{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/839",
    "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": 839,
    "subject": "Book and Urth",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-06-20T13:52:32+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-20T13:52:32+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0014-0064@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "adam louis stephanides",
        "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-20T13:52:32+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Book and Urth",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Fri, 19 Jun 1998 I wrote:\nSpectacled Bear wrote:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "You took the words right out of my mouth! It seems to me that any\npuzzles in BotNS ought to have answers in BotNS, subject only to\nmodification by things we find out later in UotNS."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "OTOH, _Urth_ is evidence of Wolfe's intentions in writing BotNS, just as\ninterviews with Wolfe are (although neither of these sources are\ninfallible).  So if we allow the interviews as evidence, as we usually do\non this list, we should allow _Urth_ as evidence also, even if we're only\ninterested in BotNS."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I neglected to say that I basically do agree that the answers to\ninterpretative questions about a work of fiction should ideally be\ndeducible from that work itself. Thus I prefer evidence from the novels to\nevidence from interviews, and in interpreting BotNS I would prefer\nevidence from BotNS to evidence from _Urth_."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "This raises an interesting philosophical (and very Borgesian) question:\ncan the meaning of BotNS by itself be different from the meaning of BotNS\nas part of the five-volume \"Fictions of the New Sun\" (Peter Wright's\nuseful term, IIRC) including _Urth_?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I was thinking more about the relationship between BotNS and _Urth_, and\ncame to the conclusion that this problem is not as serious as it might be,\nbecause BotNS and _Urth_ are basically complementary.  What I mean by this\nis that, IMO, the essential \"matter\" of BotNS is Severian's personality,\nas revealed both by the tale he tells and by the way he tells it; the\nsetting of Urth and Briah-Yesod, while of great interest, is essentially\nbackground material.  Thus, while _Urth_ may contain information about the\nNew Sun cosmos which contradicts the best inferences we could have drawn\nfrom BotNS, this doesn't change the basic meaning of BotNS.  Conversely,\n_Urth_ is essentially about this cosmos, and doesn't tell us much that's\nnew about Severian's personality (which may be one reason why some people\nfind it a disappointment).\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}