Buy! Analogy!

Adam Thornton · 19 Feb 2011, 19:07 · from 2011-February.txt.gz

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From: adam at io.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 13:07:25 -0600
Subject: (urth) Buy!  Analogy!
Message-ID: <A50801E0-A986-4A7E-93BF-3736D6CB1C16 at io.com>

So, and I want to preface this by stating that I am NOT on mushrooms, we've often been able to find promising lines of inquiry into Wolfe's work by looking at what books HE likes and then finding their echoes in the things we're studying.

Recently we've been (or at least I've been) thinking a lot about Borges in the context of Ultan, the books of _BotNS_, etc.

But this morning it occurred to me that there might be an elephant in the room we're missing.

Is there any way to stretch a consistent analogy to _BotNS_ from....

wait for it....

_The Wizard of Oz_ ?

We have Severian as Dorothy, obviously, and Triskele as a present-only-in-spirit Toto.  Jonas is certainly the Tin Woodsman.  Baldanders might be the Cowardly Lion and Talos the Scarecrow (that doesn't seem to work, quite).  The Wizard: the Autarch or Inire?  I can't decide.  Don't forget that "Oz" stands for "Oscar Zoroaster."  The Agia/Agilus twins as the WIcked WItches, East and West?  Or is Vodalus the W.W.W. ?  Hmmm.  This is getting less convincing, isn't it?  Time to change the subject:

The Silver (Ruby if you're playing along on the Technicolor version) Slippers?  The ones whose power, it turns out, was inside Dorothy the whole time?  Does this sound like any well-known artifact in the books?

Yeah, this probably doesn't work.

Adam

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