From: matthew.malthouse@guardian.co.uk
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 11:19:33 +0100
Subject: Re: (urth) catamites and narrators




On 13/09/2002 05:28:32 maa32 wrote:

>Additionally, Mr. Borski has already elucidated on the strange
preoccupation
>with circumsicions and various other repressed evidence of homosexual
behavior
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^



What in hell connects circumcision with repressed evidence of homosexual
behaviour?

>Just a short note based off an old point made by James Jordan:
>he claimed that Wolfe would never have a protagonist with homosexual
>encounters.  However,there is some evidence that works against this both
in
>Fifth Head of Cerberus, in the relationship of Blood and Musk, and in the
>strange commentary made by Severian about little Severian - (when he
insists
>that he didn't have anything to do with molesting the child, who would
have
>thought of that before he brought it up?  He plants the seed in the mind
with
>his occupatio - "I didn't do it, so don't think I did")
>
>Blood and Musk aren't evil becuase they are homosexual.  Not even in
Wolfe.
>To have Severian defend himself creates a bit of suspicion, doesn't it?
And
......
>in The Fifth Head of Cerberus, available at Cave Canem.  For an author
who
>should be a bit opposed to it, there seems to be an awful lot of it in
his
>books - and a lot of it that goes relatively uncommented upon, too. While
>Wolfe may be clearly anti-feminist at times, I don't pick up this
hostility to
>the very idea of homosexuality.  After all, he loves Proust's Remembrance
of
>Things Past.  Just my two cents on something that was said many days ago.
>Sorry I'm so far behind.


Not hostile.  The character's little commentary in the area of sexuality
seems to be generally neutral.

However examples of such behaviour, such as Severian's glimpse of what he
speculates might be Baldanders' catamite, are invariably associated with
the "other side" (to be Manichean about it).

Severian doesn't say that he was tempted to paederasty with little Sev,
rather that others would assume that he was.  Perhaps it is more a
commentary on the society of the Commonwealth than on Severian (then and
later as author) that the posibility existed and any assumption worth
pre-emtive denial.

Matthew



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