(urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

[Jeff Wilson]

On 5/21/2011 5:58 PM, Jack Smith wrote:
> I did not realize it and I think that's what Wolfe intended.  He wants
> her identify to be obscured.   Look at the mysterious note that Severian
> finds in the Inn of Lost Loves.  The mystery is not resolved until Book
> 4.  Severian and the reader don't know who Dorcas is until the end of
> the story

I read BOTNS with having read Wolfe before, but it was just after I had 
exhausted the last of the conventional Golden Age SF authors' works in 
the local library, including a lot of detective and mystery stories. 
This left me in the frame of mind to associate Cas with Dorcas on the 
first reading, but I figured it was too fantastic and kept on to see 
what the "real" explanation would be, like the Cathedral being a flying 
tent.

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