{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1388",
    "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": 1388,
    "subject": "\"Kevin Malone\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-02-24T22:36:57+00:00",
    "last": "1999-02-24T22:36:57+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0024-0001@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-02-24T22:36:57+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"Kevin Malone\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "    I just finished re-re-reading \"Kevin Malone\", from _Endangered_Species_.\nWhat I would like to know is: who did what to whom, and why? Is KM a ghost,\nor just what he purports to be?\n    Note that we again have an unnamed narrator, though most everyone else\nin the story is named. The narrator's wife is named Marcella. Is that name\nsignificant? Why does she repeatedly impugn her husband's masculinity? They\nare newlyweds, after all.\n    The story, though contemporary (published 1980), evokes, I think\ndeliberately, the era of the 1920s, a la Fitzgerald. Marcella is an\nalcoholic, and her husband is not far behind. Both are shallow, vapid, and\npretentious; basically useless people. The narrator questions their newfound\ncircumstances; his wife accepts things as they are. The narrator is cast out\nof this Edenic life for questioning it; the wife remains, even if only as a\nmaid, seemingly with the concurrence of all involved. What conclusion are we\nto draw from this?\n    The black and white, dog-eared photo he is twice shown of the staff\nshows some two dozen people, yet only about 1/4 that number appear in the\nstory. Where are the rest? Does Marcella assume, in some sense, the role of\nthe murdered Betty Malone? Were there other \"young couples\" before them?\n    What relationship did the murder victim have to KM? Neither KM nor\nPriest actually refer to her as KM's mother. The incident is related in\nresponse to a query about KM going to an orphanage. And what are we to make\nof the narrator's parting hunch that both murderer and victim being named\nMalone may be coincidental? Answers anyone?\n\nRoy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}