I agree with Tom Urash when he says:
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I keep telling myself this isn't plausible - but, am I the only one getting a creepy feeling reading the above passage and remembering how Severian almost inevitably used the claw by holding it to the forehead?
I strongly concur, on both points! (a) it seems very implausible, and (b) the similarity is striking, to say the least. I read OBW in three days, and apparently not carefully enough, because until the quote Tom that refers to was cited in a previous message on this list, I'd forgotten (or never noticed) that this incident had even occurred. To me it seems very much in keeping with Wolfe's style to drop a hint like this in the midst of things. "Like this" here meaning painfully obvious only after somebody else has pointed out.
*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.