Fundamentalist

The term Fundamentalist designates, in the Tower's usage, a member of the small and unusually durable Society of the Literal Letter, a reading order founded on the tenet that every document in the archive means precisely what its first sentence says and that all subsequent sentences are elaborations in the nature of an apology. The designation is descriptive rather than pejorative; the Society has used it in its own petitions since at least 6101, and the Bureau of Axiomatic Purity has never found cause to amend it.

Fundamentalists are not numerous. The Census of Unlisted Orders records 340 professed members at the last count, of whom 118 were resident on the floors between 300 and 340, and of whom 71 were, for reasons of conscience, engaged in the reading of the same document they had begun in the previous census.

Origins and the Waterleaf Recension

The Society traces its foundation to the Waterleaf Recension of the winter of 6402, a revision of the Concordance 22 undertaken by a collating clerk named Oris Marn, who had been assigned to reconcile the Concordance's annexes and had instead concluded that the annexes were the problem. Marn's argument, set out in a memorandum of nine folios, held that the annexes had been permitted to soften the Concordance's opening rulings, and that an instrument softened at every point is not a governing instrument but a correspondence.

Marn's memorandum was refused by the Seal of Annexes and accepted, by oversight, by the Scriptorium of the Lower Marches, an office not competent to rule on it. The Society regards this acceptance as valid. The Seal of Annexes regards it as a clerical error of the second class. Both positions have been maintained without amendment for one hundred and sixty-one years.

The Doctrine of the First Sentence

The Society's distinguishing doctrine holds that the operative text of any Concordance is its first sentence, and that the remainder of the document is a record of the drafters' misgivings. A Fundamentalist reading of Concordance 37 therefore admits only the ruling that the spillway is not to be obstructed, and treats every later clause, including the nine that identify the spillway, as a subsequent qualification of doubtful authority.

Tertius Vane, Warden of the Third Annex, summarised the objection in the course of the Inquiry into Reading Practices (6612):

"To read the first sentence and no other is not reading. It is a decision made in advance, dressed in a document."

— Tertius Vane, Warden of the Third Annex, evidence to the Inquiry into Reading Practices, 6612

The Society answered the following year with a printed defence, its twenty-fifth, arguing that Vane had himself read the first sentence and no other, having stopped at the word "to."

Practice and the Reading Leaf

The Society's ordinary practice is conducted in Reading Leaf — a small aperture between floors 331 and 332, no more than two metres square, where the daylight is admitted through a single slit and members assemble daily at the hour fixed by Concordance 61. Reading proceeds alphabetically, and no member may proceed past the first sentence of the document assigned. The Society points out that it has not yet reached the end of the catalogue and considers this a strength.

Members are asked to leave the leaf by the north stair, not by the aperture, since what falls onto the floor below is not the Society's concern. Departures otherwise are unrestricted.

Disputes with the Bureau of Axiomatic Purity

The Society has been in continuous correspondence with the Bureau of Axiomatic Purity since 6503, when the Bureau issued a note observing that the doctrine of the first sentence, if applied to the Bureau's own founding instrument, would abolish the Bureau. The Society replied that it had applied the doctrine to the founding instrument and that the abolition was correct; the Bureau, somewhat unexpectedly, filed the reply as a submission against itself and has since cited it twice.

The Society has also fallen out with the Index of Unresolved Imperatives, which catalogues obligations it cannot discharge. The Fundamentalists observe that the Index is a list of second sentences and is therefore a list of things that need not be done. The Index has declined to comment, and the refusal is recorded in its own entry, which now reads as an imperative and has been entered in the Index again.

Scholarly Assessment

The main point of scholarly disagreement concerns the Society's number. The Doctrine of Incompletability holds that every order in the Tower is incomplete and that the Fundamentalist claim to completeness is therefore an error of category rather than of reading, and that the Society belongs in the Inventory of Impossible Geometries rather than in the census. The Bureau of Cartographic Incongruity disagrees, noting that the Society is readily locatable, has a postbox, and answers correspondence within the fortnight.

In the matter of Mare Inexhaustum, the Society's position is accepted even by its critics: that the first sentence of the Waters' Second Account governs, and that the sea is not to be crossed. The Society has accordingly never crossed it, and considers this its longest-running experiment. Its members are permitted to look at the water from the parapet. They may not describe it.