Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v006.n022

From: Alice Turner <al at interport.net>
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 19:51:46 +0000

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

Wow, we're back in fettle!

>Am I misguided or stating the obvious in guessing that
>Reechy grew up to be Ymar?

No, rana, you're right on the mark.

teliss, I love your locution, but Ultan's mythic Alexandrian Library is
hardly Thecla's "local library!"

Patrick O---neat!

>He's asking us to look (really look) at the final two letters in the word:
>"last."
>
>They are S--the serpent, and t--the knife.
>
>st
>
>They are pictographs. Symbols in their own right. The root of writing, no
>doubt.
>Abstract representations of something else. Isn't there a symbol that
>incorporates both the snake & the sword? Isn't it the symbol of "Doctor"?
Or,
>if you will, "Healer"?
>
>They are also symbols of sounds. They form the word "Est."
>
>They are also the abbreviation of the word "Saint."
>
>As a Saint is (in a sense) an abbreviation of God. Something greater and
>richer embodied in a smaller vessel.

lasrach, this is so nice re BOTNS:

>I would imagine that the version that Thecla & Sev read is similar to the
>one Dr. Talos claims to have based his play on. That is, a colourful,
mythic
>reworking of the "facts", which are more likely to be found in the Brown
>Book, purporting as it does to contain accounts of the original historical
>events upon which the mythological corpus of the time was based....it is
perhaps not
>unreasonable to allow the possibility that the version of tBotNS which
>Thecla gets from the library relates an account from a parallel
Urth>lasrach

And Ratty, you're baaaaaack! Sinking your oversized incisors promptly into
newt's tail---lucky that newts can promptly regenerate their tails. Well,
taking the secular example of Freud and the cigar, I hope you will someday
admit that not every novelistic encounter with water is a baptism, not every
invitation to dine a eucharist. Or is that too much to ask?

-alga-

---

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 10:58:21 +0000

>invitation to dine a eucharist. Or is that too much to ask?

Slimy:

	Where have I ever made such an assertion? Now, when it comes to Wolfe, I'm
pretty safe making the assertion, since it is fairly obvious. Also, since
he confirmed it.
	Blind Ultan's library may allude to Alexandria (I suspect it doth), but is
primarily Blind Borges's library in Buenos Aires. (Note the Borgesian intro
to the series: I found this ms and translated it....).

Big Nutria Rat