Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v019.n014

From: Kieran Mullen <kieran at phyast.nhn.ou.edu>
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 1998 19:15:17 +0000

Robert Borski writes:

>I also think it's fairly obvious that Valeria is Catherine's mother
>(meaning Severian has slept with both grandmothers).

  Umm... Obvious?   Isn't there a problem with time here?

>Catherine also has access to the Corridors of Time.

   Ah!  So that's how you get around this one.  Care to explain why
you think the above are true?

   I had hoped that Wolfe was a great writer.  From this mailing
list he seems to be like one of those hack mystery writers who 
have the butler just coincidentally be the father of Lord Billings
*and* be the brother-in-law of the deceased.

                Kieran Mullen

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Peter Stephenson <pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it>
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998 13:22:00 +0000

> *and* be the brother-in-law of the deceased.

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 tie up in this narrow way
seems to reduce it to a certain extent to a family soap opera.
Severian's family certainly *should* be important somehow, I'm just a
bit worried about the way it's done.  Wolfe's in good company, though;
lots of major authors have links of this kind (Dickens is full of it,
although I take it none of his characters are their own ancestors),
but that doesn't make it `right'.

But that's a highly personal assessment, of course.  I'm entirely
convinced the links are really there, and it's fascinating to hear all
these things I never suspected.  Indeed, you could quite easily read
every word of the Book twice and not have the smallest idea what any
of these arguments were about.  (In fact, would somebody mind
sketching a brief family history of Valeria for those of us left
behind? ta.)

corncrake
(craking at the corn)

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it>       Tel: +39 050 844536
WWW:  http://www.ifh.de/~pws/
Dipartimento di Fisica, Via Buonarotti 2, 56100 Pisa, Italy

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 08:39:30 +0000

> but that doesn't make it `right'.

I've long suspected I have some sort of deficiency because I am utterly
unmoved by these kinds of revelations.  Vader is Luke's father?  Leia is
Luke's sister?  Yawn.  Let's see some more spaceships blowing up.

Dorcas's identity interests me more because it shows how she's been dead
or suspended for a long time than because she's related to Severian.  I
guess the whole sleeping with your grandmother thing provokes a satisfying
"eeeew!" as well.  I just hope Silk doesn't turn out to be Severian's son,
brother, clone, grandfather, or twin sister. 

Maybe my family life was just too humdrum for these kinds of things to
have any emotional resonance for me.

-Rostrum