(urth) The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned by Rudesind

[António Pedro Marques]

Tim O'Donnell wrote (07-07-2010 17:13):
> From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com
> <mailto:entonio at gmail.com>>
>
>> I'll have to ask yet again - clues to *what*, please? IF some of the
>> characters that appear throughout the book are Inire in disguise, then
>> what? What happens? What doors open? What new understanding of the
>> story is enabled? What's the net worth of such a knowledge? What is it
>> that we don't grasp about the book that we'd begin to grasp that way?
>> No one has answered this so far.
>
> Well, in the case of Inire, it depends on how much time travelling
> influence outer elements have had on Severian's life and specifically
> the difference between Sev1 (not optimised) and Sev2 (optimised). Was
> Sev1 almost but not quite the candidate for New Sun in which case he
> only needed a little gentle prodding or was he way off in which case he
> needed quite a lot of help? If he was close to being the New Sun then we
> can theorise that appearances by Inire are moments where Sev1 needed a
> little push perhaps and Inire wants to be sure that these moments occur.
> If the second option then do we believe that the forces of entropy are
> also interfering with Severian's progress in which case Inire's presence
> may be to ward off such negative influence?

What I don't see is how Rudesind and other characters being FI in disguise
has much to do with any of those questions.

> Far from having a single reading of these books (which I have reread
> many times now) I value the variety of interpretations that can be
> extracted from readings and rereadings. I don't want to go off topic but
> has anyone seen the film Primer?  If so they will know that a key scene
> is the bench scene, multiple viewings of the film have convinced me that
> there is no correct reading of this scene.

Yes - the pervasive idea that there must be correct readings of a given 
situation is wrong. Sometimes several readings are correct. Sometimes non is 
(rarer, but happens).

Thanks for the movie tip.

> I don't want to say more as we are getting into spoiler territory but I
> feel the same way about Wolfe - to reduce the books to a single correct
> reading is to cast aside the wonderful multiplicity of interpretations
> one can find within.

And that is precisely my beef with the drive to reduce characters to some 
specific trait that doesn't mean anything by itself.

- Agia must be a robot because blablabla - but at a certain point, what is 
the relevance of her precise nature?

- Rudesind must be FI in disguise because Fechin is a ranga - but what does 
that gain us?

If there is a common theme in the GW works I've read so far - I'm not 
fortunate enough to have done significant rereading already - is how 
characters break free from their native, starting conditions. Trying to pin 
down exactly what those conditions are, and trying to come up with (or 
outright invent) a definite answer, as if it had in itself a deep 
significance, is in my view misguided - and harmful when it blinds the mind 
to the rest. Their precise nature may be explanative of something else, but 
I just can't see that it can be an interesting fact all by itself.