From: Dan Parmenter <dan@lec.com>
Subject: (urth) Yes to everything!
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 11:53:28 

From: "Jim Henley" <jlhenley@erols.com>

> I must reluctantly agree with you here, which is too bad, because I really
> want it to be Argentina and Buenos Aires. If only the mountains and the sea
> were reversed! I'll bet it's Typhon's fault...

I don't see why the Commonwealth can't "be" Buenos Aires *and*
Constantinople *and* New York City for that matter.  Wolfe isn't about
search-and-replace.  It seems to me that whatever Wolfe found
fascinating, he worked in.

It's was once observed in regard to "The Circus of Dr. Lao" by Charles
Finney that it's a mistake for an author to try to sum up a lifetime's
observations and experience in one novel, which in many ways "Lao"
seems to do quite successfully without ever being a mere
autobiography.  I would suggest that BOTNS also succeeds in this
regard.  Like Finney, Wolfe does a certain amount of combining and
abstracting and in the end nothing is as it seems but everything is
exactly what it's supposed to be.

D


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