{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1001",
    "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": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1001,
    "subject": "Continuing Westward",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-07-16T21:12:20+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-16T22:38:59+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0017-0025@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at coredcs.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-16T21:12:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Continuing Westward",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "\"Continuing Westward\" reminds me of \"Suzanne Delage\" in several respects.\n(1) It's an homage piece to another writer, this time Rudyard Kipling. And\n(2) its more fantastic elements don't really emerge until you realize the\nstory is actually about something else. In other words you need still\nanother relevant text to help decode the story properly (just as I argue\nSnow White helps us to make sense of Suzanne Delage, even though I know all\nof you don't buy into this).\n\nGiven the locale of the story--Turkey during World War I--and our unnamed\nnarrator's stated direction--\"Continuing Westward\" (which almost certainly\nplays off Kipling's six year stint at a school called Westward Ho! in\nDevon)--one needn't be either Rand or McKnally to figure out where we'll\neventually end up. Of course, the biplane we're traveling in is incapable\nof flight, having been caught in a premature explosion, and our compass is\na good 30 degrees off north, so it might take us a while, even if we do\nmanage to get our directions right. But so far, so good:  the dust we've\nraised hasn't come to the attention of our calvaried enemies--\"the Turkish\nhorse\"--and eventually we even reach a primitive desert village, where many\nof the people are either blind or one-eyed and we're served mutton. Here\nwe're also treated to the dancing ministrations of a local tribal girl who\nis so irresistable our narrator abandons his comrade de guerre, Sanderson\n(who eats \"like a pig\"), and he takes off with the little desert vixen for\nparts unknown.\n\nGot everything figured out yet?\n\nThe unnamed narrator is No-Man, or Odysseus. The biplane with its torn silk\nwings and broken compass is his ship, lost 20 years in the return from war.\n\"Turkish horse\" references the Trojan Horse (ancient Troy was located in\nwhat is now modern Turkey). The blind villagers symbolize Teiresias; the\none-eyed are the Cyclops, who raise sheep. (The blind  might also represent\nPolyphemus after the eye-poke.) And Sanderson, in addition to being Paris,\nthe son of Priam (aka Alexandros, according to Homer), is the ensorcelled\npig of Circe.\n\nAs for the desert girl, who has broken radio parts woven into her hair, and\nwho's described over and over again by the noises she's making (lots of\nringing and jingling), she's the siren. Only this time Odysseus has not\nstopped up his ears with wax and so is unable to avoid her call. And now\nhe'll never return to Greece and patient Penelope. (Kipling, of course, did\nhave his anti-feminist side--witness The Light That Failed; and The\nNaulahka--so this may play into the femme fatale ending as well.)\n \nThen again a lithe young desert girl...I could think of worse ways to go,\nwestward or otherwise <g>.\n\nRobert Borski"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0017-0027@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "mary whalen",
        "address": "marewhalen at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-16T22:38:59+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re:  Continuing Westward",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0017-0025@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This is Sean Whalen (prion)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Robert Borski wrote:\nAs for the desert girl, who has broken radio parts woven into her\nhair, and\nwho's described over and over again by the noises she's making (lots\nof\nringing and jingling), she's the siren. Only this time Odysseus has\nnot\nstopped up his ears with wax and so is unable to avoid her call."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This seems to fit, but how does it fit in that he originally thought\nthat she stabbed Sanderson?  He didn't just decide to leave him, he\nthought that he was dead.\n\nprion"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}