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Adam Stephanides wrote I haven't read the story, but I can't resist pointing out that the two shepherdesses in the sheep-shearing scene in A Winter's Tale are called Mopsa and Dor…
10 Sep 2000, 21:20
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Missed that, sounds fascinating. I wonder why it's in fashion at the moment? I've been thinking I really ought to go... For ages I've been planning an essay on time themes in th…
27 Jul 2000, 21:47
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Two thoughts inspired by the meeting with Hethor in chapter XXXV (the last) of Shadow. The first has two threads. Some time last year, I noted a similarity between Severian's nig…
23 Jul 2000, 21:49
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A propos of which (although it doesn't apply any more), I noticed an oddly Wolfian passage the other day. It would be ultraborskian to suggest any genuine parallel, but it rather …
21 May 2000, 18:44
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Yes, I agree with both of these. Anyone think there might be a dash of the `tortured Catholic soul', as in Graham Greene or (sometimes) Evelyn Waugh, or [puts on BBC arts correspo…
20 Jan 2000, 20:11
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Hmmm. I don't think this is entirely appropriate with Wolfe. If you look back in the archive I think you'll find we have had the same question over and over, and each time with d…
14 Dec 1999, 23:44
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Ciao Leute, Someone was remarking a few weeks ago about Paul J. McAuley's `Confluence' series. I've finished the first one, `Child of the River', quite recently, and rather than …
22 Sep 1999, 13:28
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I said I'd report back if I found anything relevant in Proust on the subject of hawthorns. This turns out to be embarrassingly rich for what in Claw is only about two pages (and I…
26 Jul 1999, 14:04
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Ranjit, thanks from me to. I have no doubt that at some time in the future/past http://www.urth.net/urth/ will in its turn give rise to http://www.urth.net/urth/, and so on ad inf…
24 May 1999, 12:12
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At least there's no danger of Wolfe being underrated on this list. I can't agree about Asimov being overrated, though. Books like `The End of Eternity' and `The Caves of Steel' a…
28 Apr 1999, 09:53
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I would tend to caution against seeing Prufrock as anyone too specific --- he may well be a horny old man, but Eliot is saying `there's a lot of it about'. To me he stands for all…
01 Mar 1999, 15:05
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Isn't it associated with the London department store Dickens 'n' Jones? It goes with their famous advertising lines: My shop closed twice before it closed; It yet remains to …
22 Feb 1999, 09:51
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Has anyone noticed the strange resemblance between the following? Are they perhaps related? (If anyone has, I should just look back in the archive for the same subject line, sinc…
05 Feb 1999, 11:10
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Just a PS: the long-standing tradition in England was that common people were beheaded by the axe, nobles had the right to the sword. Thus many of the more famous executions (such …
23 Oct 1998, 07:50
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Maybe this is obvious, but I don't think the phrase "grown from the body cells of exultant women" has to imply cloning as we know it. Nothing else is quite as we know it; I can wel…
07 Oct 1998, 10:12
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I do find it hard to escape the implication that Severian's real father is intended, and that somehow Severian and Thecla combined have worked out who he is --- what else could it …
22 Sep 1998, 10:30
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(I've been away, which is why I'm referring to something discussed several megabytes ago.) The Chinese pillow episode in Peace has a possible literary precursor in `Das Glasperlen…
11 Sep 1998, 14:54
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This is the quotation I was scrabbling for before. The old orchard and the herb garden beyond it had been so silent, so freighted with oblivion, that they recalled to me the A…
11 Jul 1998, 13:53
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By the way, this just got posted on the C.J. Cherryh mailing list, and I happened to notice another of my favourite authors listed in the convention schedule. ;Date: Thu, 2 Jul 19…
03 Jul 1998, 11:37
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I suspect prion's right about what a real black hole would do to the sun. I don't necessarily think that matters to Wolfe. (He doesn't necessarily believe in wooden spaceships wi…
03 Jul 1998, 10:28
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Just to start off away from the main topic: if Thecla, Dorcas and Agia are some combination of substitute wife, mother, sister, then presumably little Severian is a substitute son…
29 Jun 1998, 08:42
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The Shadow here is VRT's (or the Shadow Child[ren] if you prefer): I like `Roy' for the middle name for the Celtic clues. However, given the Proust links it would have been nice i…
21 May 1998, 07:46
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I had some nightmares of my own last night: Sev: Travolta (not that I've got anything against him, it's just that he has `late twentieth century' written all over his face; I …
14 May 1998, 08:25
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I absolutely agree that `unable to be photographed' is a chilling phrase, coming from Wolfe. I don't necessarily think that means there is any `obvious' supernatural explanation. …
09 May 1998, 10:27
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Whew, I've never seen so many messages... it doesn't seem worth staying silent at the moment, so... 1) Antechamber: it just occurred to me this has more specific Kafkaesque overt…
04 May 1998, 08:40
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The latter. I was a bit glib, so I've looked it up, in chapter XXVIII of Claw, `The Odalisque of Abaia'. The undine tempts Severian to join her under the water for largely unname…
13 Mar 1998, 09:14
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As a fan of both Wolfe and W.B. Yeats, I've been struck by some parallels. I could easily be convinced that they are simply parallels, and not direct influences, but they seem to …
12 Mar 1998, 10:21
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