{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1856", "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": 1856, "subject": "Tales", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "1999-10-26T03:12:17+00:00", "last": "1999-10-28T15:41:29+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Nicholas Gevers", "address": "vermoulian at yahoo.com" }, "date": "1999-10-26T03:12:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Tales", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Reading the fascinating discussion of narrative forms\nand strategies on the list, two points occur to me:\n\n1) Someone (I think alga) states that \"The Tale of the\nStudent and His Son\" would not work as a short story\nin a magazine, but is very effective in its NEW SUN\ncontext. This may well be true, but the \"Tale\" did in\nfact appear as an independent story, in THE MAGAZINE\nOF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, October 1981.\n\n2) I've speculated previously that THE BOOK OF THE NEW\nSUN IS \"The Brown Book\" (in addition to all the other\nthings that Sev's narrative can be taken to be). In\nother words, NEW SUN is an anthology of folk tales,\nmyths, and legends, woven into a narrative which for\nall its modernist first-person presentation is\nsufficiently episodic that each set-piece adventure of\nSev's still functions as a tale in itself, conforming\nto some recognizable pattern (rituals of initiation,\nconfronting the ogre, overcoming captivity, whatever).\nIt's been frequently remarked that the five Brown Book\ntales Wolfe has given us in full each tell Sev's story\nin some compressed, generally allegorical, form; but I\nthink this logic runs deeper: just as Wolfe's essay\n\"Books in THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN\" implies that Sev\nbrings Thecla a copy of THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN in\nSHADOW, so Sev is in a sense carrying a copy of his\nown narrative with him throughout his wanderings on\nUrth. \n\n\n=====" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Ol' Pappy", "address": "cglst7+ at pitt.edu" }, "date": "1999-10-28T10:21:14+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Tales", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nicholas Gevers sez:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "2) I've speculated previously that THE BOOK OF THE NEW\nSUN IS \"The Brown Book\" (in addition to all the other" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, that can't be right. I like the sentiment, though. A friend of mine\nwho read the BOTNS suggested that the Brown Book and the Book of Gold are\nthe same: besides the obvious conflict of editions, I can't see that\neither. Symbolically, sure. \n\nMy candidate for the most recent Brown Book is Borges and Bioy Casares'\n*Extraordinary Tales*. It's out of print now, having been translated and \nfinished up by Herder and Herder in 1971 and suffering obscurity even\namong Borges' own works. It fits Severian's exposition and the Brown\nBook's own subtitle-- my first edition has featureless brown cloth\nbinding.\n\n(My first edition, which is the only book I scrupled to steal from my old\ncollege's library upon my departure. An act I made well with myself\nbecause it hadn't been checked out since the Carter administration, and\nwhich bears a romanticism that didn't register with me until recently, \neven though I had read the series only two years previous to the theft)\n\n\n\n\nO.P.P." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jim Jordan", "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net" }, "date": "1999-10-28T10:20:12+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Tales", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 10:21 AM 10/28/99 -0400, you wrote:\n\nMy candidate for the most recent Brown Book is Borges and Bioy Casares'\n*Extraordinary Tales*. It's out of print now, having been translated and \nfinished up by Herder and Herder in 1971 and suffering obscurity even\namong Borges' own works. It fits Severian's exposition and the Brown\nBook's own subtitle-- my first edition has featureless brown cloth\nbinding." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\tCould this be *The Book of Fantasy* by B & BC, published by Viking in\n1988? It's a collection of stories by other authors first pub'd in 1940 in\nthe Argentine. The first is by Akutagawa, but this edition is arranged\nalphabetically (aleph-abetically?) by authors. There's a Bradbury, a couple\nof Chestertons, etc. \n\tLet us know if it's the same book.\n\nNutricious" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Ol' Pappy", "address": "cglst7+ at pitt.edu" }, "date": "1999-10-28T15:41:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Tales", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nutricious sez:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Could this be *The Book of Fantasy* by B & BC, published by Viking in\n1988? It's a collection of stories by other authors first pub'd in 1940\nin the Argentine. The first is by Akutagawa, but this edition is arranged\nalphabetically (aleph-abetically?) by authors. There's a Bradbury, a\ncouple of Chestertons, etc. Let us know if it's the same book." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No. They are similar but not the same. The longest story in *Extraordinary\nTales* is four 5x7 pages. Both books have the same mission statement, and\nare peppered with the same Borges sine qua nons: \"On Cartography\" and \"The\nMagician,\" I think, are two. \n\n*Extraordinary Tales* is better, for reasons previously stated.\n\n\n\nO.P.P." } ] } ] }