(urth) theories

[Gerry Quinn]

From: Lee Berman 
> Gerry Quinn: 
> > I can’t understand why such a person finds this and similar ideas 
> > sufficiently attractive to persist with it....I’m merely asking a question about 
> > the topic.  Is that against your rules?

> Gerry, the problem is that you have asked this same question numerous times over
> the past few years. I have given you detailed answers each time. Apparently it
> never sank in. What would be the purpose in repeating my answers to you?

I don’t remember anyone going into detail about the events of Dorcas’ life with Inire (assuming that he was the boatman and she was married to him) and how they impact on her character and story.  Point me to it and I’ll certainly take a look.
 

> In truth I really don't think your intelligence is so different from the others here that
> it limits your understanding of these other theories as severly as you claim they do. It 
> may be as simple as saying that if you try to understand the theories of others you will. 
> If you are trying to not understand them, (only to undercut them) you won't.      

By ‘undercut’, do you mean ‘analyse for consistency’?  I certainly do not think we should apply Popperian falsifiability principles to literary analysis (I even think they are at times applied too strictly to science).  Nevertheless, surely everyone agrees that certain criteria related to consistency and logic must apply?  If it occurs to me that Severian must be an alzabo, for example, I feel I must, before bringing the proposition to the attention of others, attempt to solve the obvious problems that this theory brings with it.  If I don’t bother doing this, and people ask me questions like “why does nobody notice he is an alzabo”, I don’t feel I have a right to get in a huff and demand that they stop undercutting my theories.

The proposition that the boatman is Father Inire has problems that, while not perhaps quite so severe as those of Severian being an alzabo, might be considered to be of the same kind.  Does Dorcas know she is married to the alien chief vizier?  Did he appear old when he married her, or can he also appear as a young man?  If the latter, what price the appearance of an old wizened man as a signifier of Father Inire?  If Father Inire “pinches off” youthful copies of himself, does this involve him hiding away for a while and growing to twice his normal size before splitting?  Why does the boatman apparently search for Dorcas’ corpse, when surely as Inire he has access to technologies that would spot it in a trice?  If he’s just waiting there for Severian, what is his motive as he seems to do very little – and also, if just being there is his motive, why involve Dorcas at all?  Why marry her, and – whether he was married to her or not – why mention her?  And, last but not least – what is the story of Dorcas now?

If I were proposing that the boatman was Inire, I would try to answer these and the many other questions.  When somebody else proposes it, I feel I have a right – indeed a duty – to ask them.  When I have proposed theories, I have always taken any such questions seriously.  Because I think that the ability to answer such questions is an important means – though not the only means – by which good theories may be distinguished from bad ones.  

- Gerry Quinn
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