Severian as a student

Dave Tallman · 02 Jun 2008, 05:35 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:35:58 -0600
Subject: (urth) Severian as a student
Message-ID: <484386BE.5080200 at gmail.com>

Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> Again, what do you mean by "rewrite" and "second chance"? His original
> manuscript was written shortly before boarding the Ship and sent to Ultan.
> Whichever version Wolfe "translated", we have no means of comparing the Ship
> copy to the original. The events recounted in the manuscript were first
> written down ten years after Sev became autarch. There was no running
> account made over the years that he could redact at leisure. The copy seems
> to have been written out only days or weeks after completing the original
> manuscript.
>   
Perhaps I am making an unjustified assumption, but I thought it was a 
given that the copy made on the time-traveling Ship was the only copy 
that Wolfe could have obtained and "translated." If the copy given to 
Ultan is the version we are reading, then my point is not valid. 
Severian could consult all the resources available to an Autarch to 
write the first one. If this is the second manuscript, it's too good in 
the level of detail and style to be the work of a person with an 
ordinary memory attempting to re-create the book they just wrote.

Even though it was written soon after the other one, it still gave 
Severian a second chance to notice "Hey, what I wrote here is 
inconsistent with what I wrote there."  The fact that it was rewritten 
within a short time makes the inconsistencies even more strange. His 
memory has to play tricks on him not only about the events themselves, 
but in his memory of writing about them.

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