You can find their schedule here. They'll wrap up on March 27th, 2023.

My apologies! I listened to this episode again and realized that you mention all of the above.

Certainly, Wolfe spent a lot of time considering the difficulty of discerning the truth, but I don't think that you can reduce that to "lies become truth". Even if you could though, how would that apply here, given that Weer doesn't believe the diary is genuine? Gold wrote a story, Lois bought it, and now the gold is real? Wolfe isn't that simple. I think a better argument for your POV would be that Weer is lying about the diary being a forgery to cover up killing Lois etc. That would mean that most of Chapter Four is a complete fabrication, and maybe that's true, but I don't really believe it. I have spent some time thinking about why Weer is writing this book. The only answer that works for me consistently is that he is trying to find peace by reexamining his life. The things he avoids, the things he won't admit, are things he is trying to hide from himself. I don't see how he--or anyone--could commit outright murder and then try to pretend to themselves that they didn't do it. You might counter that Weer is simply trying to turn his lies into truths. But he's not at peace. Additionally, Weer himself provides the argument that coins are sometimes found in the river because of shipwrecks upstream. You make the argument that we KNOW the gold is real, but a few coins found here and there are no proof of the diary's narrative. Why do you think that "Chekov rules" would apply in this novel? Your argument about the tropiness of secret weapons seems cut from the same cloth. "Wolfe did it elsewhere so it must apply here" is just not convincing. Weer has just wrested Lois's gun from her, if he wanted to kill her wouldn't he just shoot her? Failing that, hitting her with the shovel he's already holding would make a lot more sense than fishing out his Boy Scout knife. The knife is associated, in one of his conversations with Lois, with Chesterton, who was known to carry a secret sword in a walking stick. I think the knife's symbolism is very different than what you suggest here, and speaks to a part of Weer's character that is genuinely good but which, given his circumstances, has never had a chance to come to fruition.

The podcast hasn't really gotten to this point, but I'd love to hear how you worked out that the gold was at the Lorne's house. I have some doubts, driven mainly by the simple fact that the entire diary is a forgery--something that Weer realizes as soon as he reads it. I doubt that he killed Lois. I think it's more likely that he got tired of playing along with the idea that there was any gold to find, and that when he told her, she left. He'd been hoping that she had feelings for him and that they might settle down together. Sadly, he's not a very good judge of character.

I think you're right that Weer has not developed many good relationships in his life, but I think what he's struggling with is that after the Bobby Black incident, he's a pariah in Cassionsville.

Isn't it odd that Weer never mentions anyone being punished for Olivia's death? I wonder if the event was a hit-and-run, and the driver was never identified. It's more tantalizing to imagine that Weer knows but won't say, and to wonder why but, at least within the text, there's not much to go on. At the time of Olivia's death, Peacock did have a car, but so did lots of other people, including Macafee, Smart, and Weer himself. You could argue that each of them had motive. It looks like the source of the theory that Peacock killed Olivia is an article by Damien Broderick in The New York Review of Science Fiction. I haven't read it but am looking for a copy. At least one person who HAS read it says that it's only speculation.

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.

@G.L. McDorman But it's not Tennessee. The Civil War statue in the town square is of a Union soldier.

@Daniel Falch It sure is. What happened to that skull later on? Den doesn't know (I'd guess) because he's never realized what actually happened. The pattern of stories-never-completed, and events that Den misunderstands, recurs throughout Peace.

I think Peacock went back to take away some of the bones they found. He hid them in Olivia's basket, necessitating her leaving the tray behind. She didn't want Den to know so she made up a story, and got the details wrong. Basically they've disturbed a burial site and it's a bit of a horror trope that this would likely stir up some angry spirits. In relation to the Bell Witch (mentioned later in Peace), there is a Bell Witch Cave which also contains a native American burial site. I don't think these two are meant to be the same cave, but if you know that legend, this part of the story has a slightly different feel.

I'll add that the legend of the Bell Witch is mentioned a few times. The events which gave birth to the legend occurred in Tennessee, but were pretty widely known even in the 1800s.

I think this affects the "river flowing the wrong way" discussion as well. While I like the idea of Weer's America not being the "real" one, I think it's possible that Cassionsville is east of the Mississippi. I've generally leaned toward Tennessee, but I'm not sure a definite conclusion can be reached.

Yes, your podcast is a real treasure. I have started at the beginning and am working my way forward trying to better understand Wolfe's development. I am making an exception for the Peace episodes because it is one of my favorite books. I don't want to give anything away and I hope my Olivia comment didn't do that - it seemed like more of an aside. Thank you for taking the time to go through Wolfe's work with such care. It's really valuable.