From: Derek Bell <dbell@maths.tcd.ie>
Subject: Re: (whorl) mouse vis a vis rat pt 2
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 21:23:50 +0100


[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

In message <199704082116.OAA23830@lists1.best.com>, Alice Turner writes:
>But I can't resist one more reminder. Who do we KNOW was worshipped on Urth
>from the time of Typhoon on? Why, the Conciliator, that's who, though it's
>not formal worship. And who do we KNOW who coos? Thecla, that's who. And
>not for a minute do I think that Wolfe would create a character with a
>trademark coo (it's a family trait, her sister coos too), and then be so
>careless as to assign this coo to another character in a related book--even
>if, as some of you suggest, that character is the BVM.

	I agree entirely, alga. (I've forgotten what BVM is, though.)
Wolfe is rarely, if ever, careless.

>I grant that the Sevarian is not the Increate (neither is the Outsider),
>but by the end of the Urth series he is certainly as much of a god as JC is
>thought to be on this Earth--I think some of you want parallels to be too
>literal . Remember how the Brown Book twists things....

	There's a lot about the nature of writing in tBotNS
and tBotLS - unreliable narrators, self-referential passages
(e.g. Talos' play), several references to pencases in tBotLS
(possible hints from Horn), Severian mentioning his manuscripts, the
titles of the two series themselves, the Chrasmologic Writings - these
contain at least extracts from Marcus Aurelius' work and the Bible...

	BTW, is there a link to Volume 4 of the archive? Volume 3
stops in mid-March.

	Tercel