(urth) theories

[Gerry Quinn]

From: Ryan Dunn 
> Gerry Quinn
> > I’m sorry if it bothers you that I think there are right approaches and wrong ones. 

> - But who gets to decide which are which, Gerry? Sergio, for instance, 
> doesn't like Inire as boatman because it reminds him more of Roman 
> Polanski than Gene Wolfe. Who is to define and uphold what "Wolfean" 
> means and to what extent? You? Me? Sergio? Most certainly NOT.

It will ultimately be decided by what works.  As for Inire as the old boatman, I really don’t understand why people take such ideas seriously.  Can somebody explain how they understand Dorcas’ character and story in this picture?  Married to a rich and powerful alien, running a small shop selling lace or something I think, going back to find him in the slums of Nessus after being resurrected – and *finding* him.  Oh yes, and he’s still running the secret service from the House Absolute all the time, even after dying in Dorcas’s arms in the slums of Nessus.  Does Dorcas mention anything about an alien lover?  And wouldn’t she have married a young man, even if he is old now?  Why couldn’t he save her?  Yet the fact of him being old and wizened seems to be one of the supposed signifiers of his identity (like that’s rare or something).  I guess he made himself look young that one time?

Do we think about Dorcas’s story, or just ignore it because of all the loose ends that fall into place when her husband is Inire?  Loose ends like... just what, exactly?

> > But it seems to me that all approaches to understanding Wolfe – or any
> > author – cannot be equally useful.

> - Again, who's approach do you endorse besides your own? Who 
> gets to decide what is useful and what is fruitless? You? Me? What
> if you have it wrong? What if Gene called you up and told you you 
> had it wrong and were reading it wrong and that Agia is a robot and
 > Inire is Fechin? Then what?

So tell me.  Where’s all this ‘Inire is the boatman stuff’ getting us?

> > I think reading his works as cryptic crossword puzzles and brainstorming
> > for clues is an approach that is unlikely to be effective.


> - I'd say you couldn't be more off base here, Gerry. Sorry. His BotNS
> series is most DEFINITELY an enigma wrapped inside a mystery, and
> meant to be studied and analyzed over time. Gene truly expected the
> reader to infer everything you learned in UotNS within the first four
> volumes, which means there likely are/were shape shifters in the 
> original volume, and Severian likely had a child with a hierodule.

That has to be either a ridiculous expectation or a gross exaggeration.  UotNS is full of events and characters that are never foreshadowed in BotNS.  You were supposed to know that Severian becomes the Conciliator and brings the New Sun, stuff like that, certainly.  That he becomes Apu-Punchau.  Some of the metaphysics.  But Wolfe simply *cannot* have supposed we would know all the details.  He cannot have known them himself.

Has anyone read Jack Vance’s _Lyonesse_  and read the ‘What Now?’ page at the end?  It’s very *like* what happens in the sequels.  But it differs in almost every detail.  Now Wolfe plots more carefully than Vance and has better continuity, and his vision would have been developed in much more detail.  But it’s worth looking at Vance to see how a book can be planned, and yet not planned.


> - As for brainstorming for clues, who is doing that? Asking whether someone 
> things a part of the text is a clue is different from brainstorming unique ones. 
> Sometimes you need some help in parsing a line of thought, or interpreting
> the substance (or lack thereof) of this occurrence or the other.

I’m really just saying, the story is primary.  If someone has a brainstorm and decides that Severian is replaced in the Autarch’s vault by a shape-shifting man-ape, I think that before posting it they should think a bit about how it fits in with the rest of the story, and whether there are any problems that may negate the insights it provides.


> - I'm really not personally offended here, just surprised that someone on an
> Urth discussion list would be so presumptuous as to decree the right and 
> wrong way to read a book.

The idea is not so radical, I think.  Indeed, the line “I think you couldn’t be more off base here, Gerry” would seem no less of such a decree than anything I have said.

- Gerry Quinn



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