From: "Nigel Price" <nigel.a.price@virgin.net>
Subject: (urth) Late night speculation!
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 01:38:12 

Marc A Aramini wrote:

>>I  haven't read anything by her (C J Cherryh) even though
>>I have a copy of Kutath and Chanur's Legacy lying around
>>somewhere.  Is she worth reading?  If so, is there a good
>>place to start?)

This is a question which potentially takes us way off-topic, so I will, if I
may, give you a brief answer here and respond to you more fully off-list.

Yes, C J Cherryh is very much worth reading. "Downbelow Station" would be
the best place to start.

Others - let me know if you want see a copy of my more verbose reply to
Marc.

Bit to return to matters more obviously Lupine, and arising from my theory
that "Cherry Jubilee" is in some measure a Cherryh pastiche...

Wolfe loves to pastiche other authors. He's very good at it. He's done
Dickens and he's done Poe, and of course he's done Proust - amongst others.

Thematically, he's very interested in his literary works in concepts of
spiritual possession, of people being possessed by gods, and of the living
incorporating the personalities of the dead. Severian's mind is also
inhabited by Thecla, and by the personalities and memories of his
predecessors as autarch. There are possessions in the "Soldier" books, and,
well, Long Sun and Short Sun are just full of it. Horn becomes Silk and vice
versa or perhaps they both become Horn-Silk or - well, I'm still not sure.

But, I wonder...

Is literary pastiche connected to this interest in any way?

Wolfe the author likes to ingest other writer's spirits through reading
their works and then allows their personalities partial reincarnation by
allowing them to write through him, expressing his thoughts in their style.
It would be a very elegant matching of means of composition to content.
Wolfe as the autarchial author; the creator of Severian himself inhabited by
the myriad previous literary masters whose works he has studied and whose
mannerisms he has mastered.

Nigel
Minety, Wilt, England


*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/