On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Steven Brust wrote: > At 05:33 PM 3/5/2003 -0500, Gaertk at aol.com wrote: > > > >So what was the reason behind the stream-of-3-consciousnesses > >bit in _Issola_? > > If you don't know, then they didn't work. Couldn't it (they, whatever) have worked without his consciously knowing? I thought the point was to evoke an experience which was fragmentary or rather fragmented Vlad and was put together afterwards in that way since our language isn't adapted to such experiences. If that's what was intended, it worked for me as writing, but I thought at the time that the passage showed authorial (?) intervention. Vlad is a sophisticated storyteller (see _Taltos_ or _Dragon_ for similarly interwoven books) but one with a verbal bent - and I can't see anyone speaking the lines from that passage even having had the experience in question. - Philip