From: "Andy Robertson" 
Subject: Re: (urth) not so sure about this...
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 05:52:27 -0000

It really does seem to me that much of this discussion is based on a
profound error about the way people write.

In some part a writer is an explorer - discovering, rather than unpacking,
what is in the text.

If you read Wolfe's own essay on Severian, the one where he says that the
story of Severian started as a novella in intention, you will see this
coming through loud and clear.

You may reply that Wolfe has reworked the books from start to end.

I agree, but still, in this case, it seems to me that the discoveries move
from being linear (located at the end of the advancing text) to being
hologramatic - located at multiple points in the mutating text.

I don't think Wolfe knows everything about what is going on.  He builds a
story, but as he builds it the relationships between the characters and
events conjure new things into life.   Half-accepted facts become
irresistably obvious.   Minor characters reveal unforseen aspects.  Obscure
background events mutate and change.

And mythic patterns perist, and occur again and again.   The historic
relationship between he Blue world and the Green world is one of these
patterns.

We would do better to wonder what the Green World *represents* in a mythic
sense.  Obviously both St Anne and Green are loci of human suffering and of
visions.  The Green World seems to me to be a marginally spiritual
reflection of the Blue one.


    hartshorn



----- Original Message -----
From: "maa32" 
> all I can say is that Nick did not ask specifically if Urth was Blue; he
asked
> if St. Croix and St. Anne fit in thematically.


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