Sev's name

Alice Turner · 15 Oct 1998, 08:49 · from urth-v0020.mbox · original

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From: "Alice Turner" <al at interport.net>
Subject: (urth) Sev's name
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 08:49:50
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=46rom mantis

>The intended point of my post, which I hesitate to belabor in sightof your
>evident happiness, was to say, well yes, "Severian" is in theOED, but
>how much can you do with the information given there?

Oh, it does make me happy. What can I do with it? Hmm. Well, the first thing
I can say with confidence is that is that, in a long book where virtually
100 percent of the human characters are named after either Christian saints
or Roman pagans, to name the hero after a heretic, or indeed an entire sect
of heretics, adds a note of playful cynicism. Wolfe has said (to Ratty, as I
recall), Well, I am a Christian Catholic, but not the sort you think. (I
paraphrase.) Well, yeah!! Dr. Talos's play, which is written along
Manicheaen lines, might merit another reading with Sev's name in mind.

Simple reading: I am now going to write a sort of Christian fable, a Rapture
and Rebirth imagining  retold as sword-and-sorcery adventure with some Torah
and pagan mythology tossed in; obviously this is not scripture, so I will
make it clear that I am writing heresy. Of a sort.

-alga-

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