Textual criticism of TBOTSS

Jerry Friedman · 18 Jun 2001, 07:54 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Textual criticism of TBOTSS
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 07:54:45
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--- Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net> wrote:
> With all the talk about the difficulty of
> determining the "true facts"
> behind the narrative(s) of TBOTSS, I thought I'd try
> and determine just what
> are the textual "components" of the book we have,
> and how close each of them
> is to the events it purports to describe.
...

Thanks for this clarifying outline.

> All the above were transcribed and translated
> (unless the Common Tongue is
> English; I don't recall) by Wolfe, introducing
> further errors.
...

And that, in turn, was set into type by publishers,
introducing further errors.  I read the SFBC edition,
but I gather from comments in the archives that the
original Tor edition was also poorly proofread.
Though it would be amusing if the typos were made
intentionally by Wolfe, for instance as reflections of
copyists' errors in his supposed original source.

Incidentally, maybe people who know about textual
criticism will be skeptical of this, but it's possible
that some of the fictional editing steps did in fact
correct previous errors.

Jerry Friedman

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