(urth) Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers
Gerry Quinn
gerryq at indigo.ie
Sun Aug 15 03:03:41 PDT 2010
From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>>Gerry Quinn- But again - verisimiltude! Would Pas's engineers and
>>quartemasters have
>>used strings of numbers, or a panoply of teratoid icons? I expect that
>>somewhere in Mainframe is a big list of what all vaults on the Whorl
>>originally contained, indexed by number. In a more controlled
>>disembarkation, instructions would be passed down regarding which were to
>>be
>>opened.
> Still having trouble with your verisimiltude. We understand that Wolfe
> shows us certain
> symbols that Severian or Silk is incapable of understanding. My gut
> feeling is still that
> if Wolfe wanted to depict a number sequence that WE also cannot understand
> then he would
> describe it that way: "He saw the Seal of Pas and it had a block of
> incomprehensibly organized
> numbers". From this description we just as easily can figure out they are
> vault container
> index numbers or whatever.
>
> By actually giving us the numbers, organized in sequence, I feel Wolfe is
> expecting us to be
> able to figure them out, even if Silk can't. In similar fashion I don't
> think Severian really
> knows what teratoid or gnostic symbols are. But WE can interpret that they
> mean there is
> something akin to monsters in Father Inire's wing of the House Absolute
> and that Witches deal
> in mysterious, arcane knowledge. If he called the symbols an ankh or a
> swastika, I think
> we would be expected to come to different conclusions.
>
> As the numbers are organized into 9 groups of four digits, and each group
> of four digits adds
> up to a number which is less than 27, my best guess is that it is a
> cryptogram. Perhaps it
> lists the initials of the 9 gods of the Whorl. Perhaps the cryptogram
> solves to the 9 letters-
> Typhon-Pas. Or perhaps it spells out the 9 letter name of the true monarch
> and creator of the
> Whorl, GENE WOLFE. We need more hidden wolves in Long Sun, don't we?
But that raises a question. Suppose we convincingly solved such a
cryptogram. Now, how do we explain the fact of that particular vault under
Viron having a number with this secret meaning?
I think that we cannot, just because Wolfe is the author, assume that some
elements of a story are not merely 'colour'. It would be very restrictive
for Wolfe. Every time a character booked a hotel room, Wolfe would be
constrained from saying "he was given the key to room 167", for fear that
readers would waste time searching for some numerological clue.
- Gerry Quinn
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