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From: Nigel Price <NigelPrice1 at compuserve.com>
Did you hear the reading of "In the Heart of the Sea" on Radio 4 recently?
Missed that, sounds fascinating. I wonder why it's in fashion at the moment?
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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?
I've been thinking I really ought to go... For ages I've been planning an essay on time themes in the Book, and I have this inferiority complex about showing my face in polite society until I actually sit down and write it.
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From: "Tony Ellis" <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Slightly more on topic: one of the conceits in Barnes' novel is the idea of history repeating itself, but as a whimper rather than a bang. (The image he uses, as I recall, is the way a belch faintly brings back the taste of the hotdog you had earlier in the day.) This certainly chimes with the idea of Hethor standing in for Simon of Cyrene, and indeed with the idea of Severian standing in for Christ.
`And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'
(Yeats, `The Second Coming', from the collection `Michael Robartes and the Dancer'.) There's another essay I should have written ages ago. Sigh.
Peter Stephenson <pws at pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk>
Work: pws at CambridgeSiliconRadio.com
Web: http://www.pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk