Severians Later Appearance (Spoilers)

Matthew Keeley · 12 Jan 2010, 19:12 · from 2010-January.txt.gz

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From: matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com (Matthew Keeley)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:12:08 -0500
Subject: (urth) Severians Later Appearance (Spoilers)
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Severian's a generally dishonest and unreliable narrator, but he does
tell SilkHorn that he won't ever tell of their meeting. As Sev
probably doesn't completely understand how much SilkHorn influenced
him, he feels no need to break the "promise" he made in his casual
statement. In New Sun, Sev acknowledges that he has broken many
promises, but that doesn't mean that he likes breaking them. I could
see him taking some satisfaction in not writing about SilkHorn.

And surely Severian encounters all kinds of fascinating things that he
doesn't tell us about. His life as autarch was doubtless fascinating,
but we don''t hear too many details about things he did as ruler, his
courtship of his wife, etc. Other things Severian just doesn't feel
like writing about, i.e. most of the executions and excruciations he's
paid to perform.

But yes, one does wish Sev had mentioned SilkHorn. Or that Wolfe had
translated a manuscript with curious gaps and missing pages.

-Matt

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