# Digest urth.v001.n004 *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 17 Apr 1997* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Charles Dye *17 Apr 1997, 19:04* This is from Reusch : > Well, I can't help but throw one question/observation out about Urth of > the New Sun. The writing style of this books starts out dramatically > different than the four which precede it. Has anyone noticed this, or > thought why? At first I thought that it was just less polished by Wolfe, > but now I wonder. A different author? Severian 1, or Severian 2? Any > thoughts on this one? Severian tells us when and how he's writing "The Book" -- during his reign as Autarch. Sounds like favorable conditions to me, especially as he may have had editorial assistance from Inire or Ultan. On the other hand, it's not at all clear to me where (or when) "Urth" got written. (Living amongst the newborn people of Ushas?) Writing conditions might have been adverse. I'll toss out a couple of minor "New Sun" mysteries, because I haven't seen these discussed anywhere (and not because they seem particularly important.) Does Severian suffer from spatial dyslexia? He seems to have trouble distinguishing left from right, and prefers to refer to orientations in other ways, "good-leg" / "bad-leg" for example. On more than one occasion, he's given precise directions to reach some goal and remembers them perfectly, but gets lost anyhow. And of course there's the bit where he looks out the left eye of west-facing Mount Typhon and sees a battle to the north. We never learn whether his injured leg is the left or the right; we never learn whether his injured cheek is the left or the right. I think something's going on here that I'm not catching. Also, what's the significance of the Father Inire / Lewis Carroll thing? I assume that this is just Mr. Wolfe paying homage to another writer he admires, but Father Inire is awfully enigmatic for such an important character. raster at highfiber.com ---