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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=ryan@liftingfaces.com
href="mailto:ryan@liftingfaces.com">Ryan Dunn</A> </DIV>
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class=Apple-style-span><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: calibri; FONT-SIZE: small"
class=Apple-style-span>Gerry Quinn</SPAN></SPAN></DIV></DIV>
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> <SPAN
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class=Apple-style-span><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: calibri; FONT-SIZE: small"
class=Apple-style-span>I’m sorry if it bothers you that I think there are right
approaches and wrong ones. </SPAN></SPAN></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>- But who gets to
decide which are which, Gerry? Sergio, for instance, </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>doesn't like Inire as
boatman because it reminds him more of Roman </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>Polanski than Gene
Wolfe. Who is to define and uphold what "Wolfean" </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>means and to what
extent? You? Me? Sergio? Most certainly NOT.<BR></DIV>
<DIV>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?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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?</DIV>
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class=Apple-style-span></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT><SPAN
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class=Apple-style-span><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: calibri; FONT-SIZE: small"
class=Apple-style-span>But it seems to me that all approaches to understanding
Wolfe – or any</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT><SPAN
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class=Apple-style-span><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: calibri; FONT-SIZE: small"
class=Apple-style-span>author – cannot be equally useful.</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>- Again, who's approach
do you endorse besides your own? Who </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>gets to decide what is
useful and what is fruitless? You? Me? What</DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>if you have it wrong?
What if Gene called you up and told you you </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>had it wrong and were
reading it wrong and that Agia is a robot and</DIV>
<DIV> <FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>Inire is Fechin?
Then what?<BR></DIV>
<DIV>So tell me. Where’s all this ‘Inire is the boatman stuff’ getting
us?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT><SPAN
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class=Apple-style-span><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: calibri; FONT-SIZE: small"
class=Apple-style-span>I think reading his works as cryptic crossword puzzles
and brainstorming</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT><SPAN
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class=Apple-style-span><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: calibri; FONT-SIZE: small"
class=Apple-style-span>for clues is an approach that is unlikely to be
effective.</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>- I'd say you couldn't
be more off base here, Gerry. Sorry. His BotNS</DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>series is most
DEFINITELY an enigma wrapped inside a mystery, and</DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>meant to be studied and
analyzed over time. Gene truly expected the</DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>reader to infer
everything you learned in UotNS within the first four</DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>volumes, which means
there likely are/were shape shifters in the </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>original volume, and
Severian likely had a child with a hierodule.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>- As for brainstorming
for clues, who is doing that? Asking whether someone </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>things a part of the
text is a clue is different from brainstorming unique ones. </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>Sometimes you need some
help in parsing a line of thought, or interpreting</DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>the substance (or lack
thereof) of this occurrence or the other.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=+0></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>- I'm really not
personally offended here, just surprised that someone on an</DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>Urth discussion list
would be so presumptuous as to decree the right and </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>wrong way to read a
book.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>- Gerry Quinn</DIV>
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