Who's right?

Andrew Mason · 03 Dec 2010, 22:01 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2010 22:01:11 +0000
Subject: (urth) Who's right?
Message-ID: <AANLkTim7ApvAAHT1qHxPX0cb3XYdp4Mw=Uf0Rxub1NbR at mail.gmail.com>

Lee Berman wrote:

>
> No. Most novels do not have characters who stop mid-sentence and correct themselves in a manner suggesting they have
> forgotten their scripted lines, as Paleamon and Rudesind do. This, Severian's unreliability as a narrator and
> and other auctorial tricks suggest there are multiple levels of reader deception at work here to be unraveled.

Rudesind is a special case. Shortly after fluffing his lines he _says_
he was told to say them. There isn't a mystery there as far as I can
see.

I don't recall any passage where Palaemon seems to be forgetting
scripted lines. There's a bit where he forgets a _fact_  - that Thrax
is in the north - and then corrects himself. I think it's easy enough
to see why - his own exile was in the south.

I'm a bit at a loss here because I've come in at the end of an
argument. Can you tell me briefly what the Inire theory is? It seems
to me _obvious_ that Inire is keeping an eye on Severian and guiding
him - see Rudesind above. So is the Autarch - he explains this near
the end, including how he was alerted to Severian's significance by
the aquastor Paeon, and that he has a spy among the torturers - which
could be Palaemon, though I'm inclined to suspect Roche.  I take it
the two are in cahoots, since Rudesind - Inire's servant - directs
Severian to the room where he meets the Autarch. None of this is a
secret. But I take it your theory goes further than this.
>

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