Subject: (urth) Pandora, By Holly Hollander, by Gene Wolfe, By Kurt Vonnegut

From: Paul C Duggan <pduggan at world.std.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 08:56:18 +0000

> A fair but not trivial question. I'm assuming we're considering this _as
> if_ the fictional Kilgore Trout were real - we're not considering the
> question of what happens if Vonnegut writes a story reproducing the entire
> text of TBOTNS by Trout, or even Philip Jose Farmer writing TBOTNS while
> pretending to be KT. (One knew that _someone_ was pretending to be KT.)

Well, when Vonnegut writes

 "We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we
are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." 

it's certainly much different than Wolfe's 

 "We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we
are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges."

You can clearly see the difference. Alot of other identical texts are
pretty different too. Do you think Vonnegut did that intentionally?
Vonnegut's Severian lies alot less than Wolfe's does too.

:-)
Paul

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