{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1040",
    "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": 1040,
    "subject": "Hierogrammates; Chesterton",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-08-04T20:59:32+00:00",
    "last": "1998-08-04T20:59:32+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0017-0085@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "adam louis stephanides",
        "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-08-04T20:59:32+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Hierogrammates; Chesterton",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In THE SILENCE OF THE LANGFORD, Dave Langford discusses British critic\nNick Lowe's (presumably not the rock musician) observation that some\nscience fiction novels circumvent tiresome questions of plausibility by\nincorporating the plot itself as a character in the book, with a name such\nas the Force or Hari Seldon's Plan.  Langford gives an illustration from\nthe Hyperion books, which makes clear he is talking about characters whose\nfunction, and motivation, is to force the other characters to do what the\nauthor wants them to do.  I don't want to believe that Wolfe is guilty of\nthis in URTH, but I haven't seen any better explanation for the\nHierogrammates' activities.  (And if my dissatisfaction with this makes me\na Vulcan, then so be it.)\n\nOn a completely different topic, I know that Wolfe admires Chesterton, but\nChesterton has never seemed \"Wolfeian\" to me, to employ a Borgesian\ntemporal inversion.  But in THE COLLECTED WORKS OF G. K. CHESTERTON vol.\n14, which contains hundreds of pages of unpublished short stories,\nnovelettes, and fragments, there is a short story, \"Child Street,\" which\ndid strike me as very Wolfeian. It's an excellent story, and worth seeking\nout in a library or through interlibrary loan.  (The samw volume contains\nanother excellent unpublished short story, \"Le Jongleur de Dieu,\" which is\nnot particularly Wolfeian, but is strikingly un-Chestertonian.)\n\nThis will be my last post for a while, as I am moving and losing my email\nconnection.\n\nAu revoir,\n\nAdam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}