The Two Katherines

Lee Berman · 17 Aug 2010, 00:56 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:56:38 -0400
Subject: (urth) The Two Katherines
Message-ID: <SNT123-W347183EAE5E4D4E76ADD61CF9C0 at phx.gbl>

>Dave Tallman- 1) My theory is about what happened at Severian's graduation specifically.
>What normally happened was probably much more like the trick Severian was
>expecting.

Thank you Dave! You are so much better at presenting your theory than I am. Now I know where
people were getting that ideal of a resurrection happening. Since there are identical khaibits
waiting in the wings, I don't find a resurrection necessary, but it isn't out of the question. 
Either way I don't find it changes the theory much.

>12) Severian's own account contradicts himself from one sentence to the
>next. First he says it was all a trick, but later he says "I beheaded her."
>So it's not a matter of just believing the plain text -- one has to choose
>what to believe.

I have made this point in regard to a few other issues recently. There are some who latch onto
one viewpoint based on one section of "the text" making them blind to Wolfe's contradictory 
statements also in the text.

Before I started posting on this board, I did my best to peruse through the seven years or more 
of previous Moonmilk/Urth Archives. Now that would be an almost impossible painful task.  I think 
it would be about 13 years worth of even more densely packed stuff (and more nonsense).

But reading those old archive gave me a sense that maybe some puzzles have easier or more sure 
solutions than others. And I'll just spitball in saying that the puzzles with a 90+% plausibility
were all discussed and "solved" in the first five years. The 80%, 70% and maybe even 60% plausibility
solutions were all hashed out endlessly in the next seven years. 

So what we have left to discuss are going to be much more difficult things to "prove" convincingly.
That's just how it is. Those who would shout down all new ideas are essentially saying "shut up. you
are only allowed to discuss the topics from earlier years". Such history in nice, in a way but
is that really all this board is about?

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