Claw = Fang?

Bill Burgess · 23 Nov 2012, 07:04 · from 2012-November.txt.gz

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From: whburth at gmail.com (Bill Burgess)
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2012 23:04:42 -0800
Subject: (urth) Claw = Fang?
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We have to keep Wolfe's penchant for irony in mind as well.    Of course it
is too easy and pat, he tells us  with a wink and a nod,  because  he's
flat out giving us this one.    When he created the claw as part of the
narrative  he was thinking precisely of the eagle of Jove.

Of course when someone uses irony as much as Wolfe does,  it's always
debatable whether or not that is what he is doing.    When I re-read him,
 I always find more irony.    For example a few days ago I was reading
parts of Shadow  again and came to  Severian's  mention of how that  long
ago  women were members of the torturers guild as well but Ymar the Almost
Just noticed how cruel they were and how often they exceeded the proscribed
punishments  and  decreed that they could be members no more.   Immediately
I understood what I hadn't before,  that this was irony, and in fact we are
to understand not only that the opposite was true,  i.e. that women were
not cruel enough and were too lenient,  but that this traditional lie is
told so as to serve  multiple functions, one of which is to help keep the
brothers unattached to women.

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 8:51 PM, Bailey Swartz <bsswartz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hardly refuted, that is written in the context of a speculative scholar,
> just the same as how we speculate.
> On Nov 22, 2012 1:49 PM, "Jerry Friedman" <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>> From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
>> >
>> Very well thought out! If the thorn is the key to the meaning of the
>> Claw, and fangs do seem to occupy a space adjacent to thorns, they are
>> therefore a link to the Claw.
>> >
>> >It occurs to me that the Claw is not associated with any animal, even by
>> speculation. One thinks of a bird, especially a bird of prey, but this is
>> not supported at all.
>> ...
>>
>> In fact it's rejected.
>>
>> "(Because the Conciliator is given a Claw, one is tempted to make the
>> easy association of the eagle of Jove with the sun; it is perhaps too pat.)"
>>
>> CotC, Appendix
>>
>> Jerry Friedman
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