Oh, I agree--I think he's definitely still Oreb. On the level of mere plot, SilkHorn doubts Oreb(?) is Oreb because 1) he's suppressing Silk's memories of the last 20 years, which may have involved continuous association with Oreb, and 2) the Horn side has no idea how old night choughs can get. But I think his instinct, that Oreb is another bird perfectly imitating Oreb, is still supposed to tell us something about the movement of souls in the book and about SilkHorn's understanding of himself--I think there's a bit in On Blue's Waters where SilkHorn says he isn't Silk but has done his best to imitate him for his entire life. This is wrong, but it's his justification of himself.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Jordon Flato <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jordonflato@gmail.com">jordonflato@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div>Hmmm. Besides Silkhorn's ruminations, I can't see any evidence at all that Oreb would not be Oreb. Certainly, there are changes because of Scylla, but it would make very little sense to me that Oreb was another bird imitaing Oreb. As a connecting Avatar between Silk and Silkhorn, he makes a great deal of thematic sense to me.</div>
<div><br>As an imitation of the orignial Oreb, it has far less resonance to me, even with your good analysis of the siginficance of imitation above.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I've always seen Oreb, like Mucor, to always see the 'soul' of the person he is seeing. His change of seeing Jahlee from Bad Thing to Good Girl being a prime example.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Oreb, like Mucor, is above the trickery and confusion of the multiple identiy crises.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Except, of course, he isn't. Because he's Scylla. WTF?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>*implodes*<br><br></div><div><div></div><div class="h5">
<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 11:26 AM, John Watkins <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:john.watkins04@gmail.com" target="_blank">john.watkins04@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="padding-left:1ex;margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:#ccc 1px solid">Of course, there's another layer of complexity here.
<div><br></div>
<div>I'm currently midway through Return to the Whorl, where SilkHorn makes several references to his theory that the Oreb of SS is not the Oreb of LS, despite their apparently identical behavior except when Scylla is acting through Oreb. This bothered me the first time I read it, but I took it as just another layer of uncertainty, melancholy, and alienation--maybe even the beloved pet from the first series is an imposter.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Well, I now think that was wrong. To me, it always comes back to the idea that by imitating someone, you become them--Incus was the first to spell it out, but the Outsider later seems to confirm it to Silk, which indicates to me that Wolfe thinks it's <span style="font-style:italic">very </span>important--important enough to repeat and important enough to have the One True God say it.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Horn's skill of imitating Silk allowed him to write Silk's story. It also allowed him to almost become Silk without noticing it--SilkHorn's insistence that he is really just Horn acting like Silk convinces no one except, at times, himself.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I think the character I'll call "Oreb(?)" is a reflection of that. In RttW, when SilkHorn first meets Oreb(?), he asks if he "knew" the original Oreb, and then asks "Did he teach you how to talk?" What I think Wolfe is trying to flag in that scene is that, in a sense, it doesn't matter if Oreb(?) is Oreb or not--he's <span style="font-style:italic">functionally </span>Oreb because by <span style="font-style:italic">imitating </span>Oreb, he has <span style="font-style:italic">become </span>him. The soul, in LS/SS, may be almost as simple as diction + habituation.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Obviously this also explains the somewhat lazy use of exaggerated diction (Patera <span style="font-style:italic">Incus</span>, Patera, that, is, um, augur, hey? Remora, d'yeh remember Pig? Yeh do!, and all of the Dorp people.) Wolfe is good, but the challenge of writing people's souls into their diction and vice-versa is tough unless characters have idiosyncratic modes of speech.
<div>
<div></div>
<div><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Jordon Flato <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jordonflato@gmail.com" target="_blank">jordonflato@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="padding-left:1ex;margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:#ccc 1px solid">
<div>Having just read through both LS and SS, one of my favorite aspects, minor though it may be, is that in LS we have Horns voice, which we think is Silk, and in SS we have Silks voice, which we think is Horns. They tell each others stories, and the style of their narrative voice greatly affects the telling. There is something so resonant in this for me. Just a brilliant stroke.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I'm still on the fence about the Nettle/Vadsig/Hide voice of the Whorl narrative in RttW. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Also, I guess in fact in LS we don't JUST have horns voice, but Nettle's too. Which makes here the only common narrative voice between the two works. (Holy spirit?)<br><br></div>
<div>
<div></div>
<div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 11:04 AM, David Stockhoff <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net" target="_blank">dstockhoff@verizon.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="padding-left:1ex;margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:#ccc 1px solid">Doesn't the style of narration depend entirely on the narrator and his/her circumstances? That is, how else should the narrator of LS have narrated?<br>
<br>That scene-by scene style, without introspection, was certainly a shift after Severian's many-layered and discursive account. But Silk doesn't narrate LS.<br><br>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 4<br>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:26:51 -0700 (PDT)<br>From: Jerry Friedman <<a href="mailto:jerry_friedman@yahoo.com" target="_blank">jerry_friedman@yahoo.com</a>><br>Subject: Re: (urth) Weekly blog links<br>To: The Urth Mailing List <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net" target="_blank">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>
Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:925508.79653.qm@web50710.mail.re2.yahoo.com" target="_blank">925508.79653.qm@web50710.mail.re2.yahoo.com</a>><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1<br><br><br><br><br><br>And we didn't need LS to consist entirely of dramatic<br>
scenes, in the sense of "The Cat in the Starfleet's<br>Attic". I'm glad that in NS and SS, our narrators get to<br>ruminate occasionally.<br><br><br><br><br>---<br>avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.<br>
Virus Database (VPS): 090416-0, 04/16/2009<br>Tested on: 4/16/2009 2:04:27 PM<br>avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2009 ALWIL Software.<br><a href="http://www.avast.com/" target="_blank">http://www.avast.com</a><br><br><br><br>
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