{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1450",
    "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": 1450,
    "subject": "Textual criticism of TBOTSS; disturbing thought",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-06-18T20:29:48+00:00",
    "last": "2001-06-18T20:29:48+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0853@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-06-18T20:29:48+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (whorl) Textual criticism of TBOTSS; disturbing thought",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "on 6/15/01 2:21 PM, Adam Stephanides at adamsteph at earthlink.net wrote:\nThe components are:\n\n2.  The third-person \"Horn\" sections written by the editors."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "2 is a narrative based on a\ncombination, in unknown proportions, of a participant's testimony,\nimperfectly recollected by its hearers (there is no indication that Horn's\nrecollections were transcribed at the time he spoke them) and conjecture by\nthe editors."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I missed something here: the third-person account of \"Horn's\" final meeting\nwith Remora is based not on \"Horn's\" recollections but on Remora's\ntestimony.  This raises a tough question.  The passage on pages 406 and 407,\nfrom \"His hands were still now\" up to \"Returning with a worn volume\" -- what\nis the source for this?  Remora is absent for nearly all this passage; he\nonly \"caught the last few words.\"  The source is not Silk, since \"Following\nthat interview, he was seen only by Daisy\" (410) and Daisy's account of this\nmeeting says nothing about this. (*)  The only other witness to this passage\nis Oreb, and he is surely not the source.  So what are the possibilities?  I\nsee only three.\n\n1)  After the portion of the interview we are given, Silk told Remora of\n\"Horn's\" last conversation.  But it's hard to see why he would have done\nthis.\n\n2)  There was an eavesdropper, not mentioned in either the text of the\nchapter or the epilogue--a hypothesis of desperation.\n\n3)  Most likely: this entire moving passage is the editors' invention.  Horn\nsaid something to Oreb, ending with the words \"When at last I was given the\nchance to actually do something for him, I failed\" or something similar, but\nwe know nothing else.\n\nNot only is this a moving passage, but it contains important indications of\n\"Horn's\" state of mind which are not duplicated elsewhere, as far as I know.\nIt also contains the information that the Greater Scylla \"taught me how to\ncommunicate with her sister here,\" (407) from which several deductions have\nbeen drawn.  I don't even see another source for Horn's asking the Greater\nScylla how to find Seawrack (Juganu tells Hoof that Horn made a bargain with\nthe Greater Scylla, but doesn't say what Scylla's side of the bargain was).\nIf the above paragraphs are correct, and if Wolfe has not simply blundered,\nthen all this is useless in terms of finding out \"what really happened.\"\n\nFurthermore, if the editors would invent such crucial information, how much\nof what is contained in the passages based on Horn's recollection can be\nrelied upon?  Can any of it be?  These are radical conclusions, and I'm not\npleased with them.  But I don't see offhand how to escape them.\n\nSo it appears that the third-person sections are neither an omniscient\nnarrator's reliable account (as the reader who has not yet read the\nAfterword is likely to assume) nor an attempt by the editors to \"flesh out\"\nHorn's oral recollections, in the manner of non-fiction books such as Bob\nWoodward's in which conversations are \"reconstructed\" (as I had assumed);\nbut a combination of the latter with totally fictional material, in the\nmanner of, say, _The Killer Angels_, a novel based upon the Battle of\nGettysburg, which uses real historical figures such as Lee and Longstreet,\nand has them doing things they really did, but also attributes to them\nconversations which there is no evidence ever took place.  So mantis's\ndesignation of these sections as fan fiction, which I had rejected before,\nis at least partly correct.\n\nSince the question \"what difference does it make?\" has just been raised\nagain in reference to Horn's authorship of TBOTLS, I'll add that in this\ncase I think it makes a lot of difference.  In TBOTLS, Horn's Silk was the\nonly Silk we had.  But in TBOTSS, we need to know whether conclusions we\ndraw regarding the \"Horn\" seen in the third-person sections of the book can\nbe applied to the \"Horn\" seen in the first-person sections (other than as\nevidence of how the editors viewed the \"Horn.\") (**)\n\nRereading the book's ending with these considerations in mind brings up\nanother point upon which I have to backtrack, at least partly.  The giveway\nwords at the end of chapter 30--\"Silk nodded.\"--were \"really\" written by the\neditors.  And since in the Afterword they avoid repeating this\nidentification, it's not evident what they meant: that Narr has always been\nSilk (as opposed to Horn or Silkhorn) since the \"transference\" to the new\nbody?  That Narr was Silk at the end of chapter 30, and will remain Silk?\nThat Narr was Silk at that moment, but not necessarily in the future--i. e.\nthat it is Silk's \"personality\" speaking, but that Horn's personality\nremains?  I still think the best interpretation is that Horn's personality,\nthough not his memories, are gone by this point; but I have to admit the\nissue isn't as clear-cut as I thought it was.\n\n--Adam\n\n(*) Daisy's narration ends \"And he: 'To the stars.'  Soon after I left\nthem...\".  This allows a temporal gap during which Silk could theoretically\nhave told Daisy of the conversation.  But in the first place, why should he\nhave?  At this point Daisy is only a \"friend and fellow student\" of Hoof's,\nand has no connection with \"Horn's\" manuscripts.  He might conceivably tell\nDaisy that \"Horn's\" last words were that he loved his sons, but there is no\nreason for him to tell her the rest of the conversation.  In the second\nplace, if Silk, through Daisy, were another source for the editors' account,\nwhy would they not mention it in the Afterword, where they discuss the\nsources for the third-person passages?\n\n(**) I would argue that the character seen in the first-person sections\nwritten by the editors is in fact the same as the character seen in the\nfirst-person sections written by the Narrator, and different from the\ncharacter seen in the third-person sections; but I'm not going to go into\nthat now.\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}