Subject: (urth) True Confession?

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 00:05:07 +0000

In the context of the recent discussion of the veracity of Severian's
narrative; on Fri, 22 Oct 1999, I wrote:

>>Why write a memoir at all that purports to be a true and accurate account
of one's adventures, bring up wondrous and even momentous events, then leave
so many of them unexplained? In the context of the fictional memoirs it
makes no sense unless their author is hiding something, whether from the
reader or from himself, which is hard to do when you have a perfect memory.
In this sense, Severian is an unreliable narrator.<<

Compare that with this excerpt from John Clute's review of OBW, recently
cited on the Whorl list:
( http://www.scifi.com/sfw/current/excess.html )

>>The four-volume Book of the New Sun, set inconceivably deep down the
aisles of the future upon a world called Urth (it is our own Earth
transfigured by time), professes to be the "confession" of Severian, the
torturer's apprentice who becomes Autarch of his Brazil-like country, and
who eventually redeems his folk by bringing about the coming of a New Sun--a
white hole which scalds and drowns and cleanses the sacred Urth. But
Severian himself has much to hide, and the text of his "confession" has
become a honeypot for puzzle-solving readers. Severian's memoriousness--he
cannot forget a thing--has been deeply analyzed, as have his family (which
he never identifies) and the actions he undertakes to gain the throne (which
he lies about, for he is a liar).<<

It seems that I am not alone in my assessment of Severian being an
unreliable narrator, and that the rather glaring lacunae in his narrative
are not just quirks of his (or Wolfe's) writing style. Sev is not being
truthful. And Clute seems to think Severian an even bigger liar than did I.

Roy

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

---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 12:56:46 +0000

Well, Severian TELLS us he's a liar, etc.  But I'm still unclear about what
you and Clute think he's lying about in a major way--Wolfe's narrators are,
in my opinion, for the most part unreliable in not giving the whole truth,
but only part of it.  I really can't think of any instances (other than things
that are just odd--who said what on page #1) where Severian outright lies.
Of course, if he's lying consistently, there's no way we can tell--but that
undermines the entire narrative, and also (to me) seems out of whack with
Severian's role as bringer of the New Sun (unless we're to doubt that, too).
The minor oddities--well, Severian may be lying about who was at the gate, but
WHY?  It's a very strange thing to (baldly) lie about, since it seems to have
no real importance.  I think Severian lies to other people in the narrative,
but other than dodging the uncomfortable is reasonably honest (given that even
perfect memory cannot grant him complete understanding of his own story) to
US.  Anyway, I've always felt that Severian was writing has narrative more for
himself than for others--his slinging them into the Seas of Time is a romantic
gesture, but he's amazingly lucky that they ended up in Mr. Wolfe's back yard.
:)  In which case he may state things that are not completely true (his
claim that Jolenta & Dorcas were sexually involved) but these are the self-
deceptions that the non-Divine are prone to (and Severian, despite his post-
human state at the end of Urth is still clearly not Divine).  In this sense,
ALL narrators are liars.

I think Severian's sometimes stingy with facts, but that the hypothesis that 
he's a serious liar is the quick path to total literary solipsism.

By the way, I noticed this past week that Ask and Embla are mentioned in C. S. 
Lewis' PERELANDRA--I wonder if that sparked their inclusion in Wolfe (we know
he's read Lewis).  The whole Lewis trilogy has an interesting feel compared to
Wolfe--I think the visions of the cosmos in it are actually more similar than
might be thought to Wolfe's in BOTNS--Lewis is just vastly less subtle about
it.

Natural theology, at least to the extent that God's existence is knowable from
observation of the natural world and the application of reason, is, if not a
declared item of the faith, at least standard Catholic theology (ob: Aquinas).
On the other hand, Silk's experience in Long Sun is a direct revelation, and
so cannot be reasoned from natural experience.

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce

---

From: Tony Ellis <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 18:32:00 +0000

> Oh, MAN is that a badly written review.
>
>    "But Severian himself has much to hide, and the text of
> his
>    "confession" has become a honeypot for puzzle-solving
> readers."

<g>
You should try "Eden Sounding", the published extract of
Clute's mysteriously un-published novel. An object lesson in
how knowing lots of long words and being terribly clever
doesn't make you a second GW.

---

From: Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe at apocalypse.org>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 11:43:38 +0000

>that are just odd--who said what on page #1) where Severian outright lies.

My take on Sev's claim to be a liar is that he is attempting to be as
truthful as possible. That is, I have always thought of it in light of the
saying that the greatest saints are the most aware that they are great
sinners. No one is truthful all the time, and  anyone who says he is not a
liar is an even bigger liar, and not to be trusted. Severian's very
admission that he is a liar provides a certain amount of paradoxical
evidence that he is a trustworthy narrator, given what we know of his
character.

If Severian were really concerned about saving face with his readers, or
his place in posthistory, or whatever, would he have admitted that he raped
Jolenta, for example? It seems more likely to me that Severian's lies are
likely to be in places where it doesn't matter -- he might have some hangup
about something he did as a child, for example, that no other adult person
would hold against him for a second.

It is possible his "lies" are lies of omission; we already know he leaves
things out. But there are alternative explanations for this as well that
others here have already mentioned -- things that are interesting to us are
not necessarily interesting to Severian, etc..

I am willing to grant that I have not read closely enough, and it has been
a few years since I last read the Urth cycle anyway. (I am in the early
stages of another reading at the moment.) Can *anyone* on the list provide
more than one or two examples of Sev lying to the reader in a situation
where it mattered?

Ron H-E
--
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