Subject: (whorl) Re: The OutSever

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 1997 19:41:00 +0000

[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Reply:  Item #1627691 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#

While I myself don't much believe that Severian the Great (or more
properly, Severian the Sleeper of Ushas) is the Outsider, I admit that
the clues and cues appeared to me independently.  Since alga is
outnumbered (here comes Keith--he should have more ammo for her side)
I'll put in one chip to try and help her out.

One of the first arguments I could see to push Severian out of the
picture would be the time frame--NIGHTSIDE was taking place 300 or so
years after Monarch Typhon's time, 700 years before Severian's birth.
 Even taking into consideration Severian's time travel in URTH, still
it seems that Severian would have to have solid time/space
coordinates to intervene.  But this timeline is challenged by the
revelation that the voices of the gods have been dead for over a
thousand years--now suddenly the books of Long and New Sun are
happening at roughly the same time.  Not much, but there it is.

Keith's interesting idea that the criminal on the scaffold is one of
Severian's clients.  In CLAW (ch. 2) recall Barnoch, the Vodalarii
spy who was entombed within his own house for so long, then drawn out
to be executed--we do not see his execution, yet with Keith's notion in
mind, the whole set up =does= have elements we normally associate
with the Crucifixion: one of three executions (Morwenna, the cattle
thief, and Barnoch); the criminal most reviled, called a
traitor/seditionist; a three day event; emergence from a tomb (Barnoch
entombed prior to execution, but still) . . . again, we don't see the
deed done (in fact, in fresh hindsight it seems that if Barnoch is executed
at all it isn't by Severian's hand--so there's a new mystery right there)
but the idea that Barnoch's mother and a few friends are witnesses makes
perfect sense, Saltus being the village where Barnoch presumably grew
up.

=mantis=