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 class="Apple-style-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 class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">functionally </span>Oreb because by <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">imitating </span>Oreb, he has <span class="Apple-style-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 class="Apple-style-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.<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">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>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 class="h5">
<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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