Severian's family tree

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 24 Aug 2006, 17:41 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 10:41:56 -0700
Subject: (urth) Severian's family tree
In-Reply-To: <20060824061956.86487.qmail at web32405.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <000e01c6c73d$7309ea80$a23ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>
	<20060824061956.86487.qmail at web32405.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <1f7617370608241041u1f7e99fexf7c0be709db6a2fa at mail.gmail.com>

Why do people keep referring to Severian's immediate predecessor
as Appian? Is there some reference I've missed? I thought Appian was
rather further back in the history of the Commonwealth, and that  Sev's
predecessor was (deliberately?) left unnamed.

--Dan'l

On 8/23/06, don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> --- "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > Severian, interrupting his narrative to directly
> > address the reader at the
> > time he was writing, wrote:
> >
> > "Ymar is dead, and such memories of his as lived for
> > a time in the blood of
> > his successors are long faded.
> >     "So mine in time shall fade too." (SHADOW,
> > chapter XVII)
>
> This assumes that Severian is a reliable narrator, but
> there have been serious signs that his identity is
> severely (no pun intended) compromised. I don't
> believe he knows which memories are his or whose they
> are either. And this is not grasping on my part; the
> easiest way for an author (Wolfe) to hide things is to
> have the narrator say things that he thinks are true
> but aren't and then belie them with what the reader
> observes. This happens constantly in SS and LS and I
> think it happens often in NS as well. IMO (flawed as
> it may well be) direct statements of belief by any of
> Wolfe's protagonists are completely unreliable.
> Besides, if Sev is like any of Wolfe's other multiple
> personality characters, there are certainly more than
> just Thecla and Appian in his head. But, I'm not
> saying that Sev's memories of his "childhoods in the
> citadel" are shared with Ymar, just that that's a more
> likely scenario than he and Thecla sharing such a
> memory. I actually think that your interpretation is
> the correct one, "childhoods" describing three
> separate places.
>
> argumentatively yours
>
> Don
>
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-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
"Shovels are essential to the fantasy genre.
However, they are primarily used by the authors rather than the
characters." -- Stephen R. Donaldson

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