{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1347", "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": "whorl", "thread": { "id": 1347, "subject": "The Ending; Some Spoilers for _Engine Summer_", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-04-12T14:10:05+00:00", "last": "2001-04-18T13:25:17+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Lebling", "address": "dlebling at ucentric.com" }, "date": "2001-04-12T14:10:05+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) The Ending; Some Spoilers for _Engine Summer_", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: Adam Stephanides \n[Re: Merryn] But we did, I think. Jahlee says she doesn't know who the\nboy [Severian]\nis, and Merryn says \"'He's my brother. We're brothers and sisters, we\nwitches and the torturers.'\" (267) There's a bit of ambiguity here, as\nher\nwords could be interpreted as meaning only that all torturers are\n\"brothers\"\nto all witches; but if that's what she means, her answer is rather\nunhelpful." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Wolfe is kind enough to preserve some ambiguity here. The obvious reading is\nthat their guilds are brother and sister guilds. You may read it otherwise\nif you choose, but don't think Wolfe is going to open his kimono on this\nissue at this late date. He's fluttering his fan at you here.\n\nOne of the things about _Engine Summer_ (referenced later in the Digest)\nthat makes it a minor masterpiece (a Faberge egg, perhaps?) is that we will\nnever and can never know what happened to Rush That Speaks after the story\nends. This is, of course, true of every stand-alone novel or story, and\nCrowley builds that into Rush's tale in a way that is truly poignant, since\nRush is both the teller and the subject of the tale. The horror of Asimov's\nSyndrome is that it means we ultimately find out about the rest of Rush's\nlife, or Severian's, or Hari Seldon's, in a way that tends to trivialize our\nprevious experience of the characters and the milieu." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Huh? The scene with Silk and Remora is the only scene that follows the\nwedding attack, except for the three-page Afterword." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, maybe I should have said is \"once the wedding attack theme is\nintroduced,\" which happens somewhat earlier. My memory of exactly where all\nthese events happen is a little foggy, but frankly, the whole Dorp sequence\nthrough to the ending didn't do much for me. The climaxes happen offstage\nand are too like the climaxes of the previous volumes (yawn, Silk overthrows\nanother bad government; oops, he does it again; yawn, Silk defeats his\nenemies by a clever trick; etc.) The \"dutch\" sentence structure was a bit\nmuch, too. I found it far more off-putting than the pseudo-Scots that Pig\nspeaks.\n\nI don't want to be too negative. This was a series that I enjoyed and have\nand will again reread. It could certainly have been outstandingly worse. At\nleast Severian didn't turn out to be the Outsider, or (pace Mr. Borski) Silk\nan inhumu, or Green St. Anne, or any of the other horrors that have been\nproposed on this list.\n\n Dave Lebling\n aka vizcacha\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "matthew.malthouse", "address": "matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk" }, "date": "2001-04-18T13:25:17+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) The Ending; Some Spoilers for _Engine Summer_", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On 12/04/2001 19:10:05 David Lebling wrote:\nFrom: Adam Stephanides \n[Re: Merryn] But we did, I think. Jahlee says she doesn't know who the\nboy [Severian]\nis, and Merryn says \"'He's my brother. We're brothers and sisters, we\nwitches and the torturers.'\" (267) There's a bit of ambiguity here, as\nher\nwords could be interpreted as meaning only that all torturers are\n\"brothers\"\nto all witches; but if that's what she means, her answer is rather\nunhelpful." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Wolfe is kind enough to preserve some ambiguity here. The obvious reading is\nthat their guilds are brother and sister guilds. You may read it otherwise\nif you choose, but don't think Wolfe is going to open his kimono on this\nissue at this late date. He's fluttering his fan at you here." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Another 'I can't quite remember' I'm afraid but is it not said early on that the\nboy children of condemned prisoners who could stand under a certain bar were\ntaken into the torturers guid and the girl children given to the witches? The\nambiguity remains but with the possibility that Merryn and Sev could be\nbiological brother and sister although if so they should not be aware of it.\n\nMatthew - catching up, being 1/2 way through RttW\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }