{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/37",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 37,
    "subject": "The Book of the New Sun",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1984-11-28T09:28:00+00:00",
    "last": "1984-12-03T10:17:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v9-211-5@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jim Aspnes",
        "address": "asp%mit-oz at mit-mc.arpa"
      },
      "date": "1984-11-28T09:28:00+00:00",
      "subject": "The Book of the New Sun",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I, too, found it difficult to find a true plot to The Book.  It's\ncurious, because Wolfe has done more substantial works (_Fevre\nDream_ comes to mind), where he has managed to keep his plot tight\nand his characters human.  Perhaps it's the strange setting or the\nself-indulgent first-person narrative, but The Book of the New Sun\nreads like literary doodling.  It has points of greatness (the story\ntold by the Ascian is a work of art in itself), and they manage to\ncarry the story limpingly along, but the work as a whole seems more\nof an anthology than a series of novels.\n\nMy praise will flow freely for anyone who can pick out some\nsemblance of continuity of plot and can justify it well.  But at the\nmoment it seems very much that the Autarch's clothes are impossible\nfor any but the truly wise to see.\n\nJim"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v9-215-2@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "FEBER",
        "address": "feber at usc-isib.arpa"
      },
      "date": "1984-12-03T10:17:00+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: The Book of the New Sun",
      "in_reply_to": "<sflovers-v9-211-5@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Jim Aspnes recently added a new book to the Wolfe canon,\nFevre Dream, which, considering it is by George R R Martin, is\nfairly suprising.  Since arguing ad hominem is generally frowned\nupon, I will restrict this flame to the following: There seems to be\na widely held belief that a narrative can take only one (or maybe\ntwo or three, for the more liberal minded) forms, and that\neverything else is either \"literary doodling\" or \"too long\" or \"full\nof big words\" etc. etc. I would suggest that before you start\nattacking a book on literary grounds, you understand something about\nthe subject - Northrup Frye's Anatomy of Criticism is a good place\nto start.  Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun (which is really one\nbook, as its name implies) has an episodic narrative which places it\nsquarely in the oldest literary tradition there is (except for maybe\nthe grunt).  What makes it a fascinating work, outside of the\nclarity of its prose, is the interweaving of themes and motifs.  But\nif you don't get it by reading it, no amount of explication will\nhelp.\n                (mark)"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}