Shadowy reflections on an amazing article

Jerry Friedman · 17 Apr 2002, 22:10 · from urth-v0204.mbox · original

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From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Shadowy reflections on an amazing article
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 15:10:50 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <urth-v0204-651 at digest.urth.net>
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--- Nigel Price <nigel.a.price at virgin.net> wrote:
> (Well, I've finally read through all those Urth lists that you posted
> while
> I was away. I didn't know what "geritol" was, but was surprised to read
> of
> Marc's apparent surprise that someone only in their mid-forties could
> already be pontificating, patronising and dull.

(For me it was the white hair.)
> Read on, Marc, read on! And
> then there was Nick Gever's splendid article on Wolfe in the Washington
> Post.
...

I too was really impressed.

> Ignoring for the moment that other great maze in Wolfe's writing,
> namely the labyrinth encountered by the Student ("Theseus" because of
> his "thesis"!)

There's one I never thought of.

> in his search for the navicaput, as told in an inset tale in
> TBotNS, what should we make of the movement of the shadows in "A Solar
> Labyrinth"? (Come to think of it, don't the channels in the maritime
> maze
> threaded by the Student also move and change about? They do! They do!)
>=20
> It has often seemed to me that while Wolfe does on occasion invest
> certain
> characters and events with quite specific symbolism, the identification
> is
> usually fleeting and evanescent. Severian in some sense takes on the
> role of
> Christ when he resists Typhon's three-fold temptations, but as the
> author
> has insisted elsewhere, Severian is not Jesus, for all that he may be a
> pilgrim making a long and difficult journey towards God.
...

An excellent point.  Or maybe Severian had a Christ-like incident
happen to him.
...

> "Planet Urth is Blue
> And there's nothing that I can do..."
> 	(David Bowie comes out in support of Marc)

LOL!  So I forgive you for sticking the tune in my head.

Jerry Friedman

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