Sev's not-so-perfect memory

matthew.malthouse · 14 Jul 2003, 07:09 · from urth-v0307.mbox · original

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From: matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk
Subject: Re: (urth) Sev's not-so-perfect memory
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 08:09:34 +0100
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On 13/07/2003 08:31:14 Andrew Bollen wrote:

>Josh says:
>
>> In a fifteen hundred page book?
>>
>> Without a computer?
>>
>> No one, as far as I know, is arguing that Gene Wolfe has a perfect
>> memory.
>
>FWIW, I agree with Josh. Roy's list of errors are easily explained as=20
Wolfe
>nodding, IMO. Go through any series of large books by anybody, and you'll
>probably find the same. I'm reading Trollope at the moment - a similar
>effort for his body of work would probably fill a volume the size of one=20
of
>his big, fat novels.

I wouldn't disagree with you were it not for Severian's persistant claim=20
to a perfect memory.

Is that claim significant or just a throw-away line.  Throw-away lines in=20
Wolfe?

If it's significant I don't find it credible that Wolfe would have allowed=20
it to be diminished or negated by a number of textual "mistakes".

So we have a meaningful reference to the narrator's memory; a careful=20
author (who is on record to the effect that he never says anything twice=20
yet the matter of Severian's memory is repeatedly highlighted).  And in=20
Severian we have a first person narrator who is not consistant.

And an observed correlation between some of the inconsistancies and claims=20
for Severian's memory.

There has to be a reason for this although I confess that what that reason=20
might be eludes me entirely.

Matthew

--=20

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