I'm curious what you guys might think of the following.
I've always taken the story of Saint Brandon as an explanation for the presence of spirits, good and evil, from the old world, in the new. No doubt there's a lot going on in that story that I don't understand, but the bow of the boat is said to be in Boston Bay and at the end of the tale, when the cat and the king of rats are fighting, we're told that one is wickedness, and the other a fairy. As they fight, pieces of them run off into the woods.
I take this to mean that although Brandon brought Christianity to ancient America, he also brought...other things. Juxtaposed with this is Doherty's reference to his grandmother "the old Kate" which is another name for an evil spirit, mentioned later, called the Bell Witch. The banshee story that Den shares in chapter one is told by "the old Kate", or rather, by Hannah who knew her. Wolfe is showing us an oral tradition of stories from the old world being carried on in America. Is Doherty descended from the Bell Witch? Maybe.
The "Bell Witch" has a Wikipedia entry, and I'll hazard that Wolfe did not create her. You can visit Bell Witch Cave in Tennessee and, while it's not an exact match, I'm pretty sure that the cave Olivia, Den and Professor Peacock visit is meant to evoke it. Part of the legend is that disturbing the native bones buried there would awaken an evil spirit. Since I'm pretty sure Peacock carried away a skull, it's sad that he disappears from the story immediately after.
More of this comes up later on.
I think the sign on the beach “No help needed” or whatever it was is a pretty deep commentary on anti immigrant feelings from earlier immigrants
Thank you! I'm glad you find it interesting. Once I started looking for evidence of fairies and so on in Peace, I started seeing things scattered throughout. For example Mab, Den's maternal grandfather's housekeeper, is named after the "fairies' midwife" in "Romeo and Juliet".
There's also Den's conflation of the landscape in the painting of his uncle Joe with the fairy lands of Andrew Lang. Wolfe implies that this association came after the accident with Bobby because Den doesn't receive the Green Fairy Book until he is six.
Given that, as it spread across Europe, Christianity worked to replace the beliefs that came before it, it's tempting to think that Den is, in fighting Bobby, defending fairy against Christianity. It seems unlikely though, that he had this in mind at the time. Still, there's a difference between knowing a thing consciously and being under it's influence. I think Wolfe is pointing at that difference here, and trying to inform us about how to read the rest of the book.
So what really happened in the attic? Den thinks the house knows, but won't tell him. Poor Den.
This is an awesome reading and a great way to approach the St. Brandon stuff. I'm sure we'll take this into account when we do our wrap up episodes on the novel. Thanks for this!