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This is a fascinating point. Here's my guess. The mausoleum is the grave of Severian's alter ego. At one level, this is a real other Severian. But the only time Wolfe works at …
07 Aug 2000, 22:10
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Perfectly reasonable --- she was, after all, already dead when she was weighted down with lead shot. (Well --- I hope so.) If the Claw brought her back to life, presumably a bit …
30 Sep 1999, 08:32
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OK, I didn't look that up. I may have got confused with the older english for marzipan, marchpane, which is no more like the french than the modern word, but different enough to c…
27 Jul 1999, 08:32
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Aha, that sounds to me distinctly Proustian. It may agree with the time themes present in that particular episode (starting at the begining of the chapter with the comparison with…
24 Jul 1999, 11:45
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Yes, it would, although maybe he's just saying Wolfe refers to anything and everything and has picked some extreme examples, like Polonius ends his list of things the players in Ha…
22 Jul 1999, 11:49
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You (and other people) might like to know that a lot of the books are available over the net from Project Gutenberg. Go to http://promo.net/pg/query.html and enter Baum in the…
25 Jun 1999, 08:37
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This was going through my mind, too, and it seems to tie up the loose end in the most plausible. It's the sort of mistake Severian makes a lot. Nice way of illustrating that even …
24 Jun 1999, 09:12
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I still can't really agree with this for two reasons. In the first place, it's not at all so clear that reality is like that. There are plenty of people arguing for one extreme or…
16 Jun 1999, 11:46
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I don't think it can be that simple. As someone was saying just earlier in the week, Wolfe writes about non-humans as if they have `souls' in some sense. They're not completely h…
12 Jun 1999, 11:29
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Don't you mean `they're still Greys, because there's nothing wrong in being grey, of course, but they have a much more fulfilled inner life now they have been purged of their anach…
06 Jun 1999, 14:42
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I don't want to drag this out into a pointless argument over points of view (viewless argument over views of points?) [I was arguing the green man, although he comes from the futur…
02 Jun 1999, 07:46
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What, presumably: it's turned into a citadel, with torturers, witches, magic atria, homunculi, the works. Nowhere a hard-working sailor can land a spaceship any more. (Borskian e…
01 Jun 1999, 14:05
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(late again, holiday trip to Ravenna, Urbino, life's hard. sigh.) I haven't gone back to check, but reading the Book before my impression was very strong (in fact, I was quite cer…
31 May 1999, 09:14
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I wrote (weeks ago): Whoa! sorry about this, our mailer seems to be stuck in another age. Jonathan's had enough stick about this, and anyway his subsequent remarks make it clear I…
21 May 1999, 07:20
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kn i play 2? I'd like to be Hildegrin, because Mr Badger in Wind in the Willows is one of my favourite fictional creations. I've been wondering if it had it in his mind when he w…
10 May 1999, 08:38
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Actually, maybe that's the only way to understand it... the characters blunder around senselessly for most of the novel so that even Free himself gets infuriated, and at the end ar…
07 May 1999, 07:48
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I can't quite agree with this, or what it seems to me to say, though I may be reading too much into it as usual (and I realise how much it blights your career in literary criticism…
30 Apr 1999, 09:20
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Surely, at least to some extent, Severian is Everyman? That may seem hard to accept of a rather dour torturer with a perfect memory, but I think Wolfe wants us to make the imagina…
22 Apr 1999, 09:49
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Francis Bacon, presumably? That's not so silly... I mean, it's not true, but what is truth? It's plausible in a sort of Borskian sense: the stature of the exultants suggests a ce…
18 Apr 1999, 14:28
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This is an interesting point, and it seems to me that the critic in question has largely got the wrong end of the stick about worldmaking in fantastic literature in general --- but…
20 Mar 1999, 16:41
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It's not even quite Deuteronomy. The original biblical quotation is about Moses, who isn't mentioned by name in what they're reading --- I forget the term used, it's some generic …
17 Mar 1999, 14:05
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Looks like you're on to something here, since this document also contains the sentence: The Thikoloshe is the familiar of the night sorcerer and sent by him. which is presumably…
16 Mar 1999, 14:09
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I just wanted to suggest the scenes were parallel. I'm certainly not implying the books are parallel, and the subject line was just a throwaway, there's certainly no overt connect…
05 Feb 1999, 14:13
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It's been quiet, has it? Oh, *I's* been quiet. Dialect, don't you know. Good show. All explained. Tallyho. Sounds like parallel evolution. Lots of mystical views of the futu…
03 Dec 1998, 16:35
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Haig's theory was that the Germans were suffering more by this, and the only way to win the war was by attrition. Maybe he just subtracted the population of the Central Powers fro…
25 Nov 1998, 09:21
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When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. Julius Caesar, II.ii. ok, it doesn't quite work.…
24 Nov 1998, 08:42
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I enjoyed it too, and it certainly seems relevant to the Ascians, but put in this context the idea struck me as utterly implausible. I can't understand how a space-faring culture …
31 Oct 1998, 15:58
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That can't be quite right, since until it's horizontal gravity is keeping the mercury at the hilt end. Long ago I used to play with things where what I was later taught to call `i…
20 Oct 1998, 07:58
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Oh, that's neat. If you're a Protestant, and believe in justification by faith alone, you don't need the merit, and don't get to transcribe the Catholic Encyclopedia. (Well, mayb…
15 Oct 1998, 15:57
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absolutely... even if I can't follow Severian's family tree [is there a pun about this at the Inn of Lost Loves? maybe I shouldn't start this one off] it does appear to be pretty …
14 Oct 1998, 07:51
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For a time I thought so, but I finally found the film wasn't ambiguous enough: there seemed to be just the one interpretation that finally worked, unless he had some impressively c…
12 Oct 1998, 07:46
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I have to pipe up and admit that I have worries along these line. The great strength I find in Wolfe is the overarching themes and links between them. Having all the characters t…
10 Oct 1998, 13:22
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That's always seemed obvious to me, at least after I realised the place was a spaceport which took a decade or so, because... ...that's surely because the `towers' have flown in a…
10 Jul 1998, 09:10
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This is certainly a fascinating question. I would hazard that in the cases of Dorcas and Thecla it shows Severian has a mental quirk of pigeonholing people, and particularly women…
17 Jun 1998, 12:47
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Peter Westlake wrote: (pedantically, GW wrote and PW typed in and added quotes) Just wanted to agree (belatedly --- fast list!) with the Lovecraft overtones. (The Baba Yaga joke …
16 Jun 1998, 09:28
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Oh, goody, can I have a go? Last time I took a trip, I'd better say, To this great depth to fry my bacon, The stone had not yet come away. But just before (if I'm not much mistake…
15 Jun 1998, 09:15
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I would say this is a very Wolfean theme altogether, or to put it another way, torturers have shadows too. (Readers of this list may still dimly remember Wolfe wrote another serie…
09 Jun 1998, 07:53
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Alas not, so he'd better be Malrubius :-) That reminds me, I missed out two from my anti-list Malrubius: Leslie Nielsen Triskele: ALF Well, more sort of `knightly' rather tha…
14 May 1998, 12:10
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I can imagine Miranda Richardson (`Dance with a Stranger', `That Film about the First Mrs Eliot' (not the real title), Queen Elizabeth in `Blackadder II') getting the pent up evil …
13 May 1998, 08:45
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You're right that this is a key moment, and seems to be asking for a psychological rather than a fantasy explanation. Actually, it recalls another part of Proust, towards the end,…
11 May 1998, 08:02
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I have to agree with this. The cover for Shadow, showing a mysterious figure (Severian) below a cluttered hill, has haunted me ever since I first bought it. There's a sense of ag…
06 May 1998, 09:58
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Ever on the look out for tenuous links: there's a late nineteenth century humorous poem by W.S. Gilbert, about an old sailor the narrator met, wandering around the coast. It turn…
06 May 1998, 08:52
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I always assumed the latter were referred to simply as `Member of the Group of Seventeen', or something such? It doesn't seem likely they go in for shining dinner party repartee (…
27 Mar 1998, 08:55
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There are certainly no major thematic links, I didn't want to imply a deep relationship. Certainly there are differences of this kind. I would say, though, that when looking for …
13 Mar 1998, 09:37
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Even if this isn't what happens in this particular episode, it's certainly striking how quickly Severian `falls off' in any episode where he is somehow fleetingly put up against Ch…
12 Mar 1998, 09:08
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There are some apparent references to Severian as Christ, which should probably be seen in the context of references to Severian as lots of other (in the broadest sense of the word…
09 Mar 1998, 09:13
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About Dan Parmenter's comment on Master Ash (and without looking back at the archives to see if this has come up, I'm new here too): The second time I read the Book, I remember hav…
04 Mar 1998, 09:45
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