Typhon's scene - (sorry - last time)

Roy has a very fixed idea of the Typhon scene in mind - and I admit I am guilty (all the time) of paraphrasing. Even in quotes. We should agree to disagree about this scene - I can't read it without thinking that the Conciliator and the New Sun are equated, no matter how many times I look at it, and that Typhon of course recognizes that Severian is both the Conciliator, and that he is the New Sun, who will kneel before him if Severian does so. I just can't read it any other way. What's the point of having him tempt the "savior" figure here if he doesn't understand the importance of deterring him? Isn't there some kind of allegorical resonance here? Doesn't Satan know what's up? No big deal. Marc Aramini

Which is unfortunate, the more so for those who might read posts without the text at hand.

But that is unforgivable. To do so is duplicitous. Matthew

That's a bit harsh. Marc's paraphrase includes some paraphrased reported speech, so he puts it in quotes. It's not like he's faking up a reference or something. Maybe it'd be helpful if he flagged it as a paraphrase, but it's not that big a deal, I think.

Marc ascribed to Typhon words that are not in the text. The use of quotation marks is conventionally to indicate a direct citation. Unless you propose that we abandon the conventions what was presented to us was an interpretation apparently textually supported but for which in reality no such text exists. Matthew

I don't think anyone's disputing that Marc's quotes were incorrect. To use the word "duplicitous" indicates that he intended to mislead, whereas it seems clear that he believed what he put into his post. This is what seems harsh.

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Oh, hey, get a grip here. This is parlously close to namecalling ... this is a pretty flame-free sort of a list and I, for one, would like for it to stay so. I might add: it would only be duplicitous if the paraphraser intended to deceive the reader into believing that the paraphrase was a quote. I don't get the impression Marc intended that at all. It's a pity we're limited to ASCII here ... in the old days of mimeo'd fanzines and such, we had a way cool bit of invented-for-the-purpose punctuation called the "quasi-quote," formed by typing the double-inverted-comma character, backspacing, and typing a hyphen in the same place: meaning, "I'm quoting this from memory, so the exact wording may be wrong." Almost as useful as the interabang (? typed over !) for rhetorical questions and the often-discussed but never quite created "irony mark."