{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/105",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 105,
    "subject": "RETREAD Changeling",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-07-16T15:40:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-07-16T15:40:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0002-0168@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-07-16T15:40:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) RETREAD Changeling",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #1856700 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#\n\nI finally found some of my old notes and present them here with\nhardly a dusting off.\n\nRETREAD NOTES ON \"The Changeling\":\n\nFirst off, last time I read it I got to the encrypted name at the\nend and said to myself, \"Ah, so his name is Peter Pan, with Pan\nbeing a link to both the Greek god Pan (benign) and Typhon-as-Pas\n(malignant) in the Wolfean scheme of things.\"  But that was last\ntime.  [Also note: Pan as rubric for \"idylic pagan times,\" or, to\nadd to Nutria's religious approach, \"pagan childhood (of\nhumankind before advent of Christ)\"; which works nicely with Peter\nPan by itself; and by tangent the appearance of god Pan to the childish\nanimal people of THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, or even pre-civilized Mowgli\ndescribed as Pan-like in the Jungle Books.]\n\nThis time [1995?] I made note of elements: \"Alienated Guy\"\n(tracked in Joan Gordon's work; makes strong link between \"The\nChangeling\" and \"The Adopted Father,\" among others), \"Hero in\nPrison,\" \"Korean War (1950-1953),\" \"Hero as Criminal,\" \"Sealed\nRecords,\" and \"Hidden Manuscript (in cave).\"\n\nThe initially nameless hero was in Korea (before the North\ninvaded) when his father died in Buffalo.  Hero came back for\nfuneral, then returned to Korea, became P.O.W.  Refusing\nrepatriation in 1953, he went to China for a few years, then\nchanged his mind again (\"changeling\") and returned to USA where\nhe faced court martial in 1959 and prison time.  (Question: as is\noften the case, \"What year is the story set in?\")\n\nHis memories of the town are up through fourth grade, the\nchildren he played with and things of that nature.  His family\nleft before he started fifth grade.\n\nThe story and his memory center on the Palmieri family: Mama,\nPapa, Maria, Paul, and Peter.  There is some word magic going on\nhere: Peter, Paul, and Mary are fused into \"Peter Palmieri\"\n(which is later truncated into \"Pete Palmer\").  (And their motel\nis out by the fair grounds--yikes!  Can the dogboy\nbe far off?)  Papa Palmieri tells of their move to Cassonville\nfrom Chicago when Maria was a baby; the overnight arrival of\nstrange little Peter, the ageless fairy child, locked at age\neight.\n\n(The scene wherein narrator recalls wrestling with a same-age\nPeter [\"That must have been twenty years ago\"] echoes both Weer\nwrestling with Bobby Black in PEACE and Apu-Punchau/Severian\nwrestling with Hildegrin in TBOTNS. Likewise the skiff scene\nreminds me of Severian on the Lake of Birds in TBOTNS.)\n\nAnyway, it comes down to narrator \"Pete\" (\"re-Pete\"?) \"Palmer\"\n(pilgrim returned from the holy land) looking for his own face in\nthe fourth grade class photo of 1944.  (Click, click: so the\n\"now\" of the story is circa 1964.  Hmm, and a fire in 1945 burned\nall the old newspapers . . . Pete Palmer is looking for newspaper\nmention of his birth in Cassonville.)  But there is Peter\nPalmieri's face instead of his.  (Timeline check-in: a fourth\ngrader would be nine years old; in order to be in the Army in\nKorea before the North invaded, a fellow would have to be around\n19 in 1949; it is difficult to see how a nine year old could age\nten years in five calendar years, unless, of course, it involves\na trip to fairyland.  In which case, that \"fellow\" would\nsure be a \"traveler.\" <g>)\n\nIs \"Pete\" in PEACE, somewhere?  I don't know PEACE so well.  That\nbit about the cave reminded me of the skull in the cave in PEACE.\nI found that section fast enough and backtracked--no, that is set\non a mountain, not an island (\". . . of Doctor Death . . .\"), but\nbingo!  In the lead-up to the cave picnic Weer does mention\n\"there is a long, stony island which used, at about the time\nI imagined myself visiting Dr. Van Ness, a [sic] harbor a hermit\ncalled Crazy Pete.\"\n\nHeh-heh.  That picnic takes place in 1915 (according to Schuyler;\nthose who believe Dan French [a character in PEACE who provides\none of the few year date anchors] might put it at 1925),\nforty-nine years before our narrator Pete becomes a hermit on the\nisland.\n\n TIMELINE\n 1931 -- Maria Palmieri born in Chicago; youngest US soldiers of\nKorean War born.\n 1932 -- Palmieris move to Cassonsville, where 8 year old Peter\nappears and warps reality around him.\n 1934 -- fourth grade class of 1944 born; narrator Pete born in\nCassonsville?\n 1939 -- Peter is Maria's twin brother.\n 1940 -- Paul Palmieri born in Cassonsville.\n 1944 -- fourth grade photo (in spring); Pete wrestles with Peter\nPalmieri over fate of a frog (and Pete had hit Maria with a\nrock); Pete and family leave Cassonsville (change names?) (in\nsummer).\n 1945 -- fire burned old newspapers.\n 1949 -- Pete's father dies in Buffalo.\n 1950-53 -- Korean War.\n 1953 -- POW exchange, Pete refuses and goes to China where he\nworks in a textile mill.\n 1959 -- Pete back in US, faces court martial.\n 1964 -- out of US prison, Pete (changes name?) goes to\nCassonsville.\n\n So what happened in 1944?  Pete and family (at least father--had\nmother died already?) leave town; Peter Palmieri replaces Pete in\nschool photo (if not elsewhere); then there is a fire at the\nnewspaper in the next year.  That wrestling scene seems to have\nsome reality warping, so I'm thinking it is the triggering event.\n\nIt is not clear when the name changing took place.\n\n(OED gives \"casson\" as \"a chest\"; or as a variant of \"casing\";\nbut \"cassons\" as \"? sugar in some form.\")\n\n[Finally: in a non-fantasy reading ala Le Carre, this story is like\nTHE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE; or an Orwellian tale about a guy with no\nties who goes off to war, is captured and goes over to the enemy,\neventually to return to his hometown to find that the enemy's culture\nhas begun to take root there (shades of \"Paul's Treehouse\").  Since\n\"erasures\" of \"un-persons\" is a pretty well known fact of Stalinist\nRussia and Communism-as-she-is-practiced.  Now IF Pete were visiting\nduring McCarthy's Fame, that would be an interesting comment on\ncommie-like political purges, but he's not.]\n\n[Nostalgia mode: read in non-fantasy mode, this could be another\nbeer hall meditation on \"if we hadn'ta moved, my life wouldn't have\ngotten so messed up and I would've turned out just like those nice\nkids I played with as a child.\"]\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
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