Subject: (whorl) Scylla and Wolfe's "side by side" style

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 18:43:51 +0000

Since someone mentioned Wolfe's foreshadowing of Scylla as Oreb again, I just 
wanted to point out that Wolfe always places two seemingly unrelated things 
together, side by side in the text, often dozens of times, without drawing 
explicit links. Kind of like how everytime a weird creature in The Book of the 
New Sun shows up hunting Severian, Hethor reappears immediately afterwards.  
Wolfe did the same thing throughout most of In Green's Jungles and Return to 
the Whorl.  Almost evertime the narrator dreams of Scylla or thinks of her, 
Oreb flaps in or makes a noise or draws attention to himself. I noticed this 
because I had read most of the spoilers for Green and Return to the Whorl on 
this list before I read them and decided to pay attention every time Scylla 
came up.  Much as most of the stories related in Peace involve ghosts and dead 
people, when strung together the parallel structure casts light on the primary 
narrative.  Anytime something is repeatedly mentioned side by side in Wolfe, I 
think it is intentional (and the most predictable aspect of his style).  He 
doesn't draw immediate connections but the placement in the text insinuates a 
whole lot.  Which leaves me curious as to the strange narrative jumps 
throughout the short sun books ... how connected is the narrative?  Can we 
determine what makes the narrator skip from topic to topic?

Another interesting thing I noticed, which I think is very very strange, is 
that the narrator does not directly narrate anything that happened to his 
present body before the incidental beginning of narration in On Blue's Waters.
 In other words, everything the narrator remembers did not happen to his body.
 When he gets to his present body, the editors tell the story.  If we accept 
that Silk is  the narrator, he only narrates what he was not present to 
experience (except for his "present" journey from being Rajan to arriving at 
Horn's home, during which time he was actively composing his manuscript).  
There's just something weird and deliberate about what he narrates in detail.

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