{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2348",
    "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": 2348,
    "subject": "Memories",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-08-15T00:48:02+00:00",
    "last": "2000-08-15T00:48:02+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0029-0160@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-08-15T00:48:02+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Memories",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "        I have been reading the Urth Cycle yet again, trying to ignore the\nstory line (which isn't easy), and pay attention to the details, the little\nclues that Wolfe drops here and there to larger plot elements, often in\nunlikely places. This too often leads to more questions than answers, but\nthat's the way Wolfe writes, and the reader has little recourse unless he is\ncontent with staring at the rear-ends of a pair of Clydesdales--which is the\nplowman's normal view. <g>\n\n        One element often overlooked, it seems to me, in deciphering\nSeverian's narrative is the fictional fact that he has written a memoir, ten\nyears after the main events it purports to relate. It is not an on-going\nnarrative of things as they happened; it's all hindsight. For example, when\nhe gives his account of the challenge leading to the avern duel, the\nidentity and motive of his challenger was known to him. Sev elected, for\ndramatic reasons (and likely other, less honorable reasons in other\ninstances), to withhold from the reader what he already knew. Sometimes, as\nin this example, the mystery is later revealed to the reader, but by no\nmeans always. But the reader must bear in mind that Sev _does_ know the\nanswers to most, if not all, of the mysteries that are presented but not\nfully explained in the text. He has to. He is absolute dictator of the\nCommonwealth, in a better position than anyone on Urth to command the\nanswers to the enigmas he himself puzzled over, let alone his readers.\n\n        The circumstances of his birth and what happened to his mother are\nbut two examples of questions of this nature. It's not just that _I_ want to\nknow the answers; so did Sev. \"It struck me, and not for the first time,\nthat Master Gurloes and Master Palaemon too must have known whence all the\napprentices and younger journeymen had come, having approved their\nadmissions originally.\" (I, VII) It's not credible that he didn't ask.\n\n        It is sometimes offered that inconsistencies in his narrative--where\nhe misremembers, lies, evades the truth, and is otherwise an unreliable\nnarrator--may be due to altered details in the lives of the various versions\nof himself. That argument fails when you consider that, however many times\nhe may have died or otherwise been sent back to do something over again, the\ntext he wrote was written from memory, his memory, about which he, at least,\nhas complete faith. He wrote it just before leaving for Yesod, then\nreproduced it from memory just after boarding the ship. It is this latter\nversion that we are supposed to be reading. Unless he got himself killed\nbetween chapters and forgot to note it, then the version of himself who\nwrote the first chapter of the memoir also wrote the last. If he writes in\nchapter I of SHADOW that Vodalus handed his pistol to the \"heavy man\"\n(Hildegrin), and that Thea then took it from \"the heavy man's hand\", then\nwrites in chapter I of CLAW (immediately after once again vaunting his\nfamous memory) that he remembers \"he [Vodalus] gave his pistol to his\nmistress\", then, unless Wolfe is more careless than I believe, Wolfe is\ntelling the reader that Sev's memory can't be trusted. And this is about a\ndetail that Sev would have no reason to lie about. Imagine how creative\nSev's memory might become when he has something to hide.\n\n        The consensus here seems to be that Sev was born and raised in the\nMatachin Tower. He says that his earliest memory is of piling pebbles in the\nOld Yard (I, II), but later undermines that statement with two memories (II,\nXXVII & IV, XXXV) of being an infant too young to crawl, which would be too\nyoung to pile pebbles. That Catherine was \"taken\" for an unspecified offence\ndoes not imply that she was sent to the torturers. The Matachin Tower is\ndefinitely not the City jail; it seems to be reserved for political\nprisoners and others who have incurred the wrath of the autarch or someone\nnear him. Running away from a religious order or even being involved in\nwhatever petty crimes Ouen was in trouble with the law for would not likely\nget her sent there, much less killed for.\n\n        If Sev really believed he was born as well as reared in the\ntorturers' tower, then the first night of his life spent away from it might\nhave induced him to say, needlessly, as he prepared for sleep on the bed\nwhere Baldanders lay, that he was spending the first night of his life\noutside the tower. Instead, he wrote: \"... I blew out the candle and lay\ndown to spend the first night outside the Matachin Tower that I could\nrecall.\" That he could recall? What reason did he have to suspect it could\nhave been otherwise?\n\nRoy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}