{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1195",
    "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": 1195,
    "subject": "(no subject)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-10-16T10:54:08+00:00",
    "last": "1998-10-16T10:54:08+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0020-0037@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Kevin J. Maroney",
        "address": "kmaroney at crossover.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-10-16T10:54:08+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "At 08:47 AM 10/16/98 -0400, Rostrum wrote:\nMemory."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "\"Memory\" doesn't seem to me to be a theme, but a subject matter (just as,\nsay, time-travel is a subject matter). \n\n\"All of life is a fragmentary memory, even as we are living it\" would be a\ntheme.\n\nWolfe repeats *tropes* over and over--tricks with memory and memory\npalaces, resureections and wars, killing one's friends (I often find myself\nwondering who, exactly, Wolfe killed that he feels so guilty about\nit--perhaps he's working through war guilt, or possibly he just finds it a\nfascinating subject), stage-acting, and so forth. \n\nThe equally brilliant John Crowley returns again and again to a few\nwell-defined themes--the past is fundamentally different from the present\nand the present is constantly fundamentally changing into the future; the\nentire world is a palace of memory. \n\nWolfe is more varied. Yes, memory features prominently in _The Book of the\nNew Sun_ and the _Soldier_ novels (and in so many smaller works) but in\nvery different ways; I would say that its role in _The Book of the Long\nSun_ is, while certainly not absent, much less central and not in a\nthematic continuum with either of those. \n\nMore central to Wolfe's work is his ideal of heroism, which is a remarkable\nmixture of self-determination and self-sacrifice. The degree to which his\ncharacters are refined by suffering, but never lose sight of the fact that\ntheir heroism is grounded in a need to protect their friends and their world.\n\n(Of course, that doesn't fit Alden Weir at all, probably the least\nadmirable of Wolfe's protagonists. But even Weir has the self-determination\nof a Wolfe hero.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Wombat\n\n\nKevin Maroney\t\tkmaroney at crossover.com\nKitchen Staff Supervisor\tNew York Review of Science Fiction\nhttp://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}