{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/115", "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": 115, "subject": "Why I Think Pan", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1997-07-23T14:26:00+00:00", "last": "1997-07-26T15:56:29+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.com" }, "date": "1997-07-23T14:26:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Why I Think Pan", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Reply: Item #3748604 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INTERNET#\n\nNutria,\n\nI think you've already stated all the pieces that made me guess\nPeter's last name as Pan. First the ending suggests that Peter has a\nlast name older than Palmieri; then the not growing up, the playing\npirates, the island, the interaction with a big sister/two brothers.\n\nRe: the island as deathland. Yes, definitely. Just like the shore\nof the averns; the skiff, the number of passengers threatening to\nsink the skiff, the space bending, the weird guide.\n\nBut as you nearly say, Cassonsville itself is part fairyland. You can\nonly get there by a ride from a denizen. Pete's \"welcome\" had run\nout until he got the ride with Ernie Cotha.\n\nAnd the whole \"changeling\" mythology is fairy based/driven. A fairy\nbaby or elder is substituted for a human baby--the human baby is\ntaken to work in the fairy labor system (shades of \"A Cabin on the\nCoast\") or pollenate the fairies (like Severian in the cave on the\nisland with Apheta in Yesod). After this task is complete, the\nfairies dispose of the human baby, usually by letting it go back\n\"home\" only displaced in time.\n\nPeter Pan obviously has a great deal of fairy to him, which is why\nI'm so eager to tie him to little Peter Palmieri. Peter Palmieri is\nthe fairy changeling of the title, but like many Wolfe stories, the\nfocus is on paradox, how the human baby goes through an awful lot of\nchanges (making it a \"changeling\") while the fairy changeling remains\nunchanged--static. We might also be close to \"hero wrestles with\nhis own shadow\"; again, Weer vs. Bobby Black, Severian and\nApu-Punchau vs. Hildegrin the Badger, (Peter Pan vs. his shadow?).\n\nHey, good point--twenty-nine year old Pete was supposed to have\nnocturnal reunion in motel room with thirty-something Maria, leading\nto marriage, and then eight-year-old Peter could latch onto a new\nnuclear unit. Nice! The sugar lump (cassons?) for the overworked\nlittle burro (note that Pete calls Papa a burro; and that Papa is the\nonly other one who knows about Peter's weirdness), but the burro\nbalks!\n\nRe: \"contemptable situation of an able-bodied man living off the\ngifts of others, who treat him as a guru. Pete has moved into the\nmentality of Hinduism,\" well . . . anchorites, cenobites, stylites\n(sp?); monks, nuns, saints, and martyrs all have a place in\nChristianity (some branches, at least ).\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jim Jordan", "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net" }, "date": "1997-07-26T15:56:29+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Why I Think Pan", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Mantis,\n\n\tWell, I'd completely overlooked the fairy connection with changeling,\nswapping babies, etc. Sounds exactly right to me. I'll have to read it yet\nagain. Soon I'll have it memorized!\n\tThe Peter Paul Mary Mama Papa stuff suggests a church connection, too, and\nWolfe likes to conflate stuff. I'll have to see if it will work out.\n\tBTW: Wolfe says that the old man is dead. Whom do you think that means?\n\nNutria" } ] } ] }