#nostalgebraist

Temporal Setting

Herschel Schoen is set almost entirely in New York City; that's made abundantly clear. The question is when this story is set, which is impossible to pin down and subject to a lot of contradictory details. For instance:

Frederick claims his daddy knows "Moses," i.e. Robert Moses

Damien Eggert developed technology during the "last war," supposedly World War II

Marshall McLuhan is being taught by a college professor as though he is a cutting edge new theorist

Miriam watches a box television set with antennae, and has a particular fixation on sitcoms

Herschel frequently listens to the radio

Miriam is typing her account on a typewriter

These facts point toward a 1960s or 1970s setting, but then you get facts that point to a more modern setting:

Miriam watches Vincent's "video essays" on an ambiguously-identified handheld device with a "knob"

Herschel encounters two men on the subway who appear to be talking using cell phones or Bluetooth headsets, in modern jargon ("He needs to be leveraging the new dataviz tools, pronto")

Herschel sees what appears to be a flock of drones in New York Harbor

Frederick and Damien's technology seems to operate like modern AI technology

There are also numerous references to Damien's colleagues, who seem to be real scientists or AI researchers of disparate time periods, but with whom I'm not familiar enough to temporally distinguish.

This temporal confusion leads to strange oddities like Damien using scans of physical books from real libraries to train his AI machines, rather than, say, any sort of internet resource. There is no reference to the internet existing at all and Herschel seems incapable of comprehending that the men on the subway are using cell phones (saying they're talking to themselves), though Herschel didn't even know who Santa was so it's not as though he's a paragon of the bleeding edge. Still, these confusions persist in Miriam's perspective chapters, and while she's not exactly the most reliable narrator herself, she's at least wise to the basics of the world in a way Herschel is not.

Spatial Setting

At the same time, there are some spatial oddities to the setting, especially on the one occasion the story leaves NYC and goes to Portland, Oregon. Portland is described bizarrely:

Through the window of the bus, I watched the low, crouching buildings of Portland, Oregon advancing and receding. It was an ever stranger place than I had expected. It did not really look like my idea of a city at all, come to think of it. [...] “Are you sure this is really Portland, Oregon?” I said, as we walked along the street. He laughed uncomfortably. “They don’t really look like buildings at all,” I said. [...] Its exterior was strangely squat, like all the other “buildings” of this “city,” and curiously round, like they were. Like them, it looked very, very old. And its interior was strangely spacious, with an extensive and cavernous basement.

West Coast homes rarely have basements, if the more overt strangeness of the city's presentation wasn't clear already. Furthermore, despite living in squalid poverty, Vincent's home has two kitchens. Even most mansions wouldn't have two kitchens.

There is also the spatial oddity of the Schoen's apartment. Miriam describes it, in Chapter 166

She didn’t look at Herschel, or at me.  She turned toward the inner side of the living room, the side with the doors that lead to the bedrooms and the bathroom and the kitchen.

Later, in Chapter 21, Herschel affirms:

I looked, to try to catch sight of the gift-box that was mine. It was difficult to make out, for the Intercessor was already striding across the room, towards the wall of doors. I thought I spied some sort of box under his arm, fluttering in the changing shadows. But I cannot say for sure. He reached the wall of doors. He stopped, before a particular door. I knew he had selected that door, singled it out, in full awareness of what lay behind it. “May I go in?” he asked, with the utmost politeness. As though he were only a common houseguest, and not the king of the universe. “Go in?” I said, with the utmost simplicity. “To my . . bedroom?”

Can you try to imagine this layout? The Schoen apartment has a living room, and then there is one wall of doors, and those doors lead into two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen.

There is also a living room balcony, as well as windows in the kitchen. So we're looking at a layout that might be like this:

This is already a strange layout on its own, but gets stranger when you consider that the apartment is a brownstone:

He was real, he was a boy, I was his sister, we did live on earth, in a dusty little two-bedroom brownstone apartment in Flatbush, with too many drawers in the kitchen, we were always losing things in those drawers

Brownstones are townhouse apartments. They usually have a small and narrow footprint with multiple floors, like so:

(For reference, this is a layout of a brownstone in Brooklyn, which is where the Schoens live.)

It's difficult for me to imagine how you can cram the Schoen's apartment's layout into a footprint like this. This doesn't even account for the fact that there is apparently an elevator that the Schoens take to reach their apartment:

I rode the elevator, crossing the many floors that separated my home from the earth below it.

Brownstones are usually converted single-residence homes. They are usually not that tall and usually don't even have elevators.

What's interesting is that, even in light of these spatial oddities, the layout of New York City is depicted, as far as I can tell, highly accurately, even down to the trains Herschel takes to get around the city.

There's another oddity I'd like to talk about here, though I pointed it out to Nostalgebraist and it turned out to be a mistake. Frederick is said to attend Midwood High School (which is a real school), but there's a scene in Ch 17 where the school starts being randomly referred to as Midway instead of Midwood. I was hoping this might be some VALIS-style flashback delusion to the Battle of Midway overlapping with the real world, but alas. The error has since been corrected.

Though I also wonder what this line is about:

I would scale the walls of Yankee Stadium, and peer into its maw, seeing the true face of my Adversary within it!

What the hell does he think is in Yankee Stadium?

Herschel's Physical Body

In Ch 16, Herschel's mother Ruth beats Herschel several times with a frying pan.

This scene is bizarre for a few reasons. First off, the perspective character, Miriam, NEVER SEES Herschel being beaten. She always closes her eyes and only hears the sound of him being beaten.

Secondly, this isn't being hit with a belt, or punched. This is being hit with a frying pan. Herschel seemingly takes no serious damage from this. He does not refer to it in his own writings and is apparently up and about the next week.

Did this actually happen?

Another odd thing: Herschel's height. Take this passage, after Madeleine steals his paper crown:

My arms were not as long as Madeleine’s, and she was much taller than me, as well. In order to reach her scalp and recapture what was mine, I would need to come closer to her, and elevate myself as well. I began to climb up onto the surface of the table.

Herschel is supposedly 16. Madeleine is a high school student, so at most two years older than him, and also a girl. While it's entirely possible she's taller than Herschel, it wouldn't be "much" taller, certainly not so tall that Herschel needs to climb onto a table to reach her head.

At the same time, the way Herschel is described relative to Frederick is bizarre. Frederick is described as older than Herschel, but still in high school, so again he is at most two years older than Herschel. What is the meaning, then, of this bizarre exchange with Mrs. Rachel?

“I have a friend,” I said. “Frederick Eggert,” I said, “is my friend.” “Yes,” Mrs. Rachel said, “and that’s a good thing, Herschel. I’m very glad you’ve been able to form that bond. It’s very encouraging, developmentally. Especially in light of all this other . . . context . . . which is, well, not so encouraging. “But now, Herschel — you’re so careful with words, I’m sure you noticed that I said peers, I said forming relationships with your peers. “And Frederick Eggert, ha, well, he’s not exactly your peer, now is he?”

Is this a reference to the economic disparity between them? Why, though, would that matter to Mrs. Rachel as a developmental psychologist? Why does Frederick constantly use the infantile term "daddy" to refer to his father?

Herschel also can't tie his own shoes, though that might be a developmental issue.

The strangeness of Herschel's body interests me because it is, ultimately, his body that divides him from the Intercessor:

The Intercessor’s exit was unceremonious, when it did come. At some point, after many hours at the kitchen table, he suddenly began to make a curious show of himself, plying me with a variety of sententious and vaguely valedictory utterances.  I could not see what he was driving at, and I was afraid of asking him directly about it. I was in my body, and it had its ways. And so, at one point, I found that I had to leave the game table, in order to use the bathroom. I was only in that room very briefly.  But when I returned to the kitchen, I saw that its window was starting to glow with the first hints of the dawn. And when I looked around my home, under that dawning light, I saw that there was no Santa Claus there, and no steeds or sleigh.  He had simply vanished, and I was alone.

Though I wonder, if we presume Herschel to have a "real" body during Of Nativity, how is he shown all the things he is shown? How is he transported to space to see the Intercessor's true body? Is it a hallucination? An image projected on his ceiling? It's not described that way.

Frame Narrative

There are strange elements of the frame narrative, too. Ostensibly, Miriam Schoen is collecting Herschel Schoen's papers and adding her own narrative to it, all for the benefit of an audience of "devotees":

I did not think about my little brother’s flock of devotees, clamoring for a properly dignified print edition of his “papers,” and demanding of his poor sister that she cough up every bit of family trivia she could remember that in any way impinged upon their prophet, the messiah. Because – how could my little brother have such followers? When he is only a little boy – a poor, sad, crazy little boy?

Miriam Schoen supposedly left NYC for Portland on December 24, carrying with her many of Herschel's papers. However, this doesn't explain how Of Nativity, Herschel's self-written account of the events of December 25, ended up in her possession.

A few other strange aspects of the frame narrative:

Why does Miriam refer to herself as a Redactor? (And labels all of her chapters "Redactor's Preface"?) What is she redacting, exactly?

Why does the Intercessor's Preface exist? Did Miriam put this here? Did the AI?

Why does She of High Mind exist? Herschel gives an account of the order of his December Chronicle, and She of High Mind is never mentioned. The chapter is the most incoherent in the entire story, with passages omitted due to illegibility. Miriam marks these omissions with "MS," suggesting she is in fact the one editing this chapter, but there is no explanation given for its existence. Tonally and with the capitalization of words it matches the small excerpt Madeleine reads on Herschel's paper crown. How did Miriam get this and why did she include it?

Of course, there's also the fact that in the final chapter, Miriam mentions she doesn't remember when, how, or why she has the typewriter she's using to create the account.

Who are Herschel's devotees? His prophesies of doom go unheard in his life. Are they the AI that supposedly went back in time 10,000s of years to ask for his assent?

Likewise, I wonder when the Revelator's Preface was written, and who the "you" in it being addressed truly is.

Incest and Sexuality

Madeleine teases Herschel once, so he immediately has to masturbate. Right after this scene, Herschel goes out and angrily confronts Miriam:

“I have learned,” I said, “what it is that the men of the earth call coupling and fruitfulness.” She turned her head, slightly. “I know,” I said spitefully, “what it is that you and Vincent share, that you do not share with me.”

Which leads to this exchange:

“My, my,” she said, in a merry daze. “My little brother’s growing up, isn’t he?” she said. The rhetorical question, and the sickly sweetness that dripped from its edges, reminded me equally of Mrs. Rachel and of Madeleine. Why, why, do you torment me so? My Sister, Miriam Schoen, why do you torment me so?

Herschel will continue to conflate Miriam and Madeleine throughout the story, especially in She of High Mind:

And SHE ATE the grass of the field, and ATE also the fragrant DATES growing from the PALMS of the field, and thus was SHE made MADELEINGIAN, and [lettering becomes increasing difficult to make out -MS] was made clamored [? -MS] and manyful [? -MS] and [rest of paragraph wholly illegible -MS]

She of High Mind is crammed full of weird, Freudian sexual imagery throughout, involving SEEDS and such. I find the conflating of the female figures in Herschel's life (he also, at one point in She of High Mind, describes his sister as becoming RACHELLINE) interesting in the context of Herschel's abhorrence toward substitution and pattern.

She of High Mind also begins with this line:

Then forthwith SHE went down from her virginity, and went down unto the SUNDERING FIELD.

Virginia, whose letter about Christmas Herschel reads, is a figure of extreme importance to Herschel; later, he uses her as a SUBSTITUTE for the virgin ant queen in the story's climax.

Comedy

Miriam describes Herschel as a "laugh riot," explaining this as something nobody understands about him, something she wants people to understand. Herschel describes Santa as a master of parody, who laughs at the absurd.

Herschel will later consider it a similarly absurd joke for the thousandmade forms to have interest in him, and wish for him to understand them:

For – although he was made in divine image – he is a lesser thing than his imager.  Even his virtues were fashioned for the sake of their eventual failure, and his strength for the moment when, at last, he is laid low and broken.  Thus does man’s maker glorify and sanctify Himself through His creature, which He has fashioned in order to prove itself great, and then to prove itself inferior to Him. But the ones that were assembled here, watching me, did not resemble man in any way whatsoever. It did not seem right, the way that they were watching me.  I ought to have been entirely beneath their notice.  The notion that they had taken an interest in me was a disquieting one, for I felt that it demeaned and devalued their exalted nature. But they had taken an interest in me. They were tremendously interested in me. And they were not only interested in studying me, from a distance, for their own “purposes.’” No: they wished for me to know them, as well. This wish of theirs was absurd, of course.  It was laughable.  It was what men call a very good joke.

Meanwhile, there's also an emphasis on bad comedy: the things that are "like jokes" in sitcoms but that aren't funny, as well as Damien Eggert's profusion of cliches that are said as though they're supposed to be funny but aren't.

Ho, ho, ho is a laugh.

Plaitings and Fleurons

This unique phrase appears twice:

As a little girl I liked to draw. I don’t, anymore, though. I drew shapes, rather than pictures. Spirals, nested rings, lace-like plaitings and fleurons. That sort of thing.

Much later, referring to Vincent's video essay setup:

I saw the green-on-green wallpaper behind the man. I saw its green plaitings and greener fleurons, nested, nestling.  I fell backward, smiling, into that lace fairyland.

These are, of course, patterns. And patterns are a motif of crucial importance throughout this story. The whole story seems to be built around them, with reflections and similarities across Herschel and Miriam's narratives. (Herschel as a prophet versus Vincent as a prophet, Miriam and Herschel both cowardly refusing to watch violence and battles or the oncoming wave, sitcoms and Damien's cliches, and so on.)

Processor Time Requested

Two hours

Simulation Type

Historical; semi-hypothetical; years -20 to 1

Simulation Fidelity Requested

Medium; medium-low if necessary

Description and Justification

As the recent practice of lightcone acknowledgments attests, the events of year 0 are a perennial topic of angst. While reasonable arguments are frequently furnished justifying or condemning ancestral actions, certain approaches are rarely (if ever) considered.

This project intends to prepare a human specimen with near-maximum informational throughput, then pose to him a simple question: does he accept the events of year 0, inasmuch as he understands them? Regardless of his answer (we expect it to be highly prompt-sensitive and are interested in running additional simulations if overflow capacity is available), the very fact of asking will shine a light on latent modern assumptions about long-gone history.

Harm Level Disclosure

Low risk – simulation will terminate before the events of years 1-2. Sentience levels low for potentially harmed beings. Zero industrial scale s-risk.

Simulation Expense Category

Art/Entertainment

Policy Relevance?