On Sat, 15 May 2004, Mark A Mandel wrote:
@> Whence do we know that "Paarfi is a liar"?
My reasoning on this topic appears in the other thread, but to make things
easier on you (and to get it into a non-spoiler area):
1) Paarfi =~ Dumas, and Dumas was a liar. (A good one!)
2) Brust has said ex cathedra, that Paarfi was writing fiction rather than
history (although he'd rather write history), and in general was making
things up to fill in the blanks. This occurs in the "about the author"
section of PG, and in the following locations:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=paarfi+author:steven+author:brust&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=RXM22.1998%24i63.6905077%40ptah.visi.com&rnum=3&filter=0
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=paarfi+author:steven+author:brust&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=ENV22.2039%24i63.7175442%40ptah.visi.com&rnum=1&filter=0
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=paarfi+author:steven+author:brust&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=w_M22.2000%24i63.6906694%40ptah.visi.com&rnum=2&filter=0
http://dragaera.info/mailinglists/archive.cgi?1:map:4277:jmikhcjlblbeaehdleep
3) Paarfi discounts the Dragon/Jhereg war as a factor in Adron's
attempted coup, and in fact completely fails to describe it or any of
its consequences (which, presumably, the Phoenix Guards would be
involved with in some way). The plots of Jhereg and Yendi depend, to a
greater or lesser extent, on the presence and importance of this war.
4) The language in which the characters have the honor to speak is clearly
not indicative of the manner in which the real people upon whom the
author pretends that those characters are based were actually
accustomed to speak.
Generally, my feelings on this can be summarized by Patrick O'Brian's
introduction to The Mauritius Command, which I will have to put out here
when I can locate my copy. (The basic gist being: I've reproduced this
battle exactly, except for the beginning and the end, and I eliminated
some ships whose actions would just confuse everybody.)