Drotte-Roche mixup

António Marques · 17 Apr 2011, 23:28 · from 2011-April.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 00:28:04 +0100
Subject: (urth) Drotte-Roche mixup
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David Stockhoff wrote:
> Wolfe as a writer has been working against the kind of analysis that
> allows for authorial error in the case of obvious discrepancies that
> have no possible meaning consistent with the rest of the work? That,
> i.e., authors are infallible?

I wasn't even commenting on that, rather on your 'the chapter might have 
been insufficiently rewritten' bit. Wolfe has been working against the 
kind of analysis that wants art to be shaped according to certain 
parametres. The chapter is what it is; barring some strong evidence to 
the contrary, it is just how the author intended it to be.

I'm talking about critics who go on about how a particular work should 
have more of this or less of that based on what they think would be more 
didactical to the target audience. Do they think when the author reads 
their critic, he'll slap his forrid like 'Damn, if only I'd though of 
that!'? Certainly it's a rare work of art that its author will think is 
perfect; but if there should have been anything different - and most of 
the time there isn't any identifiable thing - it's seldom if ever what 
such critiques suggest.

Certainly I think the Book of the Long Sun has 135% the length it should 
have, but I wouldn't know how to correct that. 'Editing' isn't an 
answer, unless it means returning the manuscript with the single 
recommendation of 'shorten it' until the author could find out how to do 
it himself.

> Or was Drotte momentarily Roche, or Roche Drotte?
>
> Is Severian to be seen, on the basis of one passage, as a clumsy
> bumbling oaf who can't remember anything? Does it mean that he really
> doesn't have a good memory at all but that he pretends and makes things
> up and isn't even very good at it, except that 100% of the rest of the
> time he's extremely good at it?

No, he isn't. His memory is convincingly good in what regards 
recollecting even minor events, but can be faulty when it comes to the 
details of those events (usually the unimportant ones, but who knows).

> Hey, maybe he made up the whole
> acid-trip to Yesod.
>
> It's not OUR theory that would make analysis of BOTNS impossible---it's
> yours. It's certainly possible that we could discover "errors" that are
> explained by Thecla's or some other's presence in his brain, but this is
> not one of them. YOU are going to have to convince US, Antonio.

I am going to have to convince YOU in order for ME to remain convinced 
of what I am convinced??

> Or maybe we could agree that GW the translator screwed up, but Wolfe can
> commit no error.

You seem hung up on the idea that the opposition to the idea that this 
is a mistake entails the belief that GW the real person doesn't make 
mistakes. I'm yet to see where you got that idea from.

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