Appearances of Inire

Ryan Dunn · 28 Jun 2010, 20:35 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: ryan at liftingfaces.com (Ryan Dunn)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:35:42 -0400
Subject: (urth) Appearances of Inire
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Message-ID: <61E50C31-27CD-484F-8480-645329555113 at liftingfaces.com>

On Jun 28, 2010, at 4:28 PM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:

> Why limit Inire to male characters? If he can be a fraking robot (Ossipago)
> and monkey his way up Agia's family tree (which, according to some, makes
> him related to Severian), and be both dead characters (Boatman, Maxellindis'
> uncle) and living ones, a change of gender is no obstacle. And since
> Severian only screws his relatives, by logical extension "All You Zombies"
> is us and we are Inire, but we are not alone.

I wouldn't count any of this theorizing as a conspiracy theory, if that is what you're implying here.

The idea of a boy in a bubble is very plausible, and could be the context for this entire story. How many side-stories involving plays, puppets or other theatrics are here in the text to serve as beacons?

Father Inire clearly described as monkeylike...

"More fantastic still were the tales of his vizier, the famous Father Inire, who looked like a monkey and was the oldest man in the world."
(SotT)

An old, monkeylike man pointing Severian on his way...

"When I admitted I did not, he scrambled down from the ladder like an aged monkey, seeming all arms and legs and wrinkled neck; his hands were as long as my feet, the crooked fingers laced with blue veins."
(SotT)

A painting of a painter who looks monkeylike, with red-hair...

"He was the worst of us all, that Fechin. A tall, wild boy with red hair on his hands, on his arms. Like a monkey's arms, so that if you saw them reaching around the corner to take something, you'd think, except for the size, that it was a monkey taking it."
(SotL)

Oh, and here's a red-bearded monkey spying on Severian, because why not? We never see Inire with his socks off, after all...

"Birds unknown to me called overhead, and once a monkey who might, save for his four hands, have been a wizened, red-bearded man in fur, spied on me from a fork as high as a spire."
(CotC)

Those are just a few I pulled. The crissing and crossing of things in the book is impossible to ignore, however over the top it may seem. No?

...ryan
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