Close Reading: Torturer Chapter I

b sharp · 06 Sep 2006, 12:48 · from 2006-September.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: bsharporflat at hotmail.com (b sharp)
Date: Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:48:33 -0400
Subject: (urth) Close Reading: Torturer Chapter I
Message-ID: <BAY103-F269B8F8E2F45823AFA3A77D7310 at phx.gbl>

Plaudits to JWillard for starting this thread. It appears that attacking 
BotNS chapter by chapter may expose a lot of things previously hidden in the 
cracks.  For example,

Roy says: (snip)
>there is a mistake in NEW SUN involving this exchange. Vodalus definitely 
>gave the pistol to >Hildegrin. But later, Sev recalls the scene and has 
>Vodalus giving it to Thea. The mistake is >repeated in the appendix to 
>CITADEL, so the mistake is probably Wolfe's.  There is another >mistake on 
>the second page, pointed out years ago by someone else (can't remember 
>who), >concerning whether it was Roche or Drotte who said the approaching 
>volunteers were carrying >pikes. That mistake may or may not be Sev's.

I didn't mention these two mistakes as I thought it was accepted Urth dogma 
that they were Sev's mistakes not Wolfe's, and that they are purposeful in 
establishing, within the first pages, Severian as an unreliable narrator.  
Since Wolfe is "translating" Severian's words I can't see a repeat of a 
mistake in an appendix as proof positive of auctorial error.  If anything it 
seems like the appendix mistake would be Wolfe's way of calling extra 
attention to a Sev error.

I think it is recognition of this unreliabiity which allows us to spot other 
mistakes, like the east/west switch that allows us to firmly establish this 
is the South American continent. Allows us to spot other Sev mistakes such 
as confusing wife/husband with sister/brother, old man with old woman, not 
noticing the identicality of weapons, characters etc.; mistakes which really 
impact the story.  But I guess it isn't dogma afterall.

Roy posted:
>Sev admired Vodalus for his bravado, for disdaining the pistol, and for 
>standing alone against three >armed men. "Yet something touched me. Perhaps 
>it was Vodalus's willingness to die to protect >her that made the woman 
>seem precious to me; certainly it was that willingness that kindled my 
> >admiration for him." But when Sev was put to the test, he wasn't willing 
>to die to
>protect *his* beloved, Thea's sister, Thecla. He even helped torture her.

This admiration of the hereditary elite, despite their obvious flaws, is a 
continuing theme.  Elsewhere Wolfe notes that the exultants are braver than 
common folk and much more prone to extreme violence when needed.  In Urth, 
Thecla is praised for being willing to defend, with her life, someone 
dependent on her.  Well, we know Wolfe is no Marxist, ;-).

Roy says:
>Apparently, Drotte had done to Sev what Sev would later do to Eata when Sev 
>became captain.

Yes, seems like standard procedure; perhaps Drotte would have done it first 
to Roche, to establish him as his "second".  And the morning after Severian 
is elevated to journeyman, we see the new captain of apprentices:

>(the boy Eata, not quite so small now, with a puffed lip and the gleam of 
>triumph in his eye).

-bsharp

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net