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Friday, December 31, 2010

RAW's wolfish police captain

I've been reading The Widow's Son. The novel features a police captain, named Loup-Garou, who carries out all of his orders without questioning them. "He never wondered for a moment if this Signor Celine had done anything wrong, or deserved what was about to happen to him ... " (Chapter Eight.)

The character's name bothered me until I finally looked it up and discovered that it means "wolf." No doubt there are many other jokes in the text that I've missed.

Update: It actually means "werewolf." Thanks to Supergee for the correction in the comment below.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Loup-garou" means werewolf. "Loup" is a wolf.

Anonymous said...

It is also the protagonists name in Ishmael Reed's yellow back radio broke-down. though it is spelled loop- Garoo. Whether naming this character is an allusion to Ishmael reed I cannot be sure, but Wilson has had allusions to his ismhael's work in the past. The opening quote in Illuminatus is a nod to Mumbo-Jumbo,"the history of the world is the history of the warfare between secret societies" I think Mumbo-Jumbo has some of the best lines written in fiction. take this one "Harry, you'd better get down here quick. What was once dormant is now a Creeping Thing", The creeping thing ( a virus called jes grew) is a disorder that causes the afflicted to love black culture, especcially jazz. the first scene in this is very reminizcent of the first actual scene, the one with Saul Goodman, in Illumiinatus!.