{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1841",
    "note": "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.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1841,
    "subject": "More About Severian As Unreliable (?) Narrator",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-18T18:10:16+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-18T18:10:16+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0211@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Daniel Fusch",
        "address": "dfusch at hotmail.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-18T18:10:16+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) More About Severian As Unreliable (?) Narrator",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Alex,\n\nAn insightful commentary. I don't think I would argue that Severian is a \nliar; I don't think he is. I agree with you; Severian tries to tell the \ntruth. However, I think Severian gets things mixed up sometimes. Or maybe \nhis memory isn't as infallible as he thinks. Early in the first volume, \nSeverian comments that he considers himself at least a little insane \n(chapter 3 or 4, I think). Maybe this shows in his narrative?\n\nYou wrote:\n(snip)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "I'm curious as to instances of Severian"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "actually lying (as opposed to being mistaken) that people have found?<<\n\nThere MAY be a few instances, which are rather intriguing. I'm not sure as \nto the ramifications, if they ARE lies. If they are merely inconsistencies, \nthen this means that Severian is \"unreliable\" in the literary sense. That \nis, he can't be trusted to give us everything straight perhaps because he \ndoes not have everything straight in his own mind.\n\nSo, here's a curious example. In the very first paragraph of Vol. I, Chapter \n2, \"I have never known my father and my mother.\" Yet it seems extremely \nlikely that he has met his father in Volume IV. In which case...is he merely \nsaying, \"As a child, I never knew my father and my mother\" (note tense) -- \nor perhaps \"I have never known my father as my father\" -- i.e., I met him as \na grown man, and we never had a father/son relationship... He may also have \nmet his mother, conceivably, if you take the woman who plays Katherine at \nthe feast to be his mother, which I think has been suggested by someone, \nsomewhere (an explanation that tidies up a few points, at any rate).\n\nSo, taking all these assumptions into account, since Severian is writing all \nthis after it happens, are we to believe Severian? Is it an error on Wolfe's \npart (conceivable, since he had not yet come up with the idea for Dorcas, \nand hence had not worked out the identities of Severian's family members)?\n\nI think there were one or two other minor things like this, for now I can't \nremember them.\n\nI don't want to assign too much relevance to minor inconsistencies like \nthis. They're just interesting. I think we should note, however, that with \n\"gaps\" (for lack of a better word) in the plot (e.g., the man-ape's arm), \nSeverian is de facto an unreliable narrator. Meaning that you might be \nsurprised at something much later on, since Severian left out some of the \nfacts. Maybe it would be better to call him a \"biased\" narrator. Either way, \nthis isn't a condemnation of Severian; his leaving out of facts makes the \nnarration all the more interesting, I think (once you know what's going on).\n\nSo...maybe Severian as a \"biased\" narrator? (Aren't all narrators? But wait, \nthat question leads into a vast literary discussion....)\n\nWell, that's my two cents,\n\nDaniel"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}