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From: Ouroboros The Worm <ottofaij@yahoo.com> Subject: (urth) Re: Untrustworthy Narrators? Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:13:11 This is my first posting here so please be gentle. I've done a search of the archives and I didn't find the following point discussed anywhere. Regarding whether Sev is an untrustworthy narrator, of course he is. It always bothered me that Severian keeps telling us over and over and over again that he never forgets anything. I read an interview of Wolfe where he said that he never gave the same hint twice. He said he hated it when writers keep bringing up the same details over and over to make sure the reader doesn't miss it when he felt perfectly capable of catching it the first time. So why does Severian keep droning on about his memory? Because it's a red herring. But Wolfe gives us a quick glimpse up his sleeve at the end of chapter three of TSOTT. Here Severian admits to being a habitual liar and suspecting his own sanity, but that not the truely twisted part. He also says, "...I who remembered everything could not be certain those memories were more than my own dreams." So the inconsistency between whether Drotte or Roche says he sees pikes at the beginning of the first chapter is probably not an error on Wolfe's part. The one part of a book every writer is sure to get perfect is the first page and that's where this occurs. And Wolfe hands us another hint on the first page too: "In the recesses of my mind we stand shivering there even now. Just as all that appears imperishable [like Severian's memory?] tends toward its own destruction, those moments that at the time seem the most fleeting *recreate* themselves--*not only in my memory*....*making themselves new just as our Commonwealth reconstitutes itself each morning in the shrill tones of its own clarions* <emphasis added> Now unless this is a hint, it's lousy writing in the context of the story and if I were his editor I would have encouraged him to throw it out. It drags down the story, and as a mere florish, is un-Lupine. But actually, Wolfe is telling us that Severian's memory reconstitutes, recreates itself every day and so does the rest of the world. Wolfe further explored this concept in "Soldier in the Mist": a soldier who forgets eveything that happened to him the day before--all he has is his diary which he reads and adds to every day, but which he can be no more certain is true than we are. He can't even be certain he wrote it, or if someone else added to it. In SITM, Wolfe uses this concept as metaphor for myth and history. I think he's doing something else with it in TBOTNS. I think this would be a good point for some input in the way Wolfe uses the theory of "quantum tunneling" to investigate Being. Anybody? -Ouroboros __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/