From: m.driussi@genie.geis.com
Subject: (urth) Urth syllabus
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 98 19:12:00 GMT


[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

Reply:  Item #3038987 from URTH@LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#

Dan,

Re: Funes from FICCIONES, right--that's another Borges/BOTNS
touchstone (re: Severian's memory).  And folks often remember
"Circular Ruins" (if I'm getting that title right) with regard to
"The Tale of the Student and His Son" in particular; then there's the
"Library of Babel" as the Library of Nessus, and Master Ultan as
Borges himself.  (FICCIONES has some kabbalah in it, too, if I
remember right.)

Borges looms big ("Borges on the scale of Tolkien" does seem quite
apt).  Charles Dickens looms big.  Jack Vance's DYING EARTH (and all
antecedents) looms big.  Robert Graves looms big.

David Langford at long last has convinced me that the apparatus of
the Matachin Tower is the same as that within Kafka's "The Penal
Colony."  But is Sidero also Calvino's THE NON-EXISTANT KNIGHT, or is
that finally a stretch too far?  A tangent with no payoff?  A hunt
that brings nothing to the table?

If we were to arrange a syllabus for a thirteen week introductory
course (assuming participants have already read TBOTNS and URTH one
time through already), and that participants could read one or two
books a week, what would the two-dozen or so books be, and in what
order?

=mantis=

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