{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1959",
    "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": 1959,
    "subject": "Liar, liar",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-11-17T15:04:56+00:00",
    "last": "1999-11-17T15:04:56+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0465@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1999-11-17T15:04:56+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Liar, liar",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Roy C Lackey wrote:\nAfter returning to the Ship after his phony \"trial\", Sev tells his story to\nBig Tzadkiel, the ship's captain. She offers to take away the memories of\nall his hard travails. He declines: \"I don't want to forget, Tzadkiel. I've\nboasted too often that I forget nothing, and forgetting--which I have known\nonce or twice--seems to me a kind of death.\" (V, XXIV) This quote\nestablishes from his own mouth that his claim to a perfect memory is a\nboast, not a fact, and that his boast is lie."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "A boast can still be a fact. If Prince Naseem boasts about\nhis perfect record as a professional boxer he's not lying.\n\nI suspect that the instances of forgetting Severian is\nalluding to are those where he has blacked out, or been in\nan altered state of consciousness due to Alzabo or other\ndrugs. To call anything in this fallen world \"perfect\" is\nhyperbole, but it's accepted hyperbole. It's reasonable for\nSeverian to call his memory perfect if, unlike the rest of\nus, he only forgets under exceptional circumstances."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "How much plainer can he be? He lies when he finds it expedient and he lies\njust for the hell of it. How many times does Wolfe have to write it?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "If all you're saying is that Severian sometimes lies, then\nI'm on your side. Of course he does. The real question is,\ndoes he lie to us? It doesn't follow automatically.\n\nReal autobiographies undoubtedly contain lies, but the usual\nliterary convention is that a -fictional- autobiography is\nthe truth. Fictional characters are wittier than us,\nprettier than us, have more sex and don't lie in their\ndiaries.\n\nYes, I know, Wolfe does sometimes invert accepted literary\nconventions, but more commonly he works from within them.\nWhen he does make a diarist lie, in V.R.T., the clues are,\nin retrospect, thumpingly obvious. I don't see anything like\nthat in TBOTNS, and certainly not in the various minor\ncontradictions in the text."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}