2 quoted lines
From: "Jim Henley" <jlhenley at erols.com>
I must reluctantly agree with you here, which is too bad, because I really want it to be Argentina and Buenos Aires. If only the mountains and the sea were reversed! I'll bet it's Typhon's fault...
I don't see why the Commonwealth can't "be" Buenos Aires and Constantinople and New York City for that matter. Wolfe isn't about search-and-replace. It seems to me that whatever Wolfe found fascinating, he worked in.
It's was once observed in regard to "The Circus of Dr. Lao" by Charles Finney that it's a mistake for an author to try to sum up a lifetime's observations and experience in one novel, which in many ways "Lao" seems to do quite successfully without ever being a mere autobiography. I would suggest that BOTNS also succeeds in this regard. Like Finney, Wolfe does a certain amount of combining and abstracting and in the end nothing is as it seems but everything is exactly what it's supposed to be.
D