(urth) Drotte-Roche mixup

Lee Berman severiansola at hotmail.com
Wed Apr 20 07:38:35 PDT 2011



>James Wynn: "Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that the Roche/Drotte mix-up 
>could be a typo..
 
I wouldn't go so far as to say it couldn't be a typo. But one reason I lean toward Antonio's
view and why Drotte-Roche might need a somewhat higher level of typo evaluation than the Maytera 
Marble example is the obvious- Severian is (self-) purported to have a perfect memory. I would 
expect an author to find ways to support and/or undercut the "perfect memory" assertion in the 
first few chapters. So it could be purposeful. 
 
Horn makes no such claim and Wolfe has openly identified the "Marble" mistake as a typo.  If Drotte-
Roche was also a typo, why has he not made the same identification? It has received so much more
attention.
 
Perhaps a third possibility exists..that it was originally a typo but it was not corrected, being
seen as a happy accident that served Wolfe's purposes nicely. (Does an observed but purposefully 
uncorrected typo cease to be a typo?) 		 	   		  


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