{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/134",
    "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": 134,
    "subject": "alga onto something",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-08-08T05:39:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-08-08T05:39:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0003-0207@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-08-08T05:39:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) alga onto something",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #7307956 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02#\n\nalga,\n\nRe: NYRSF, reprint time is always cause for celebration.  When PEACE\ncame out again just a few years ago there were a couple of neat\nessays about it, and a timeline.  So you can't use that as a fig\nleaf!\n\nRe: me naming the animals.  Ah, so what!  Can't use that excuse,\neither.  (But if you give me a little footnote, hey, that would be\ngreat!)\n\nSee, this is how it could go: you write it up, it is published, and\nthen out of the blue there's not one, but =two= long letters to the\neditor in response, one from me and one from Nutria.  And we're going\nat it like a battle royale, so people start to say, hey, what's it\nall about?  And then Gene Wolfe, subscriber, drops in a postcard just\nfor fun.\n\nRe: TBOTNS, I don't mean to say that \"Tracking Song\" is a miniature\nor dry run or anything like that.  Just that, as a Wolfe work it\nshows a number of Wolfe concerns (ecology, evolution, humanity's\nplace in the universe) and even some sequences (\"giant, seizure, ride\nto head, food denied\"; magical combat with Decuman the sorcerer,\nmagical combat with Ceryx the necromancer; etc.) that are more fully\nexpressed in TBOTNS.\n\nRe: the Autarch of \"Eschatology and Genesis.\"  I mean the dramatic\nrole rather than any of the real autarchs--there is a scene where he\norders the gardens to be firebombed in the hopes of killing off\n\"Adam\" so that he, the autarch, can usurp Adam's role in starting the\nhuman race of the new dawn.  Likewise the ever mysterious countessa\nis trying to pull a lilith, competing with Eve and Lilith.  Like the\ntitle of the play, like the play itself, \"Tracking Song\" is about the\nending of an old world and the beginning of a new one--there are\nelements of congruency.\n\n(Gee, that wound in Cutthroat's side is kinda sorta Christ-like, ain't\nit, doncha think?)\n\nGranted there are a few main ways to read this story.  We can agree\nthat one reading is that Cutthroat is delusional the whole time--Mr.\nMagoo in the zoo thinks he's on the subway, or vice versa.  He's\namnesiatic, he thinks animals are humans and rationalizes the obvious\ndifferences with quirky surrealistic props: a chair for antlers,\nwands for fish catching paws, hoes for tusks, etc.  And because he is\nso non-threatening, the animals treat him like Forest Gump and\neverybody kinda gets along. This is the Kafka reading, which you so\naptly named--don't back away from it.\n\nThe Planet Called Moreau reading is that the \"humans\" are not really\njust animals but beastmen who have fallen into their beastlike\nstates.  Cutthroat has been sent to help them along the path, as have\nthose teams who spoke to the other groups.\n\nThe Changeling reading is that Cutthroat originally was a beastman\nlike Cim who joined up to serve on the Sleigh (as she would like to do),\nwas modified and sent back to teach others.  (That he grows face hair\nmeans that he was not originally a wolf . . . he might have been a\nlion, since they grow face hair . . . )  Or, as she suspects, he just\nfound the suit or ate the sleigher who wore it (shades of FIFTH HEAD\nabo here).\n\nSaying that Lindsay's savagry is different from \"nature's\" savagry\nin Wolfe's story is ignoring the strong similarity.  We accept the\nbeastman savagry once we recognize them as \"animals\" (thereby\nignoring the Kafka reading); we cannot accept that Lindsay's capricious\nmurderers are acting at the same level of survival instinct since we\nexpect them to act like \"humans.\"  (Ironically? this is the split in\nperception that Cutthroat refuses to make.)  Yet if we watch a nature\nprogram with our eyes wide open as a child's, then gee, does raw untamed\nnatural reality =really= have to be so horribly violent?  As adults we\nautomatically shut down such childish notions, since that is the way the\nworld is and there is nothing that one individual can do about it, but\nin the realm of dreams and visions we can still explore them.\n\nWolfe is offering a pre-coalition Narnia, where the critters are\nstill going about the business of killing and eating each other.  And\nCutthroat is like the Green Man in that he is pointing to an\nalternative, however vague and utopian.  (But he isn't the Green Man;\nhe is just like the Green Man in this respect--an evolved being among\ndevolved beings on the threshold of the next stage.)\n\nSure would be great if we could find these terms and names in some\ndictionary somewhere.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}