{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1089", "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": 1089, "subject": "time's arrow", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "1998-09-04T09:05:46+00:00", "last": "1998-09-05T00:31:52+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Paul C Duggan", "address": "pduggan at world.std.com" }, "date": "1998-09-04T09:05:46+00:00", "subject": "(urth) time's arrow", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I heard Martin Amis interviewed when his book came out. He made the\ninteresting point that morality can be defined by whether or not an action\nis different when run in reverse or not. Two billiard balls hitting looks\nthe same no matter which way you run time. Poisoning a man looks very\ndifferent the other way around.\n\nApparently some people accused Amis of trivializing or glorifying the\nholocaust by using such moral terms for it's opposite.\n\n\"I am an impure thinker. I am hurt, swayed, shaken, | paul + | +\nelated, disillusioned, shocked, comforted, and I | --|--\nhave to transmit my mental experiences lest I die.\" | + | +\n -- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy | pduggan at world.std.com" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "1998-09-04T10:19:15+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) time's arrow", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, Paul C Duggan wrote:\nI heard Martin Amis interviewed when his book came out. He made the\ninteresting point that morality can be defined by whether or not an action\nis different when run in reverse or not. Two billiard balls hitting looks\nthe same no matter which way you run time. Poisoning a man looks very\ndifferent the other way around." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm not sure I understand. Is it because backwards it would look like you\nare sucking the poison out of a man and bringing the dead back to life?\n\nBut almost everything except two billiard balls hitting looks different\nwhen run in reverse: typing a letter, changing clothes, eating a\ncheeseburger, building a fence. How does that help us define the morality\nof these actions? \n\nObWolfe: Someone mentioned \"In Looking Glass Castle\" as a story featuring\na backwards-living character, but I don't see that at all. That's the one\nfeaturing the world where there are no men and the scientist with a man\nhiding in her house, isn't it? What am I missing? \n\n-Rostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "William H. Ansley", "address": "wansley at warwick.net" }, "date": "1998-09-05T00:31:52+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) time's arrow", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rostrum (Michael Straight ) wrote:\nObWolfe: Someone mentioned \"In Looking Glass Castle\" as a story featuring\na backwards-living character, but I don't see that at all. That's the one\nfeaturing the world where there are no men and the scientist with a man\nhiding in her house, isn't it? What am I missing?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "(To the tune of \"Little Orphan Annie\".)\n\nWho could it be\nbut Robert Borski!\n\nWho said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As for Gene Wolfe, \"In Looking Glass Castle\" is a shorter work of his where\na character lives life backwards and thus remembers the future--clearly\nmodeled here on Lewis Carroll's White Queen, who does the same. In this\ncase, however, it's Daisy McKane, who, although she's naturally confused,\nremembers her own drowning." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I am with Rostrum on this one. I don't see how Robert can get \"experiencing\ntime backwards\" out of this story. But then again, I haven't understood how\nRobert came up with many of his interpretations of other Wolfe stories,\neither.\n\nWhile I will bow to no one in my admiration for Lewis Carroll, as I have\ndemonstrated elsewhere on this list , his White Queen is a pretty feeble\nmodel for living backwards in time. The scene where she screams and bleeds\n*before* pricking her finger is the only real example of this in _Through\nthe Looking Glass and What Alice Found There_. Perhaps that is why I\nhaven't noticed the backwards aspect of \"In Looking Glass Castle\".\n\nWilliam Ansley" } ] } ] }