{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1255",
    "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": 1255,
    "subject": "Weer weird",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-11-13T00:06:44+00:00",
    "last": "1998-11-13T00:06:44+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0021-0059@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "al at interport.net"
      },
      "date": "1998-11-13T00:06:44+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Weer weird",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I wouldn't dare post this if the list weren't somewhat comatose, but here's\nsomething I just read that I thought might speak to the Weer group (of which\nI am not one). No chance that Wolfe read it, as it wasn't published till\n1984, but it does seem to have some resonance. From Robert Darnton's -The\nGreat Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History- in the\nchapter \"Readers Respond to Rousseau.\"\n\n\"When the Balinese prepare a corpse for burial, they read stories to one\nanother, ordinary stories from collections of their most familiar tales.\nThey read them without stopping, twenty-four hours a day, for two or three\ndays at a time, not because they need distraction but because of the dangers\nof demons. Demons possess souls during the vulnerable period immediately\nafter a death, but stories keep them out. Like Chinese boxes or English\nhedges, the stories contain tales within tales, so that as you enter one you\nrun into another, passing from plot to plot every time you turn a corner\nuntil at last you reach the core of the narrative space, which corresponds\nto the place occupied by the corpse within the inner courtyard of the\nhousehold. Demons cannot penetrate this space because they cannot turn\ncorners. They beat their heads helplessly against the narrative maze that\nthe readers have built, and so reading provides a kind of defense\nfortification surrounding Balinese ritual. It creates a wall of words, which\noperates like the jamming of radio broadcasts It does not amuse, instruct,\nimprove, or help to while away the time: by the imbrication of narrative and\nthe cacophony of sound, it protects souls.\"\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}