Narrator And Author

Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), pp. 9-20.

Occasionally, the first person narrator of a work of fiction is explicitly identified with its author, e.g., Somerset Maugham in The Razor's Edge and CS Lewis in the Ransom Trilogy. Is the narrator of Poul Anderson's two Old Phoenix stories likely to be identical with Anderson?

The landlord of the Old Phoenix says that his guests:

"...are those who have good stories wherewith to pay him..." (p. 9)

- yet this narrator is "...not quite sure why..." (ibid,) he is invited. Maybe "stories" means life experiences rather than invented yarns although I should think that Anderson was rich in the former as well.

The narrator speaks Italian. Did Anderson? I don't know. I am merely listing data about the narrator.

He also speaks some medieval French but adds that his visits to the Old Phoenix have encouraged "...such studies." (p. 11)

Even if the narrator is Anderson, he does not express any surprise at meeting one of his characters, Nicholas van Rijn.

He was on a flight that was forced down somewhere in the Arctic and received local help.

There might be some more information in the other story, "Losers' Night," which I will reread shortly.

For the "shadowy beings" in the Old Phoenix, see here. 

Neil Gaiman offers an explanation of his Inn of the Worlds' End and maybe by extension of other such Free Houses:

Chiron: ...we will be safe in this place. The tavern itself cannot be harmed; that is the way of things. It is being continually created; after all, worlds are ending all the time.

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 146, panel 2.