{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1409",
    "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": 1409,
    "subject": "\"Kevin Malone\" defence",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-03-02T17:59:50+00:00",
    "last": "1999-03-02T17:59:50+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0024-0035@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-03-02T17:59:50+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"Kevin Malone\" defence",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "    Re. Peter Westlake and Tony Ellis \"not buying\":\n\n    It is difficult to defend my theory against Tony's without betraying his\ntrust, so I will here argue but one point that is central to my reading;\nthat there must be some link between KM's past - his childhood -, and his\n\"present\" to account for his current circumstance. To have him become\ninvolved, ex nihilo, with The Pines, I find difficult to accept and also\nunnecessary.\n    The key, to me, lies with the narrator's question about why KM entered\nthe orphanage. One doesn't normally ask such a question at all; it is\nunderstood; because the individual in question is an orphan. Which makes the\nquestion's qualifier, \"... or lose their places?\", all the more relevant.\nThat a child could be placed in an orphanage, not because he is an orphan,\nbut because his parents were no longer in a position to financially maintain\nhim, is clearly indicated. Such an unusual phrasing would call attention to\nitself even in a story by someone other than Wolfe. When Wolfe does it he is\ncalling loudly.\n    This, as earlier outlined, establishes the link between the estate and\nKM's childhood. If there were nothing to connect them, then we are left with\nthe prospect of KM being, seemingly at random, drawn into the whole affair,\nby whatever agency, a tenet unsupported by the text. My theory, if not in\nall its particulars, at least has some textual support, previously cited. He\nand his parents lived on the estate until the time of the murder/suicide.\nWhy else did they have to leave, in such dire circumstance, if not in\nconsequence thereof?\n\nRoy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}