Help offset server costs by donating. This is totally optional. Any overages will go to library fines or new books.
The Islanders Week 5: Chill Wind
GOORN (Chill Wind)
The Seacaptain
- This entry in the gazetteer consists of a short story that takes place in the town of Omhuuv, on the island of Goorn.
- This town is home to the Teater Sjokaptain - The Seacaptain Theatre - which was previously mentioned in the entry on Cheoner (Rain Shadow) as the place where the mime COMMIS was killed by a plate of falling glass - an event the authorities believed was murder.
- Our point of view character is HIKE TOMMAS, a theatre arts student performing a work term during his gap year. As the story opens, he is new to town and beginning his contract at the theater.
- Hike's boss is Jayr, more established in the field and performing a management contract for the season.
- Hike is appointed to a number of technical jobs as a dogsbody until the actual technical crew arrives.
- He is warned that the theater has a ghost. They all do.
- Some one of the first acts is The Lord of Mystery, a stage magician who requires a large piece of glass which Hike is assigned to purchase.
- Another act is the mime artiste, COMMIS, who will follow The Lord of Mystery.
- One windy, wintery day, Hike has a pedestrian collision with a small, hunched man with a moustache. The man berates Hike and accepts no responsibility for himself.
- The very next day, the mustachioed man charges out of an alley and bowls Hike over, declaring his revenge. Hike tries to avoid further encounters.
- Hike starts to see a ghostly apparition while he working in dark parts of the theatre.
- Jayr soon introduces Hike to the mime-artiste, Commis, and it seems that Commis is actually the ghost that has been haunting Hike.
- Hike sets up the glass apparatus for The Lord of Mystery's act, which goes off without a hitch. After his stint is over, Hike stores the glass in the rigging of the theatre.
- Hike meets Commis in a corridor and slams an imaginary door in his face.
- Hike ends his work term. Jayr convinces him to say goodbye to Commis. He goes to Commis' room but finds he's not there. Instead, he finds a fake moustache and the clothing of the mustachioed man. He concludes Commis is his street harasser.
- Hike leaves and goes for a walk on the shore, and sees the Mustachioed man following him. Hike turns to run, but the man gives chase. As the man catches up, Hike turns and slams an imaginary door in his face, leaving the man injured on the path.
- Hike leaves town and never hears of Commis again.
QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION
- If you didn't care abut Commis before, you certainly don't now, amiright?
- How does his episode fit into Priest's usual themes, now that we've identified some of them?
- Which character, if any, can we identify with the author, and why?
- We've seen signs of multiple languages in the islands so far, mostly romance (Sudmaieure, Seigniory Systems, Lotterie-Collago, a ship called the Gallaton) which as made me think we're in Esperanzo type territory. But here, close to Faiandland, we've got Germano-Norse type names - Sjokaptain, Orsknes, etc. Thoughts?
- Any thoughts on the Patois names - Goorn means Chill Wind. Is Priest using them to signal something about the islands? Or are they just romantic sounding names?
Comments
As a short story, would this stand on its own? I don't think so. It's interesting because of how it shines new light on the Commis affair. As a short story itself, I don't think it's compelling; it doesn't make a point by itself.
I did entertain the possibility that the death of Commis was all an elaborate conspiriacy (the booking of the magician, the storage of the glass, etc. Is Hike telling the truth? (No reason why not: it seems like an honest account.) Is Jayr part of the conspiracy? In the end, I think the conspiracy is a bit too far-fetched for plausibility.
Commis was all about disguise, concealment, and art overwhelming "real" life. To some extent, that's a theme of the book so far.
The delay of the tech crew due to visa requirements as a deft bit of world-building, I thought. The different language families hints at a history of settlement and migration in the distant past. The fact that the names are unremarked suggests it's not a recent thing, but the preservation of the patois names suggests it's not too long ago. Perhaps Caurer was a unifier as well as a politician?
I liked the short story (though agree with @NeilNjae that it would not work in isolation from context) and especially the way in which it led the reader away from the idea that Commis's death was murder (by someone, if not by the originally convicted individual) towards the idea it was just an accident waiting to happen, without anyone's specific agency.
Language? I don't get the sense that Christopher Priest is interested in consistency of language in the way that say Tolkien is. So yes, there is a fairly clear Scandinavian influence on Goorn names, and a more southern European one on the earlier islands. But my suspicion is that that is just to arouse appropriate recognition responses in his readership, rather than to signal historical movements of people. But we'll see, perhaps.
Talking of geography, it seems to me that there cannot be much physical room for Faiandland - Goorn is already at what seems to be Scandinavian latitudes (assuming they are broadly the same as on this world), and Faiandland is further north. It must surely be largely inhospitable? We've commented before about the artificiality of the northern nations bypassing the whole Archipelago in order to fight in Antarctica, and this feeling came back very strongly to me in this chapter - I mean, wouldn't you at least try to annex a couple of bits of land closer in? And who would stop you if you wanted to?
I think a similar story about a harassing mime and a person who closes the door this harassment, set against the backdrop of a small northern town (which reminded me very much of Bonavista, Newfoundland, btw) could certainly work. But Priest spends a lot of time with the glass in this story, which has no punchline here, so I agree this story would need to be re-worked to stand alone.
Also totally agree with respect to the geography. This place is far enough north that the ocean freezes in the bay? And Faiandland (which I had previously assumed to be temperate) lies still further north? It certainly doesn't hold up. But, I think, we're not really meant to take such things too seriously. In fact, I think Priest keeps hinting that we're not to.
Same with language - it's mostly flavour, and perhaps it helps us to think of the islands as individual places, rather than parts of a single, unified, archipelago.
I've just finished reading an early Priest novel called A Dream of Wessex from 1978. Again, we have many of the same themes - uncertain realities and dream narratives being a big one. I'll post a separate review, but I found a clip of another review on Wikipedia (from 2007 - four years before The Islanders was published) that I thought would be worth sharing here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dream_of_Wessex
We already learned that CAURER has a double, that KAMMESTON might have an imaginary writer correspondent, and now here we see that COMMIS might have two personalities. This is perhaps something to keep an eye on as we move forward.
COMMIS also seems to live inside two realities - the real world, and the mime world. In both, he can interact with objects and hurt himself. HIKE only lived in one of these worlds at the start of the story, but maybe has learned to cross over by the end.
I, too, wondered if Jayr was in on it, and if The Lord of Mysteries was also Commis in disguise. I've decided that Jayr was not in on it, and that Lord is actually an author insertion character - he shows up, introduces the glass, creates some illusions that go off without a hitch, then leaves - and leaves us to wonder what it all means.
It seems like you left out an important part of the story in your summary. Hike climbed back up into the rigging and loosened the plate of glass.
And Hike doesn’t slam an imaginary door on the Mustachioed Man at the end, during the outdoor chase; he slams an imaginary plate of glass in his way.
> It seems like you left out an important part of the story in your summary. Hike climbed back up into the rigging and loosened the plate of glass.
>
> And Hike doesn’t slam an imaginary door on the Mustachioed Man at the end, during the outdoor chase; he slams an imaginary plate of glass in his way.
Both of which I suppose lean us towards thinking that maybe Hike is the killer, though maybe it would be classed as manslaughter rather than murder?
Yes - I was about to mention that! Thank you!
Why glass? Is the prevalence of glass a metaphor for something? Glass is transparent but tangible; it separates but allows observation. Is there a connection with painting and pictures?
Hike could have slammed a door on Commis, but instead mimed the glass sheet. Metaphor, or foreshadowing?
Slamming a glass sheet in front of Commis on the path is a pretty clear reference to how Commis dies. But why is the apparatus a piece of glass on not a mirror or a door? I suppose because glass works better in the path scene than a mirror wood, and better for the death of Commis than a hanging door would. And glass represents a window to other worlds. If Commis is really in two worlds (the 'real' world and the 'mime' world), then his death by being sliced in two by a piece of glass represents a severing of those two worlds by placing an invisible barrier between them.
But pursuing the glass theme - especially as Commis had specified just very pure optical qualities in the sheet - I suppose a glass sheet means the two parties can see each other, but not reach each other. In one sense the two people inhabit the same world, but in another they don't. And as a rule with windows, one person is inside and one is outside, though it's not clear to me which is which in this case.
I wondered at that...
It wasn't Commis who required the purity of the glass, it was Lord, the illusionist.
> It wasn't Commis who required the purity of the glass, it was Lord, the illusionist.
Oh yes, my mistake... another twist in the tail...
> And finally didn’t you think the street stranger was going to end up being Lord? I did, until Lord actually showed up.
Yes, definitely
The secret to stage magic is misdirection. The secret to stories abut stage magic is also redirection?