Scott and Julie argue about the meaning of "Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods." Neighbors tell them to take it to the edge of the woods because it's 2:00 a.m. and "some of us have work in the morning!" They quiet down long enough to discuss Mockingbird by Walter Tevis. Download or listen via this link: |Episode #110| Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner Or subscribe via iTunes by clicking: |HERE| The Mockingbird — A Virtuoso of Variety (from Bird Note podcast) COMMENT that was too long for the comments boxes but which I (Julie) thought was well worth reading: Hey Scott and Julie, My apologies for the length of this email. It was too long for the comment box. I started to listen to your podcast on "Mockingbird" by William Tevis. I was intrigued and stopped the podcast immediately so I could read the book. I agree, it is a very good book, highly recommended. On the question about who the mockingbird is. I don't think you all went far enough. You can make some points about who is mimicking whom. The drugged humans are in a way trying to mimic the robots, who in a way are mimicking humans. Paul and Mary Lou like stories and the old silent movies, and so they are in a way trying to mimic how to be human from them. But I think the strongest case applies to Spofforth. 1. Did you notice the book starts on page one with the birth or activation of Spofforth and ends on the last page with his death? Does the title of the book point to this fact? 2. As you all mentioned in the podcast, a mockingbird mimics the songs of other birds. Spofforth often whistled a song that he did not know. He also knew how to play the piano but never encountered a piano to demonstrate his ability. Spofforth's mind was an "impression" made from a long dead human engineer. Despite their attempts to erase portions of the engineer's memories and personality, some things remained, like the song he whistled and his piano skills. His mind is an attempt to mimic a human mind. 3. Spofforth was tortured by a faint memory of a love he never experienced, presumably from an un-erased portion of the dead engineer's mind. We learn of two attempts that Spofforth tried to "mimic" this love. First was early in the book, near the beginning of his life with that girl with the scarlet coat with a black velvet collar. It failed. Near the end of his life, he tries again with Mary Lou. (Even bought a red coat for her too.) He even thinks that he fell in love with Mary Lou, any yet it did not satisfy him. His melancholy persisted. 4. I think part of his melancholy could be due to that he did not have any good role models of humanity to mimic. His mind's impressions of humanity from the dead engineer were missing portions of "humanness". (Like the genetic code for a mockingbird to mimic other birds.) The humans he dealt with were already conditioned to be withdrawn and to rely on drugs to numb and inhibit their humanity. Later, the contraceptives in the drugs further suppress human expression by sharing their humanity with new life. I think he found human contemptible, especially after he told Mary Lou that he wished she would abort the baby. You all really hit on a key point about creativity and its connection to being human. None of the humans in the story except for Paul, Mary Lou, and Annabelle created anything. Spofforth could repair things, but not create. Do mockingbirds create new songs, or do they strictly mimic? 5. Scott brought up the question about the mockingbird being at the edge of the woods--was the mockingbird singing into the woods or away from the woods? Maybe the mockingbird is just being itself on the edge of the woods, singing his song in both directions? What if Spofforth, the mockingbird, is mimicking humanity at the "edge of the woods." The one human, Paul, that is stuck in the darkness in the middle of the woods is drawn toward the edge. After all, Paul does go to the university in New York from Ohio. And in the process of the