Borges and Vance

Michael Straight · 28 Oct 1999, 09:13 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Subject: RE: (urth) Borges and Vance
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 09:13:46
Message-ID: <urth-v0028-0304 at digest.urth.net>
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On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Jim Henley wrote:

> > What I'm thinking of is that both narrators have a tendency to report
> > extraordinary events in an almost casual way sometimes neglecting to go
> > into detail about what we would consider the most interesting or unusual
> > aspect of events.
>=20
> Ah, but so much of the time, Latro has no standard by which to tell the
> events are unusual, is the impression I get. He describes meeting, say, t=
he
> river god casually because for all he knows this sort of thing happens all
> the time.

Well sure, I didn't mean to malign Latro and say that he personally was
cool and distanced, it's his narrative style I was talking about.

You could make a similar argument that it's Severian's perfect memory
rather than his actual temperment that creates that effect in his
narrative.

-Rostrum


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