{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4097",
    "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": 4097,
    "subject": "narrative errors and time displacement",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-07-16T04:39:21+00:00",
    "last": "2003-07-16T04:39:21+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0307-3687@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2003-07-16T04:39:21+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) narrative errors and time displacement",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Andrew points out that Triskele must have been around for more than a week if \nthe time between Dorp and Silk's two visits are contiguous in time.  Of course \nyou know my position: this isn't an error at all, but further proof that Silk \ncan travel through time (I also argue that him showing up in Inclito's mother \nstory with Oreb is another example of this time travel, but that's neither \nhere nor there right now)\n\nEveryone seems to have latched onto these small errors in memory, and I agree \nthat it makes sense if Severian is trying to reconcile multiple memories \n(after all, the only reason I can think of that he spares Agia is because he \nalready knows that she will save him from Vodalus) from interference in his \ntime line.  However, these \"errors\" are as nothing compared to some of the \nmost famous works of all time: in Anna Karenina, the text follows two \ndifferent couples - for one couple, one less year passes than for the other \ncouple during their period of separation, so that in a true master stroke of \nrelativity Tolstoy omitted a year.  Dostoevsky is famous for having changing \nbuildings: was that two stories or four in the police station?  Proust has \nTHREE major characters die and then show up at the same party that confronts \ntheir death (of course, the party lasts for hundreds of pages ... ), including \nthe influential Bergotte and the very important Dr. Cottard.  Did he forget \nthat he killed these major characters off?  No author is perfect; my only \nproblem with these errors in Book of the New Sun is that they are not \negregious enough by themselves to point to anything.  If characters were dying \nand coming back to life like in Proust, there would certainly be more to work \nwith ... And isn't Gravity's Rainbow is one huge seething mess of mutually \nexclusive events, but that's because Pynchon must have been stoned out of his \nmind when he wrote it ... and a bit of an ass, eh? (And do I really need to \nread a 900 page book to tell me that everything is relative and that I can't \ntrust what I hear?  Thanks, but no thanks!)\n\n\nMarc Aramini"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}