Subject: (urth) Sev's parents

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 01:02:35 +0000

In defense of Jeremy Crampton's argument that Sev lied about "I have never
known my father or mother",  I offer this: In CLAW, third page of chapter
XXVII, Sev does remember his mother, remembers being breast fed in a gray
cell. Whether that constitutes "knowing" her or not is problematic. He can't
raise his eyes to look into her face, yet can see the gray of her cell wall.
He never spells out whether he ever equated "Katharine" with "Catherine" or
not. Sometimes having a perfect memory has its drawbacks, so that you have
to lie to yourself to keep your sanity. It wouldn't be pleasant to see your
mother's face once a year, particularly when a child too young to
distinguish between ritual and reality, on a bloody severed head.

Also, he met Ouen twice and on the second occasion, in CITADEL, figured out
that Ouen was his father. If he didn't get to know Ouen any better after
that, it was his own fault.

Jim Henley also wrote:
>>Is there anything to demonstrate that Sev knows the complete truth about
the mausoleum before the events of URTH? This is a genuine rather than
rhetorical question.<<

Chapter XXXVIII of CITADEL: "I know too in whose mausoleum I tarried as a
child, that little building of stone with its rose, its fountain, and its
flying ship all graven. I have disturbed my own tomb, and now I go to lie in
it."

Roy

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

---

From: Jim Henley <jlhenley at erols.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 22:37:59 +0000

> -----Original Message-----
> From: urth-errors at lists.best.com [mailto:urth-errors at lists.best.com]On
> Behalf Of Roy C. Lackey
>
>

So it was his own fault. The question is whether Severian lies, not whether
he has character flaws.

This is another case where someone seems to confuse the specific case (Sev
lies) with the general (Sev is a Bad Guy). Evidence of the latter does not
constitute evidence of the former. When people point this out it is
suggested that they are somehow unwilling to see Sev as having flaws.

> flying ship all graven. I have disturbed my own tomb, and now I
> go to lie in it."

Thank you. It's established. It doesn't make Sev a liar though, just shows
that for a novice writer he has an instinctive sense of pacing. I mean,
that would be a good book, wouldn't it? Chapter Two: "So there was this
tomb I used to play in as a boy. It was my tomb, and I was some kind of
time traveller. Not that I knew that right at that moment. See, time isn't
like a river, it's like an ocean with ripples. That's what these space guys
told me years later. Their names were . . . "

Note that over the course of the work as a whole, you get the complete
truth about the tomb as Sev understands it.

Best,

Jim
 *****************************************
"All God's children got a little bit of soul
 but not that much . . . "
              -- Graham Parker, "Obsessed with Aretha"

---

From: Jon Camfield <griffjon at austin.rr.com>
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 23:09:18 +0000

>"Having been reared among the torturers, I have never known my father or my
>mother. No more did my brother apprentices know theirs." . . . "Thus none of
>us knows our decent. Each would be an exultant if he could..." . . . "For
my part, I had already adopted as my own the device
>graved in bronze..."
>
>Sev boasts often of having a perfect memory. I have pointed out several
>instances (and there are more) where he contradicts himself. Either his
>claim to having a perfect memory is true or it isn't. If true he has, at
>times, given false testimony. If not true, then his claim to having a
>perfect memory is itself a lie, and anything he says is suspect.

May I offer a third possibility?  Sev's memory is too perfect.  As he
meta-commented on a few times, he would oftentimes get lost in memories,
and find himself crying or laughing in his Autarchial chambers.  I propose
that as he's churning these books out, he gets lost in his memories to do
so--lost enough such that after he gets into the flow, he neglects to
include facts which he knows, but does not treat at the time because he,
for all he knows as he is writing, is back at the citadel as a boy.  If you
wanted to get really complicated, you could analyze Sev's initial
meta-comments (when he speaks as the writer/as the adult) and if they get
scarce around the times he speak erroneously, though this is a decidedly
bad case to try that out on ;)

______________________________________________________
Jon "GriffJon" Camfield                    www.GriffJon.com
Web R&D, Competitive Intelligence; eCertain.com

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher
a hog, construct a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give
orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch
manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die
gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
--Robert A. Heinlein, _The Notebooks of Lazarus Long_