From: "Dan'l Danehy Oakes" <DDANEHYO@us.oracle.com>
Subject: (urth) Concerning Severian's Lacunae; also, "Later, dudes"
Date: 17 Jun 98 14:41:43 

Adam (who seems to write at my level, as opposed to some of you
folks who are waaay over my pointy bald head) wrote:

> 2) What does this quirk

...specifically, his habit of leaving out some critical detail
at the time of narration and mentioning it only later, if at 
all...

                          tell us about Severian?  Other quirks
> in his narration have been explained by his allegedly perfect
> memory, but I don't see how that would account for this.

Actually, it's pretty easy to attribute it (within story context;
outside story context, it's Wolfe's delight in torturing the reader 
-- "puzzling you is the nature of my game," as the Stones' Lucifer
sang) to Severian's allegedly (and that is just the right word; I
strongly suspect his memory is quite fallible) perfect memory by
noting that Severian claims (no, I do not have a page ref handy --
not that it would do any good, I have the h/c) that his memory is
so complete and intense that he sometimes gets lost in it, it 
becomes as present to him as the present; given this, it seems quite
likely that he might simply forget(!) that he has not mentioned some
detail, and _especially_ an important detail, which seems perfectly
"obvious" to him.

Side note.  Are we in fact certain that Sev and Thecla _were_ lovers?
The first time I read those passages I was quite convinced that they
were fantasies on Severian's part, or perhaps on the part of the 
Sev+Thecla combined personality.  While I am no longer convinced that
this is so, I am far from convinced that it is _not_ so.

But then, what _are_ we certain of in the Wolfean shadow(!)play...?

***

I'm going to be away from my office and from e-mail for rather over
a month, starting this evening; so if anyone respond to this (or
anything else I've blithered lately), don't be offended if I don't
reply for a while...


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