(urth) The Outsider

[Jeff Wilson]

On 12/18/2010 10:45 AM, Craig Brewer wrote:
> Witz said:
>
>>> This is a book that seems soooooooo important to Severian that he  carries it
>>> through the entire BotNS. It is plausible that this is a  truly random event,
>>> but NOTHING else about>>Severian's life, or the tasks  he's assigned, seems
>>> random at all, so it is just as likely, perhaps  more likely, that Ultan has had
>>> a hand in shaping him.
>>>
>>> This book is treacherous.
>
> Allow me some total speculation. You've been warned.
>
> Ultan, of course, talks about the The Book of Gold, and the circumstances in
> which to-be-apprenticed librarians is a mystical, mysterious experience. It
> initiates their initiation.
>
> And he uses the word "christening," which can hardly be a careless use on
> Wolfe's part, I'd imagine:
>
> "The child, as I said, in time discovers The Book of Gold. Then the librarians
> come - like vampires, some say, but others say like the fairy godparents at a
> christening. They speak to the child, and the child joins them. Henceforth, he
> is in the library wherever he may be, and soon his parents know him no more. I
> suppose it is much the same among torturers."
>
> So we've got the imagery of dying (vampires) from one life and being reborn into
> another (vampires, again, and the christening, as well as one's parents not
> knowing one anymore). And there's also the sense that, after you find the book,
> you're always in that new world, no matter where you are.
>
> The point: it's very much a conversion story. And it's a conversion story
> centered on finding a book.

I agree with this speculation, except I think the literary vampirism-> 
new life link is less likely than a disparagement of communion.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >