The Ziggurat

Nicholas Gevers · 30 Jan 2000, 21:39 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Nicholas=20Gevers?= <vermoulian at yahoo.com>
Subject: (urth) The Ziggurat
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 21:39:36
Message-ID: <urth-v0028-0760 at digest.urth.net>
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Entering the very intriguing debate on "The Ziggurat":
after having read the novella inconclusively back in
1996, I reread it in the context of STRANGE TRAVELERS,
partly because I was preparing to review the
collection and was interested in seeing it as an
anthology unified by theme. The conclusion I came to
was similar to the one I reached some time ago about
LONG SUN (see my article "Five Steps Towards Briah" in
NOVA EXPRESS): that is, that ST as a whole is about
the horrors of the present world and about generally
vain attempts to escape or palliate them. The stories
in ST were written in a defined period; they have a
common tone; in this context, then, "The Ziggurat" is
one experiment of several in delineating how a
character can be led astray by hubris and the
idiosyncrasies of his own psyche, avoiding moral and
religious truth in favour of solipsism and fantasy.
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