Who's Right

Gerry Quinn · 03 Dec 2010, 20:07 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2010 20:07:19 -0000
Subject: (urth) Who's Right
References: <SNT123-W3FD773CA84F6E35FA5BDBCF280 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <3ABE16A40B1B495F9B91F48E2ACB322E@jill>

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>
>>Ryan Dunn- My perception of the BotNS, in my readings, leads me more down 
>>the "we're watching you,"
>>premise, where others may not feel that is as central to the story.
>
> I'm with you on that Ryan. My Father Inire ideas can be rendered silly by 
> focusing on the ephemera
> like monkeys and hair color and ignoring the central theme which is that 
> Severian is being watched and
> steered. It is a common debator's trick.

And if I question theories in which two and two do not make four, I suppose 
it is only because I am a mathematician.

I mentioned monkeys, but I also pointed out what I consider to be the flaw 
in your five main reasons for believing in the Inire theory.

> Many of the episodes to which Severian seems steered towards can be
> interpreted as for the purpose of observing
> him in action: Dorcas at the lake, avern duel, Little Severian, Typhon,
> Miles, Leech etc. Leaving Urth then
> returning, the action resumes with Ceryx and Zama.

On the other hand, isn't something of the sort intrinsic to the structure of 
*any* novel featuring a main character?  [Wolfe has even written a short 
story 'The Last Thrilling Wonder Story' in which the main character is the 
plaything of his demigod-like Author.  The True God, or at least his faith, 
sets him free.]

- Gerry Quinn

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net