Subject: (urth) Sev's not-so-perfect memory

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 04:32:53 +0000

What follows is a post I originally tried to send in late September 2000,
but it was the night Moonmilk turned to cheese, so it never arrived. When
the list was back up and running, weeks later, the big PEACE debate was on,
so I let it slide. Recent discussion of Severian's memory seems sufficient
excuse to re-post it now.
---------------------------------------------

        In my rereading of the Urth Cycle, looking for--and
finding--mistakes (most of them, hopefully, Severian's) relating to Sev's
reliability as a narrator, especially those relating to his famous memory, I
have come to develop a theory regarding Wolfe's handling of Sev's memory in
the memoir. It is unprovable, in part, because the memory-based text is all
we have to go on, and the mistakes are subtle, of course, or the issue would
have been decided twenty years ago. The theory is just this: that wherever
in the text Sev starts vaunting his perfect memory, not always, but often
enough, that the particular memory then recounted, or another close by in
the text, will be flawed.

        Those recollections, when they are of an incident which has been
related elsewhere in the text, can be verified by the careful reader, but
not so those of which we are given only the transient memory, such as piling
pebbles, crying in a basket, or those subsumed from Thecla. This second
category of memory becomes even more suspect, in light of the provable
errors of the first category.

        Sev's mistakes of memory tend to go unnoticed because the reader,
caught up in the story, becomes spellbound by it, like some of the denizens
of the Botanic Gardens, succumbing to Wolfe's wizardry as a story teller and
his sleight-of-hand and stage-magician's misdirection in his plotting.
Wolfe's style of writing is one of the reasons it is often hard to find a
particular passage, because the reader doesn't associate it with the context
of the story where it is actually found, e.g., that of Gurloes being a
master for twenty years is found in the middle of Sev's account of his
escape from the mine of the man-apes.

        In addition to the errors I have pointed out in the past (not
going/going swimming, not returning/returning to the mausoleum, etc.), or
that others have found (doeskin/manskin bag, Roche/Drotte seeing the pikes,
etc.), here are some more. Although most of the errors of memory are of
details, there are too many of them for them all to be Wolfe's mistakes. I
have endeavored to include only those of which there can be no reasonable
doubt. There are, of course, others subject to interpretation.

A) "Whatever I possess I would give to become one of you, who complain every
day of memories fading. My own do not. They remain always, and always as
vivid as at their first impression, so that once summoned they carry me off
spellbound.
   "I think I turned from the innkeeper and wandered into the crowd of
pushing rustics and chattering vendors, but I saw neither them nor him.
Instead I felt the bone-strewn paths of the necropolis under my feet, and
saw through the drifting river fog the slender figure of Vodalis as he gave
his pistol to his mistress and drew his sword." (II, I)

        That's not quite what happened. He gave the pistol to Hildegrin,
from whom Thea then took it. (I, I) However, the same mistake he makes above
is repeated by Wolfe in the appendix to CITADEL.

B) Shortly after returning to Saltus from the mine of the man-apes, Sev
questioned Jonas:

   "One last question," I said, "and then I promise I won't ask you anything
more. When we were going through the Wall, you said the things we saw in
there were soldiers, and you implied they..." (II, VIII)

        No, he didn't. Sev specifically asked Talos what the creatures in
the Wall were, and it was Talos who answered him, saying they were soldiers.
(I, XXXV) That Jonas doesn't bother to correct him _may_ indicate the error
is Wolfe's, not Sev's.

C)  While camped, with Dorcas and Jolenta, by the stream where the odalisque
appeared, Sev slept, woke, and:

   "...lay down again to watch the birds voyage among the constellations and
enter that world of memory that, no matter how sweet or how bitter it may
be, is never wholly closed to me.
   "I sought to recall that celebration of Holy Katharine's day that fell
the year after I became captain of apprentices; but the preparations for the
feast were hardly begun before other memories came crowding unbidden around
it." (II, XXVII)

        Here, we have an example of Severian the deceiver. He goes on to
recall an incident from infancy, which captures the reader's attention and
distracts from what he wrote. The first part of the last quoted sentence is
worded so that the casual reader may not realize that he is referring to his
_own_ feast day, when he became a journeyman. Why he chose to phrase it that
way, I will not speculate upon. The second part of the sentence sounds
innocent enough--someone recalling a sequence of events and beginning at the
beginning. But when Sev in fact described that feast day, when he reached
the point in the ceremony where he raised the fake sword to strike, he
wrote:

   "When I think back on that time, it is that moment I recall first; to
remember more, I must work forward or backward from that. In memory it seems
to me I stand always so, in gray shirt and ragged trousers, with the blade
poised above my head." (I, XI)

        The second sentence in the above second quoted passage I included
because it, too, I believe, contains an error. When Sev gave his brief
account of the feast day when he became captain of apprentices, he wrote:

   "We apprentices were to serve the feast, and before we did so were to
doff the relatively new and clean clothes we had been given for the
ceremony." (I, V)

        The clothes worn by the apprentices for the ceremony were their
version of their "Sunday best". If they had been their normal rags, there
would have been no need to change clothes, so I doubt that Sev was wearing
"ragged trousers" for his own elevation.

D)  When Sev first visited the jacal of the two sick children in Thrax, he
wrote:

   "I braced my hands on the mud and wattle wall beside the door and
straightened up. The boy said, 'You see she is very sick, sieur, My sister.'
He held out his hand again.
   "I saw it--I see it before me now--but it made no immediate impression on
my mind. I could think only of the Claw; and it seemed to me that it was
pressing against my breastbone, not so much like a weight as like the
knuckles of an invisible fist. I remembered the uhlan who had appeared dead
until I touched his lips with the Claw, and who now seemed to me to belong
to the remote past; and I remembered the man-ape, with his stump of arm, and
the way Jonas's burns had faded when I ran the Claw along their length. I
had not used it or even considered using it since it had failed to save
Jolenta." (III, III)

        Wrong. The second paragraph contains not one, but two errors. Sev
touched the uhlan's forehead, not his lips, with the Claw. (II, XIII) And he
used the Claw again on the broken arm of the herdsman at whose hut they had
stayed. (II, XXIX; last paragraph)

E)  From the top of the donjon at Acies Castle, Sev recalled the view he had
had from the top of the Matachin Tower:

   "When I had gone there to make my farewell to the only place I had known,
I had stood at one of the loftiest points of the Citadel, which was itself
poised atop one of the highest elevations in the whole area of Nessus. The
city had been spread before me to the limits of vision, with Gyoll traced
across it like the green slime of a slug across a map; even the Wall had
been visible on the horizon at some points, and nowhere was I beneath the
shadow of a summit much superior to my own." (III, II)

        Contrast the above quote with what he actually wrote about the view
from the top of the Matachin Tower:

   "The mountains [to the north] I could see with my mind's eye, but not
with the body's: only the rolling expanse of the city with its million
roofs. And to tell the truth, the great silver columns of the Keep and its
surrounding spires blocked half my view." (I, XIII)

        Either he had a panoramic vista from the tower, or he didn't.
Perhaps his memory of home became idealized in his exile. Neither did he
make any mention of being able to see the Wall from there at the time,
though he did say, later, as they approached the Piteous Gate: "I've spent
my life so near the middle of the city that the Wall was no more than a dark
line on the northern horizon when we looked from the glass-roofed room at
the top of our tower." (I, XXXV) Note that he said the Wall was visible only
at the one point, not "some points".

F)  When Sev and his motley crew of lake people arrived at Baldander's
castle, he:

   "...asked--a rhetorical question--if they knew from where the sky ship
above the castle had come. And when they assured me they did not, I
explained that I did (and so I did, Dorcas having warned me of them, though
I had never seen such a thing before), and that because of its presence here
it would be better if I...". (III, XXXII)

        Well, no, Dorcas didn't say any such thing. She made no mention of a
spacecraft or its occupants. It was Cyriaca who had warned him: "...that
cacogens had landed somewhere in the north." (III, XII; first page)

G)  Sev to Miles-Jonas at the lazaret:

   "But Jonas, Jolenta is gone--I watched her die, and..." (IV, VI)

        No, he didn't. He was passed out in the mud when he was awakened by
Dorcas calling him. He returned to the roof of the tomb to find "...Dorcas,
alone, bent over the body of Jolenta." (II, XXXI)

H)  Of his jungle prison cell, following the flier crash, Sev wrote:

   "I, who had worked outside so many, thrusting in trays of food to the
disfigured and demented, now knew again a cell of my own." (IV, XXVI)

        Not true. Sev was a journeyman-in-good-standing for less than 72
hours, and apprentices were forbidden interaction with "clients".
Apprentices carried trays for the inmates down to the oubliette, but it was
up to the journeymen on duty to disperse them. In fact, the day Sev returned
from the library with the four books, Drotte was busy with a client and
asked him to "'...finish shoving their food at the rest for me, if you've
got a moment.'
   "I hesitated. Apprentices were not supposed to deal with those committed
to the guild's care." (I, VII)

        The same objection applies to what he wrote three pages later, when
Agia visited him and "...described the torments she and Hethor had contrived
for me when I was strong enough to endure them. When she finished, I told
her quite truthfully that I had spent most of my life assisting at
operations more terrible..." That is a lie, both to Agia and the reader.

        BTW, it also means that Gurloes was probably lying when he said that
when he was Sev's age, they had him "cranking the alternator".

I)  On the morning that Sev, then autarch, passed through the necropolis,
with Drotte, Roche, and Eata, on the way to see Ouen, he wrote:

   "The death roses I had hesitated to pick for Thecla still showed a few
autumnal blooms, and I found myself thinking of Morwenna, the only woman
whose life I have ever taken..." (IV, XXXVII)

        Not true. From chapter XX: "One of the enemy put her head from
behind a clump of brush some way up the slope. My contus struck her with a
bolt of flame; she leaped by reflex, then curled up as spiders do when
someone tosses them among the coals of a campfire."

J)  During the blackout aboard Tzadkiel's ship:

   "In my youth, when I had traveled from Nessus to Thrax with Dorcas, and
from Thrax to Orithyia largely alone, I had carried flint and steel to
kindle fires." (V, VI)

        Wrong again. Oddly, for all the dearth of detail in his accounts,
that specific lack is addressed in the accounts of both those legs of his
journey. By the stream mentioned in C), above, and when he found the dead
soldier, Miles:

   "We had broken a good many and laid our fire before I remembered I no
longer had my striker, having left it with the Autarch, who must also, I
felt certain, have been the 'highly placed servant' who had filled Dr.
Talos's hands with chrisos. Dorcas had flint, steel, and tinder among her
scant baggage, however, and we were soon comforted by a roaring blaze." (II,
XXVII)

   "...I had the impulsive need to kindle a fire.
   "There had been no fire-making gear in his pack, but I knew every soldier
must carry such things. I searched his pockets and found a few aes, a
hanging dial with which to tell time, and a flint and striking bar." (IV,
II)

K)  Sev, just before his "Examination", having cried upon seeing the eidolon
of Thecla:

   "If I had ever wept before, it was when I was so small I can scarcely
remember it--apprentices learn not to..." (V, XVIII)

        He wept when he left Dorcas in Thrax. (III, XII) He wept when he
found, among the rocks below Baldander's castle, the remnants of the gem
which had held the Claw. (III, XXXVIII) He wept in the autarch's pavilion
when he saw the claws of the cat-women. (IV, XXIV)

-Roy

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From: James Wynn <the.wynns at usa.net>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 07:24:10 +0000

Bravo, Roy!

Excellent detective work. I believe you are right about this, and apparently
others suspected it as well
(http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0028/0443.shtml). You see, my reporting
of history -- my claim that Bill's query got no reaction from the list -- is
not so accurate either, but then, Crush was not there to remember it).

-- Crush

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>
To: "urth" <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 10:32 PM
Subject: (urth) Sev's not-so-perfect memory

--

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <katbarx at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 16:04:28 +0000

Roy,

Two points: one general, one nit.

The general point: In most of the (apparent?) contradictions you list, you 
make an
interesting assumption ... you cite Sev talking about an incident, then say 
that what
he says is wrong, because it contradicts what he said in his direct 
narration of the
incident. The point here is, what is your basis for thus privileging the 
direct narration,
when both are from the same source (i.e., Sev)? If I were to privilege one 
over the
other, I would be more likely to go the other way -- he's more likely to 
"edit" the
incident when he's attending directly to it, rather than when he's attending 
to some
other incident in which the incident in question is mentioned in passing. 
This would
be especially true, I think, when the passing mention is in reported 
dialogue; it might
not occur to him to edit the reported dialogue to match the edited incident.

The second point has to do with the Feast of Holy Katherine.

The contrast between his own feast, with "gray shirt and ragged trousers,"
and the "relatively new and clean clothes [the apprentices]  had been given
for the ceremony" strikes me as just that -- a contrast. It isn't a 
contradiction;
it's a fact of the ceremony. The apprentice to be raised is not among the 
general
run of apprentices that day; he is participating in a ceremony in which he 
is
changed, from prentice to journeyman. Part of the symbolism of the ceremony
-- pardon me if I am belaboring the obvious -- is the taking off of the garb 
of
the prentice and the donning of the fuligin cloak of the journeyman. (In 
particular,
recall that the journeyman never wears a shirt under his cloak.) Thus it 
would be
appropriate, even necessary, for those being elevated, and _only_ them, to 
wear
ragged clothes.

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From: James Wynn <the.wynns at usa.net>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 00:50:42 +0000

Blattid disagrees:
Roy,
In most of the (apparent?) contradictions you list, you make an interesting
assumption ... you cite Sev talking about an incident, then say that what he
says is wrong, because it contradicts what he said in his direct narration
of the incident. The point here is, what is your basis for thus privileging
the direct narration, when both are from the same source (i.e., Sev)? If I
were to privilege one over the other, I would be more likely to go the other
way -- he's more likely to "edit" the incident when he's attending directly
to it, rather than when he's attending to some other incident in which the
incident in question is mentioned in passing.  This would be especially
true, I think, when the passing mention is in reported dialogue; it might
not occur to him to edit the reported dialogue to match the edited incident.

Crush butts in:
I'm not sure I understand your point, O Leggy One. I don't think Roy favored
one incident over another. The point is that Severian tells one version at
one point and another elsewhere -- frequently just at the point where he
brags about his flawless memory. The point is that one or both versions must
be wrong. No, Severian doesn't "edit" out the discrepancy. The conceit seems
to be that he doesn't edit his book at all -- relying on his inerrant memory
to carry him through at all times.

Or perhaps his memory IS flawless (this is a Wolfe novel after all so it
would make sense if the narrator's lies were to be somehow true), and his
memory is "reconsitituted" continuously as he says on page 2 of tSotT just
before making his first error. So every version is somehow true.  I do think
that curly-wurly sentence is somehow (although I don't KNOW how) a true
explanation of Severian's "memory" (if it can realistically be called that).

Whatever, I still think the long ago comparison between Cugel's (of "The
Dying Earth") and Severian's brags is valid.

-- Crush

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 06:54:12 +0000

>explanation of Severian's "memory" (if it can realistically be called 
that).

Random thought:  What is the process for creating a new Severian when the 
old one carellesly dies?  Occasionally we see a corpse, but more often 
not.  If the heirodules are tampering with time in order to produce the 
"right" result might _both_ reccollections be true?  True that is for the 
current incarnation of Severian?

Thus Severian's claim to perfect memory could be accurate but it's 
different worlds that he's remembering.

Now the obvious flaw in this is that it isn't third person historical 
narrative but the conceit of the book is that he writes - or copies from 
memory - the manuscript that we are supposedly reading between boarding 
the Ship and casting the casket overboard.  How many times does he die in 
that time?  Not at all as far as I can remember but certainly not a 
sufficient number of times to account for all the discrepencies thus far 
noted.  How many times might he have died in the course of writing the 
original manuscript?  We can't tell because his life as Autarch isn't in 
the narative.

Which trangentially brings up something else.  Are there not at least two 
and possibly more mechanisms by which Severain is incarnated?  From memory 
it seems that we only get embarrasing bodies left behind after Severian 
boards the Ship.  Thus the reincarnation is explicit whereas before it had 
to be inferred.  Possibly a third mechanism might exists post-trial, 
during his return along the stream of time.

Matthew

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:56:14 +0000

>to carry him through at all times.

Crush said it for me. Perhaps all of the discrepancies I and others have
pointed out over the years are just mistakes made by Wolfe. He makes
mistakes. But Wolfe is also subtle. He causes Sev to go out of his way to
boast "...that I have not scrupled to recount in great detail things that
transpired years ago, and to give the very words of those who spoke to me,
and the very words with which I replied; and you must have thought this only
a conventional device I had adopted to make my story flow more smoothly. The
truth is that I am one of those who are cursed with what is called perfect
recollection." (II, VIII)

That sort of braggadocio is almost a gauntlet thrown down. Sev makes that
sort of boast several times, yet gives contradictory accounts of the same
recollections. That much is fact. I don't think that anyone on this list has
ever maintained that Sev wrote the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth as he knew it. He clearly deceives, if only by omission, so the
question comes down to: are the demonstrated errors of recollection subtle
clues left by Wolfe as unspoken commentary on Sev's veracity, or did Wolfe
make that many mistakes?

-Roy

--

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <katbarx at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 17:04:09 +0000

I didn't see Crush's original post.

> >the direct narration, when both are from the same source (i.e., Sev)?

> >one incident over another.

By calling one "wrong," it seems to me that he implies that the other is 
"right."
My point is that I don't see any justification for that; in fact, I think 
that it may
be undecidable, when Sev gives contradictory accounts, which is "true."

> >The point is that Severian tells one version at
> >brags about his flawless memory. The point is that one or both versions
> >must be wrong.

I'm not as sure that this must be true. Consider the Narrator's ability to 
change
a story as it's being told. Now, I think we can agree that Severian is at 
least
as close to omnipotent as the Narrator; we know that Severian is a 
timewalker;
and we know that Severian claims that there have been previous versions of
himself.  I think we should at least _consider_ the possibility that 
Severian, in
telling his story, actually changes his history.

Alternatively, he could be lying (or wrong) about his memory.

Alternatively, he could be telling the truth about his memory, but the 
nature
of memory (not only his) may be more complex than it appears at first 
glance.

Alternatively, he could be lying about some of the incidents -- which was my
point about which version is more likely to be "edited" to suit his purposes
(whether they be political, propagandistic, historical, or merely 
egotistical).

>pointed out over the years are just mistakes made by Wolfe.

That strikes me as the least likely hypothesis in general (though it may be
correct in any _given_ case).

>"...The truth is that I am one of those who are cursed with what is
>called perfect recollection." (II, VIII)
>
>That sort of braggadocio is almost a gauntlet thrown down.

Agreed.

>That much is fact. I don't think that anyone on this list has

Or might it be that Wolfe is implying something more complex...

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From: James Wynn <the.wynns at usa.net>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 22:02:19 +0000

Blattid asserts:
That [all the discrepancies are mistakes on Wolfe's part] strikes me as the
least likely hypothesis in general (though it may be correct in any _given_
case).

Crush agrees:
I'm with you on this, Blattid. Especially the first and most glaring
discrepancy -- that of whether Drotte or Roche mentioned the pikes. As has
been said before, The first couple pages are the part of any novel that is
most likely to be pristine. For this to have slipped through unnoticed would
dismay me.

Blattid goes on:
By calling one [description] "wrong," it seems to me that he implies that
the other is  "right." My point is that I don't see any justification for
that; in fact, I think that it may be undecidable, when Sev gives
contradictory accounts, which is "true."

Crush attempts to clarify:
Granted. But for Severian to boast about his infallible memory and then give
contradictory accounts about trivial details, it questions his account of
his memory and his level of self-delusion about it far more than his general
account of the events.

Blattid suggests:
Alternatively, he could be lying about some of the incidents -- which was my
point about which version is more likely to be "edited" to suit his purposes
(whether they be political, propagandistic, historical, or merely
egotistical)...so the question comes down to: are the demonstrated errors of
recollection subtle clues left by Wolfe as unspoken commentary on Sev's
veracity, or did Wolfe make that many mistakes?

Crush responds:
That Severian is lying about these things strikes me as less likely than
that they are typos (and I don't think it is likely _as a whole_ that they
are typos). The discrepancies at issue are just _too_ trivial -- too trivial
too lie about, but not too trivial to prove Roy's point. If the
discrepancies were about big things, it would be obvious to argue that
Severian was lying or covering up the truth. But what reason is there to lie
about whether Drotte or Roche mentioned pikes?

With each discrepancy discovered close to a claim of inerrant memory, the
likelihood of any of them being typos decreases as well.

-- Crush

--

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 14:25:04 +0000

> most likely to be pristine. For this to have slipped through unnoticed would

What convinces me is the number of discrepancies Roy has found, rather than
any specific one.  We know that Wolfe is a careful writer; if he were going
to create a character who really had a perfect memory, he would surely have
cross-checked the character's later recollections of events with the
original accounts.

> about whether Drotte or Roche mentioned pikes?

Also, if Severian really had a perfect memory, and intended to lie, wouldn't
he have remembered to lie consistently?

All of which raises the question: what is the point of making Severian an
unreliable narrator?  For that matter, what is the point of making Horn the
not-necessarily-reliable narrator of TBotLS, or Horn's family the unreliable
authors of the third-person sections of RttW?  None of these seem to fulfill
any obvious function in their respective novels.

Marc Aramini wrote:
> What does it matter if Severian has an
> almost perfect memory as opposed to a perfect one?

It's a small point, but if Severian doesn't have a perfect memory, there's
no reason to think he has an almost perfect one.  The only reason for
thinking he had a perfect memory was that he said so.  (It's been a while
since I last read the books, though; are there any scenes where his great
memory is objectively validated?)

--Adam

--Adam

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From: Josh Geller <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 16:31:46 +0000

> cross-checked the character's later recollections of events with the

In a fifteen hundred page book?

Without a computer?

No one, as far as I know, is arguing that Gene Wolfe has a perfect
memory.

.

--

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From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 19:34:11 +0000

>he have remembered to lie consistently?

On some occasions I believe that Severian changes his mind about what he's 
going to tell you as he goes along. It seems like he is reticent on the 
subject of Thecla early on, but later finds that in order to tell his story 
he can't hold certain things back after all. For sins of omission he 
probably wouldn't feel obligated to go back and fill things in earlier- thus 
you get surprising revelations about events that you thought you understood 
well after they are first recounted. However, even when it comes to the 
lies, while he may have remembered full well that his account isn't going to 
match, there are reasons he might not go back and correct them. First of 
all, he was writing a manuscript; it's not quite so easy to go back and make 
a significant revision or rewrite, and he may not have had time to do such 
revisions. Another possibility which may seem odd is that there are things 
Severian may want the reader to know, but hesitates to say directly either 
from squeamishness or because he won't be believed if he says it outright.

>any obvious function in their respective novels.

Possibly just to make things interesting. But it also occurs to me that 
there are some points which can be made far more effectively if you give the 
reader the tools to figure them out for themselves. Especially concerning 
matters of religion or philosophy.

>memory is objectively validated?)

I suppose it's a matter of how much of the narrative you want to reject. By 
thinking of him as having an almost perfect memory, you leave open the 
possibility that he is simply mistaken rather than outright lying to you. If 
there were nothing special about his memory, there's no way he could simply 
be mistaken. This isn't "evidence" that he has an almost perfect memory, but 
it is *a* reason to believe it.

Civet

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From: Andrew Bollen <abollen at internode.on.net>
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 07:31:14 +0000

> No one, as far as I know, is arguing that Gene Wolfe has a perfect

FWIW, I agree with Josh. Roy's list of errors are easily explained as Wolfe
nodding, IMO. Go through any series of large books by anybody, and you'll
probably find the same. I'm reading Trollope at the moment - a similar
effort for his body of work would probably fill a volume the size of one of
his big, fat novels.

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 21:34:13 +0000

Perhaps this point has been made, but what is even more striking about the 
contradictions is that this is the SECOND time Sev. has written this, and 
evidently the SAME Sev. Wouldn't he catch these errors the second time 
through?
         Which makes we wonder if they really are errors. I'd have to look 
at all of them carefully, and I'm not rereading the books now. Is it 
possible both other boys pointed out the pikes, maybe one first and the 
other saying, "Yeah, look!" Is is possible Vodalus handed his weapon to one 
person with the intention of its being handed on to a third? Are some or 
all of these contradictions reconcilable?
         Maybe not. But given that they all seem to be "small" errors, it 
makes me wonder.

Nutria

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 21:41:57 +0000

>effort for his body of work would probably fill a volume the size of one of

         BUT, Trollope wrote for serialized publication. The first part of 
a given book or series was in magazine print before the later parts were 
even written, as I understand it. Wolfe worked over the New Sun books FOUR 
times before initial publication. I can tell you that I myself check 
earlier chapters  more than once for consistency while I write, and go over 
my whole book more than once after it is all finished. I don't write 
fiction but Bible commentary (fiction to some, here, I suppose!), and when 
I find something "new" to talk about in chapter 10 of, say Daniel, I make 
sure what I wrote about chapters 1-9 is consistent with it. I think we 
should assume that usually the errors are deliberate and ask IF they really 
ARE errors (my previous post), and if so, what they might mean.

Nutria

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From: Andrew Bollen <abollen at internode.on.net>
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 23:18:46 +0000

> ARE errors (my previous post), and if so, what they might mean.

As an ex-computer geek, I think of it like debugging - there's always some
left, no matter how carefully you check. I sort of appreciate the
serialization point, but it doesn't seem to me that there's that much
difference - presumably a serializer will also check against earlier
chapters?

One of my problems with Roy's list representing deliberate "errors" is just
their triviality - I find it hard to think that most of them could mean
anything much.

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 07:09:34 +0000

>effort for his body of work would probably fill a volume the size of one 
of

I wouldn't disagree with you were it not for Severian's persistant claim 
to a perfect memory.

Is that claim significant or just a throw-away line.  Throw-away lines in 
Wolfe?

If it's significant I don't find it credible that Wolfe would have allowed 
it to be diminished or negated by a number of textual "mistakes".

So we have a meaningful reference to the narrator's memory; a careful 
author (who is on record to the effect that he never says anything twice 
yet the matter of Severian's memory is repeatedly highlighted).  And in 
Severian we have a first person narrator who is not consistant.

And an observed correlation between some of the inconsistancies and claims 
for Severian's memory.

There has to be a reason for this although I confess that what that reason 
might be eludes me entirely.

Matthew

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 07:45:26 +0000

I personally think it's a backhand statement of the fact that Severian is
the Narrator.

Wolfe's universe is a Catholic one, and in a Catholic universe The Narrator
has a special place.

A way of putting it would be that S's memory is perfect **because this
reality conforms to his memory** not the other way round.

I am sorry if this sounds semi-mystical, but it expresses more or less what
I mean.   I think.

I am still lurking here with great enjoyment but I only have time to drop in
the odd note nowadays, and some of the notes are very odd indeed :-)

    hartshorn

----- Original Message -----
From: <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
To: <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 8:09 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) Sev's not-so-perfect memory

--

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 13:25:35 +0000

> No one, as far as I know, is arguing that Gene Wolfe has a perfect

And Wolfe undoubtedly knows he doesn't have a perfect memory.  Which is why,
if he had intended to create a character with a perfect memory, and to
provide many illustrations of this perfection, he wouldn't have relied on
his own memory to get it right.

And he must have had an outline, or some other means of locating events in
his manuscript.  Otherwise he couldn't possibly have written a 1500-page
book in which the parts are so complexly related.

--Adam

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From: Thomas Bitterman <tom at bitterman.net>
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 23:43:41 +0000

Crush responds:

> Since they are trivial, they can only be errors in memory (assuming
> they aren't typos).

They might also be errors in interpretation.  Perhaps Drotte and Roche 
both said it, but at
one point it was more significant that one said it, and at another time 
the other.  Maybe
Vodalus handed the pistol to Thea with his helper as an intermediary. 
 After a while it starts
to sound like Biblical exegesis.  Which may be the point.

Tom

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 00:09:17 +0000

>to sound like Biblical exegesis.  Which may be the point.

         Yes, this is like interpreting a particular part of the Bible that 
is kind of relevant to the Severian narrative: the gospels. One can find 
scores of "contradictions" in the four gospels that upon a brief inspection 
turn out not to be contradictions. Did Jesus meet two blind men on the road 
to Jericho (Matthew), or only one (Mark)? Resolution: He met two, but for 
thematic reasons the legal "two witness" gospel of Matthew mentions two, 
and the personalistic gospel of Mark only mentions one and names him. Was 
Jesus leaving Jericho or entering it? Leaving the old Jewish city (Matthew 
& Mark, more Jewish) and entering the newer Roman city (Luke, more Gentile 
orientation). The gospels seem to give different accounts of who came to 
the empty tomb on resurrection morning, but these can easily be put 
together into a coherent narrative.
         Another example of this kind of question consists of the 
differences between the books of Kings and the books of Chronicles, in the 
Old Testament.
         Of course, some people object to these harmonizings and prefer to 
believe in real errors or differences between the gospels. Fine. Wolfe, 
however, is a conservative Catholic, and I've no doubt but he is a 
harmonizer when it comes to the gospel accounts. And the question on the 
table is what Wolfe is doing.
         Which is why I agree with Tom. Before assuming there are real 
contradictions in Sev's book, we should consider whether some or even all 
of them can be harmonized.
         I agree that Sev's repeated claims to perfect memory are 
suspicious, and likely a self-deception. I'm just arguing that we want 
fully clear-cut examples so we can begin to uncover precisely what Wolfe 
may be getting at.

Nutria

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From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 00:09:06 +0000

To throw more into the fire:
Perhaps, given the "many worlds" cosmology of the NS books, Severian has 
actually picked up memories from Severians in several different branches of 
the possible event tree which all had similar enough outcomes that they 
succeeded and were able to return, become Autarch, and pass their memories 
on. If the differences were small enough he might not notice that he was 
remembering it differently from one time to the next. Even larger 
differences might pass unnoticed if there were enough time between the first 
remembrance and whenever he revisits the same subject. It may not be the 
only or even the best solution, but it's consistent enough and hangs 
together with the Ash episode.

On a side note, I am not very comfortable attaching the same powers Silk has 
(seeming to be able to change stories, including his own) to Severian. The 
two may be connected, but are not the same. Were there hints in the NS 
novels that Severian was able to do this? I can't recall any.

Civet

>They might also be errors in interpretation.  Perhaps Drotte and Roche both 
>said it, but at
>one point it was more significant that one said it, and at another time the 
>other.  Maybe
>Vodalus handed the pistol to Thea with his helper as an intermediary. After 
>a while it starts

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--

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 04:50:34 +0000

Adam wrote:
>(It's been a while

Since Sev wrote the whole thing there are, of course, no independent
accounts of an event also related by Sev to compare. In fact, I can recall
only one scene in which another character made any comment at all about
Sev's memory, and that one casts doubts about it. It's in chapter XIII of
SHADOW, on the day Sev left for Thrax. Master Palaemon was giving Sev
instructions and advice for his journey and Sev (it's almost the trademark
of Wolfe's unreliable narrators) wasn't paying attention:

    "Severian!" Master Palaemon exclaimed. You are not listening to me. You
were never an inattentive pupil in our classes."
    "I'm sorry. I was thinking about a great many things."
    "No doubt." For the first time he really smiled, and for an instant
looked his old self, the Master Palaemon of my boyhood. "Yet I was giving
you such good advice for your journey. Now you must do without it, but
doubtless you would have forgotten everything anyway."

Now, in one breath Palaemon indicates that Sev had always been attentive in
class. Sev is pretty-near grown at this point; his schooling is over with. A
child with a very good memory, much less an eidetic one, who paid attention
in class couldn't help but be a star pupil. He only had to be told something
once. It's hard to believe that in those small classes Sev's remarkable
memory would have gone unnoticed by his teachers. Yet, almost in the next
breath, Palaemon doesn't hesitate to say that Sev would doubtless have
forgotten everything anyway. That a damn peculiar remark to make to someone
who should have been notable for never forgetting _anything_.

-Roy

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From: mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 05:28:11 +0000

Wrote Nutria:

" Wolfe worked over the New Sun books FOUR times before initial 
publication."

Does anyone know if any of these earlier drafts still exist and/or if Mr. 
Wolfe has designated a final repository for his works yet? Knowing our luck 
he's probably destroyed them, but just think what a close analysis of this 
putative quartet might reveal.

Also, while I'm temporarily delurking, would like to recommend Wolfe's "From 
the Cradle," in the latest Year's Best Fantasy edited by David Hartwell. 
It's the tale of another brown book, with three embedded stories a la PEACE, 
and many of you will surely enjoy it.

msg (enhances only food, not memory)

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From: LJ Janowski <eforlesen at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:14:27 +0000

Chris wrote:

From: "Chris"
Subject: Re: (urth) Sev's not-so-perfect memory
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 00:09:06 +0000

LJ writes:

I tend to side with Chris (and the several others who were pursuing similar 
arguments), I simply cannot believe that several of the conflicting points 
would be Wolfe's mistakes.  For instance, the "like glass grow"/"like grass 
grow" dissimilarity between Sev's charm in BOTNS and UOTNS was so striking I 
caught it while reading the first time through.  And given that Wolfe has 
stressed in several interviews that he finds it shocking when he readers 
expect narrators *not* to lie, it seems that the tension between Sev's 
claims to flawless memory and his actual capabilities has to be deliberate.  
As several excellent posts have pointed out, there are several areas where, 
even if Sev's memory is near flawless (his narration is highly detailed and 
he seems too unimaginative to completely fabricate things whole cloth), he 
becomes muddled and contradicts himself.  I like the theory that the 
contradiction results at least partially from outside manipulation of Sev's 
timeline and would argue that another of Severian's claims also supports the 
idea.

With all the insistence on Sev's claims to perfect memory, the discussion 
has not touched upon another Sev's insistence that he is at least partially 
insane.  To my mind, Sev's belief in his own insanity reflects his 
occasional lapses into fugue and the events at the end of BOTSS (too 
unbelievable for him to write down), but also support the many timelines 
interpretation (i.e. the ambiguity of Sev's memory sometimes results from 
accurate memory of events that temporal manipulation has rendered 
ambiguous).  Sev suspects his insanity because his memory, ordinarily 
powerful, fails him at several critical junctures.  The claims of perfect 
memory and partial insanity allow Sev to have his cake and eat it too.  He 
can rationalize the flaws in his acute memorty to himself by using his 
partial insanity to explain experiences that are muddled in his mind.

--