. Paul has these tools and knows how to use them because he's still curious about the world and yearns for adventure, while adults have made a world that tries to keep adventure and excitement far away -- and even when it creeps up on them, they try to ignore it with a little morning whiskey. It's a kind of willful ignorance that ultimately dooms Morris.
Fabulous episode, Glenn & Brandon. And a fabulous & insightful comment, Liam. I have an alternative interpretation to offer — one I am hardly sure of at all, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
First, though, I should say that while I like the idea that Morris, Shelia and Paul are some sort of minority (whether Jewish or black), I think it's not clear, at least to me. As far as Brandon (I think it was Brandon? Apologies if I'm wrong) theory goes, I would say that "brown head" is strictly ambiguous; it could mean that Paul is African American; or it could simply be his hair color. I also thought Russell's rudeness, while possibly related to their being a minority, could also be simply characterization. Actually, the best evidence, I think, is the going down to the stores/no, the good stores exchange, which really is solid evidence. But I don't know if it's enough.
Ok. My reading (I read the story before the episode & reread it after listening!). First, I read "they were white and brown and black" as clearly racial. This is an interracial group. Second, I read "I think it's going to be the big one." as a reference, not to a holocaust, but to nuclear war — "the big one" being the bomb. (This was in fact a common usage at the time.)
So: I would suggest that "Citizens for Peace" is supposed to be a communist group, or a communist front. While (AFAIK) that particular label wasn't used, lots of communist and far-left groups were "for peace" — more in the 50s than late 60s, but of course that's when Wolfe's sensibilities were formed. (This may be particularly in my head, because in the documentary about the Korean defectors, at a news conference explaining their actions (as they were going, not later), nearly every one talked about wanting peace, and a few said how any group with peace in the title was attacked by McCarthy, etc.) What we are seeing in this story is a breakdown rather like the Weimar Germany breakdown, with street fights between the far left and the far right. Note that this idea ties into both the points above: an interracial *communist* group makes obvious sense (whereas an interracial Nazi group is close to a contradiction in terms). And the "big one" reference, on this interpretation, would be to remind the reader of ongoing cold-war tensions.
Aside from the name & the interracial quality of the attackers at the end, I would offer a few other pieces of evidence. First, the emphasis on the wealth of both Morris's and Russell's family (aside from the air conditioning, note the casual offer of building a pool) ties into the idea of a communist uprising.
The final piece of evidence is this: tracing the "them's". There are a number of they/them's used to mean either some of the characters in the story, or some obvious other group ("Every time they have one of those bulletins I think it's going to be the big one.", obviously, refers to the radio station). Aside from this, I count five major "thems" in the story:
1) There's the early usage "what they did last night? Beat a cop to death", which notably ends with Russell saying ""Sure they do [ie cops deserve it], but it's *them* [italicized, meaning the ones who beat the cops to death] doing it. That's what gets to me." So, from here we know the "them" is violent, and that they particularly get to Russell. (On my theory, the communists would particularly irk because he's bourgeois.) There's also the nice Wolfean irony of communists using "golf clubs and polo mallets" as weapons (stolen from a store window, they note: they're not theirs).
2) There's Shelia saying "You know how somebody said they were shooting at everything and doing more damage than the rioters? Well, they're going to protest that. I heard it on the radio. They're going to hold a march of their own today." So this is a group protesting. May or may not be the same group that beat the cop to death. But we know that they're going to hold an anti-National Guard protest.
3) There's the "they" stripping uniforms off of cops. (Unclear how this fits or which group this is.)
4) Then there's the news bulletin, which adds that "the demonstration organized by Citizens For Peace has been disrupted by about five hundred storm troopers of the American Nazi Party." This tells us that Shelia's they (#2), holding the demonstrations, was in fact the Citizens for Peace.
5) Lastly, there's the attacking group. In a near-uniform, but not a strict uniform; so presumably not actual cops, not fake cops and possibly not Nazi storm troopers, who would probably be uniformed, or at least have insignia (the attackers are said to have none). Presumably then they're the commies. Their interracial nature backs this up. And they come to attack a suburban, bourgeois neighborhood.
I could push this by talking about Paul's treehouse as an attempt to defend his own, establish private property and self defense against commie hordes in a failed state which can no longer protect his family's property... but it's late and I'm going to bed. Anyway, those are my thoughts.
Stephen, this is a brilliant reading -- I think you've really cracked this story. This changes the whole sense I had of the story, which was wrapped up fairly exclusively in the Civil Rights Movement, and not taking into account the whole zeitgeist of the 1960s (as Liam also has pointed out). Thinking of this story in terms of Cold War anxieties instead unifies the story and also, as you suggest, is a lot more in keeping with the "William F. Buckley" Gene Wolfe. Indeed, we are finding in Operation ARES some real anxieties about the far left, but also real anxieties about the breakdown of educated, civil discourse and the polarization of political ideologies to the point of violence (how quaint, right?).
Glenn: thanks. I started out unsure about the reading but I convinced myself, at least, in the process of typing it up.
I'm looking forward to hear you talk about Operation ARES, although given both the novel's unavailability and Wolfe's disavowal of it (at an SF con, a friend once mentioned it to a third party in Wolfe's presence; Wolfe turned to him and said "I thought you were my friend!"), it'll probably be the one text you cover that I *don't* plan to read. How many episodes are you devoting to it?
We're covering two chapters per episode, plus one wrap-up discussion (with special guest Marc Aramini), so six, which we'll air over a twelve-week period starting at the end of January.
I'm enjoying the book so far, and we're finding a lot of interesting material in it, but we definitely don't expect that anyone will read along with us. Still, I'm glad that we'll have it under our belts and be able to use it to inform our readings as we progress.
Stephen, I agree with Glenn. Thanks for your offering your reading (and its defense!). Wolfe definitely is explicitly concerned about Russia and the possibility that America will be forced to be more like Russia as the cold war rages on. It's a major piece of "How the Whip Came Back" and it's just rearing its head in Operation:Ares.
We hope you'll join us for the coverage of Ares, even if you don't read the novel along with us. Our recaps should cover enough of the material to create fruitful discussion.
Oh, don't worry, I have every intention of listening to your ARES episodes. Not sure what it will be like to listen without reading along, but at this point I am along for the whole ride, I think.
I think Stephen Frug's reading is spot on here as well. Great job so far. One of the points I remember making was that the child saw much more clearly than the adults, who were blinded by their banal smallness to the danger that was about to strike them unseen, just as our ostensible main viewpoint character is struck from behind at the end - but Paul could do nothing to change the outcome in his little treehouse.
Yes, this is something that Brandon and I really missed in our coverage, but I think that the idea of blindness or "not seeing it coming" is a major part of the story and, perhaps, Wolfe's anxieties about America's future in the late 60s.
Great episode and great comments by the Wolfpack!
Having just recently found the forum and podcast, I feel like I'm really late to the party with comments, but...
My reading of what is happening in the story aligns pretty closely with stephenfrug’s. I don't know if Paul's family is a member of a minority group, but it seems their upper middle-class status is the proximate cause of their danger, and why the suburbs are the target of the mob's savagery. Morris' apparent sense of failure and ineffectuality, his heavy drinking (I'm still trying to wrap my head around brushing one's teeth with whiskey in the morning), the divide between him and his wife (sleeping in their separate beds) - in many ways, this reads like Wolfe's take-off on a John Cheever story of suburbia, only with the bloody approach of Jacobin revolutionary mobs on the other side of the country club's golf course. Only Paul, perched high above the house, has the foresight to recognize the gathering storm, and has taken precautions to survive. It's interesting that we have no real clue how old Paul is - is he a young boy? A teen? A young adult? He's obviously not a young revolutionary, and is withdrawing from the family and society, stockpiling food and weapons (rocks) and constructing a redoubt for self-preservation. I thought Wolfe might be making the point that the young may be quicker to recognize a change in society, while the adults preoccupy themselves with internal self-doubts, middle-class anomie, status concerns, and hands-off parenting.
Paul's mother even says that he will come down from the tree when he's hungry, which is the exact thing people say about a cat stuck up in a tree...
Paul still tries to defend his father, despite the apparent estrangement between them. Status concerns may be why Russell takes such an unusual interest in Paul's tree house, goading Morris into action to remove Paul and/or cut down the enormous tree - is such a handmade construction considered out of place in a neatly trimmed, planned suburb? He certainly seems to be in a hurry to bring it down and to get Paul out. Maybe he's showing the sort of anger toward's Paul's treehouse that Noah's neighbors did to his ark.
There isn't any mention of Russell having a wife or children, but he seems to be pushing Morris to be a stronger father and to be dominant in the situation (even to chopping down an enormous tree to get his son down). This could represent the feelings, common in the 1960s in the media, that rebellious teens were the fault of parents who did not exercise enough discipline, even though many making those accusations were not themselves parents. Maybe.
Like Stephen, I also read the reference to "The Big One" as referring to a nuclear attack (with the tensions between the "Citizens for Peace" and other demonstrators, it sounds like the Cold War is at a peak in the story. I think there's a specific reason Wolfe made this mention, that I'll address below. I grew up in that era and still remember the Conelrad nuclear attack drills that would play on television and radio periodically and the way your heart would stop when the distinctive tone went off before they announced it was another drill, thinking this would finally be the announcement that the missiles were in flight. (This public service ad in particular used to scare the crap out of me as a kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ddfKzUrVI). I grew up in an era when we wrapped our grade-school textbooks in Civil Defense Agency- supplied book covers that depicted a mushroom cloud rising in the distance while teachers hurried children into an underground fallout shelter. It made us all a little crazy. I'm glad my kids didn't have to live through that.
There is also a sense in the story that the traditional protectors of society - the police, the soldiers of the National Guard - can also no longer be trusted, either because others are impersonating them or they have become too aggressive and violent themselves. Even Morris says the police might deserve to be beaten. (I don't know if the incident happened around the time Wolfe was writing this story, but in a 1980 essay ("The Profession of Science Fiction", reprinted in "The Profession of Science Fiction: Writers on their Craft and Ideas"), Wolfe describes at length and with some anger how his son was detained by the local police after he was attacked and chased by an older, larger group of boys and had to use a pocket knife to try to fend them off, an incident for which his son received the sole blame from the police. One can sense the disillusionment and indignation Wolfe felt for the police officer who mishandled the situation all those years before. Even traditionally "law and order" American citizens were having some unpleasant experiences with law enforcement in this era.)
This story was written not long after the 1965 Watts Riots, when south-central Los Angeles exploded in racial violence after an incident involving a black motorist; mobs burned entire city blocks, attacked white-owned businesses and pulled white motorists out of cars and beat them in front of news cameras, and the National Guard was called in to restore order (all replayed decades later during the Rodney King riots), with accusations in the media that the LAPD and Guardsmen were themselves over-responding to the violence. It's likely that event had a strong influence on the story. Although Altamont was still a year in the future, just before this story appeared, there was public jockeying for support, or at least neutrality, from the Hells Angels among the anti-war left, especially Jerry Rubin and the poet Allen Ginsburg, who saw the Angels as countercultural allies and potential street muscle in forthcoming violent anti-war rallies. (Ginsburg famously said “The big problem for us now is how we can start to groove with the Hells Angels instead of getting into fights with them.”) After a series of summit meetings in Berkeley between the Vietnam Day Organizing Committee and various Bay-Area biker gangs, all came to naught on October 16, 1965 in Berkeley when Hells Angels President Sonny Barger led a contingent of his bikers to break through a police line and attack anti-war protesters, yelling “America first” and “America for Americans”. I suspect this incident too was grist for Wolfe's story ("It appears that members of a motorcycle club have also entered the disturbance; it is not known on which side," as Russell's transistor radio announces)
There was a general sense of shifting alliances, shadowy groups and factions, and random violence which could intrude into the "normal" life of many Americans at that time. The mass riots staged by the SDS/Weather Underground and the Yippies outside the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago would have certainly attracted Wolfe's attention, as he and Rosemary were living in (I think) a suburb of Chicago at that time.
The National Socialist Party of America, a splinter group from the American Nazi Party, was also headquartered in Chicago under their fuhrer, Frank Collins, and were frequently in the news with marches and riots and street fights against integration, and I would guess Wolfe was also very aware of them.
I think all of those pathological elements of American society fed into the story, with the ominous theme that we could destroy ourselves on the streets of America long before the Bomb did - which I suspect is the main thrust of the story.
I'm not sure if Wolfe even felt that the exact composition or ideologies of the invading mobs were that important to the story. By the end, the mob that attacks Morris seems to be multiracial - it could be a communist group, or it could be that the mob has just become a politically incoherent mass that is only interested in destruction and violence. Morris's last words in the story are a hanging question: "What do you want? What is it?"
I just read in the Oregon newspaper that Paul Welch, a liberal supporter of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, was attacked and beaten at a demonstration by a far-left mob of antifa protestors, who hit him in the head with a fabric-covered metal pipe because he refused to relinquish an American flag they tried to pull from him as a "fascist symbol". He was beaten in the street after collapsing until he was dragged out of the gutter where he lay bleeding by some bystanders, He had insisted on carrying the flag to try to show that the flag belonged to all Americans, not just those on the right, and paid a heavy price. At some point, mobs lose all rationality and politics give way to elemental blood-lust and the desire to demonstrate power over another under the cloak of anonymity. As my dad used to say, when we become part of a mob or gang instead of thinking as an individual, we sink to the common denominator of the least intelligent and most brutal member of that group.
A good companion story to read with this would be one of Wolfe's darkest Christmas stories, "And When They Appear" (which can be found in the 2000 collection Strange Travelers). In this story as well, warnings of anarchic, destructive mobs approaching the house of the protagonist (in this case, a young boy) are ignored, leading to a horrifying conclusion.
Speaking of which, Gene has written quite a few Christmas stories over the years (And When They Appear, La Befana, The War Beneath the Tree, No Planets Strike, How the Bishop Sailed to Inniskeen, Christmas Inn, and probably others). Have you thought about spotlighting some on the podcast during the month of December?
Mick, thank you for this great post. When you get to our episode "The Road So Far" in which we wrap-up everything up until The Fifth Head of Cerberus, you'll hear us talk about Stephen's original post and how we really failed to understand the context in which Wolfe wrote "Paul's Treehouse."
I think your observation that the competing ideologies aren't clear because they don't matter and the lines between them have blurred is a great insight. The story then becomes about the breakdown of civil society and democratic discourse than about political ideologies themselves. That makes the story all the more relevant now, as you point out.
I didn't know about this police incident with his son. That's really fascinating and enlightening. As you say, it's hard to know exactly when this happened but I can easily see this in the way that Wolfe writes police every time we've encountered them so far. The chief "villain" of Operation Ares is essentially a police officer, and we'll see this again in later works.
As for Christmas stories, we just recorded an episode that we will release on Christmas day this year and made a joke about not covering "La Befana." We're committed to the chronological order, but if those Christmas stories don't get chosen in their respective polls, we will absolutely do them at the following Christmas season. We also have the collection of Wolfe's letters home from Korea, and when we're done with The Fifth Head of Cerberus, we're going to start covering some of those as special-occasion episodes (Memorial Day, Veterans Day, etc.).
Mick, these are really some terrific insights. I think it's dead on the nose encounter this story as Wolfe incorporating all of the issues in his present America. It's a fantastic reading.