# Gate of Nessus and UL *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 27 Jul 2000* > 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. --- ### Roy C. Lackey *27 Jul 2000, 02:31* > alga wrote: > Wrote Nigel: >> As to what happens to Severian at and immediately after his passage >> through the gate of Nessus, well, you do gradually get bits and pieces of >> the story, a detail here and there throughout the length of TCotC. I'm >> rereading the whole thing very slowly as part of the research for my >> paper for the symposium at the end of August. Will you be there? > Nigel, after the symposium will you post your paper? Or at least email > it to interested people like me, and I bet quite a few others? > -alga Seconded. Nigel Price wrote (back on June 6): > Greatly enjoyed reading all the articles and reviews, including those by > Urth-list regulars Nick Gevers (Potto), Michael Andre-Driussi (Mantis) and > Robert Borski (canis terribilis cum quinque capitibus). Very excited, too, > at the news that Peter Wright is publishing a book of his studies on Wolfe > next year, to be called "Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice and the > Reader". I admire the clear-sightedness of Peter's analysis of the Urth > cycle no end, and enjoyed his review of The Book of the New Sun in Ultan's > Library much as I enjoyed his previously published articles, but I'm still > not sure that I agree with all the conclusions he draws from his analysis. > To me, his reading of the Urth cycle seems overly deterministic, but I need > to do an awful lot more work before I can - maybe - come up with a > convincing counter-argument. (I'm working on it!) I would love to hear what > others think of Peter's interpretation of Severian's narrative. Surprisingly, very little has been posted to either list about Jonathan's first edition of Ultan's Library--doubly so because most of the contributors belong to the Urth/Whorl lists. I could abide the silence no longer, so I must echo Nigel's too-modest praise (too modest regarding his own contribution). I enjoyed each of the pieces, whether I agreed with them or not. Congratulations, one and all! I particularly wanted to mention Nick Gevers' articles on LONG SUN, a series I thought left a lot to be desired. Nick hasn't changed my mind about the books, but I found his insights fascinating, none the less. The companion pieces were very well written; I only wish EXODUS had been so. As for Peter Wright--where was he last year when I was pointing out that Severian was an unreliable narrator? I find little to argue with in the essay and appreciate the psychological angle on why someone with an eidetic memory can't be trusted to give a reliable account, even when they aren't out-and-out lying or otherwise skirting the truth. As I have said here before, Sev's biggest lies are the ones he doesn't tell, the glaring logical lacunae that spawn so much speculation here, the questions he is in a position to know the answers to but elects not to reveal. But I've argued all this before and will await Nigel's rebuttal. Also, a belated thank you to alga for sending along her LB articles. Roy ---