From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v019.n014
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 08:39:30 

On Sat, 10 Oct 1998, Peter Stephenson wrote:

> I have to pipe up and admit that I have worries along these line.  The
> great strength I find in Wolfe is the overarching themes and links
> between them.  Having all the characters tie up in this narrow way
> seems to reduce it to a certain extent to a family soap opera.
> Severian's family certainly *should* be important somehow, I'm just a
> bit worried about the way it's done.  Wolfe's in good company, though;
> lots of major authors have links of this kind (Dickens is full of it,
> although I take it none of his characters are their own ancestors),
> but that doesn't make it `right'.

I've long suspected I have some sort of deficiency because I am utterly
unmoved by these kinds of revelations.  Vader is Luke's father?  Leia is
Luke's sister?  Yawn.  Let's see some more spaceships blowing up.

Dorcas's identity interests me more because it shows how she's been dead
or suspended for a long time than because she's related to Severian.  I
guess the whole sleeping with your grandmother thing provokes a satisfying
"eeeew!" as well.  I just hope Silk doesn't turn out to be Severian's son,
brother, clone, grandfather, or twin sister. 

Maybe my family life was just too humdrum for these kinds of things to
have any emotional resonance for me.

-Rostrum


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