Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 13:27:40 -0500
From: James Jordan 
Subject: Re: (urth) Dinner & the Long Sun

I won't bother with spoiler space. Fair warning.
         Dinner presents LACity (sp?) as a new Jerusalem, with walls and 
gates, as in the book of Nehemiah. Also a new Eden appears, with Satan (the 
space vampire) at its center. Alcohol (the wine of the Lord's Supper) keeps 
the protagonist sane enough to deal with "satan." Also remember the 
Biblical prohibition on consuming blood; only the blood of Jesus is 
allowed, and that by means of a symbol. IIRC, once again as in so many of 
Powers's books, the protagonist receives wounds in all the stigmata places. 
He's out to redeem a "bride" (the church). Except for being out to save a 
woman from the clutches of evil, however, I don't see any of this in Long 
Sun. Viron is more like Judea as a whole than Jerusalem in particular (the 
ayuntamiento being the Jewish leaders; etc.).
         I can't recall many details of the narrative. It does not appear 
to me that there is much of Dinner in Long Sun, save as you point out maybe 
the connexion between a character named Blood and the drug Rust, which sure 
looks like an allusion to dried blood to me after reading your post. Blood 
is red because of iron, after all. Doesn't Blood promote the use of Rust; 
isn't he partly a drug lord?
         I think you may be right about an oblique allusion or influence. 
But so far, it may just be a coincidence -- they're both Catholics of 
sorts, and writing in the same genre about the same kinds of religious 
things -- or a deep memory of Powers surfacing unaware in Wolfe's writing.

Nutria


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