{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1410",
    "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": 1410,
    "subject": "HUGE SPOILER - Kevin Malone",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-03-03T10:56:25+00:00",
    "last": "1999-03-03T10:56:25+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0024-0036@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1999-03-03T10:56:25+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) HUGE SPOILER - Kevin Malone",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "If my personal reluctance to spell out the ending of a good story is\nmaking other people reluctant to post, or just plain annoyed, it's\nobviously time for me to stop standing on my principles and sit on them.\nHere's the explanation I posted to Roy: if you don't want \"Kevin Malone\"\nspoilt for you, look away now!\n\n<START OF E-MAIL>"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "    I hope these questions were not rhetorical. :-)  If there was no\nchild,\nthen who is Kevin Malone? Where did (does) the money come from to buy\nand\nmaintain the estate?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, Kevin Malone tells us that he was an orphan and that he made his\nown fortune, and I don't seen any reason to disbelieve him."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "If any of the testimony of the narrative is to be\ntrusted, then a maid named Betty Malone was murdered and someone, who\nmay\nor\nmay not have been the murderer, committed suicide in consequence\nthereof.\nWhy was she murdered, and by whom?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Again, I don't see any reason not to go along with what we're told. The\nelder Mr Malone killed Betty Malone, and then himself. Why did he kill\nher? I don't think we're supposed to know for sure, and I don't think it\n\nmatters, but a lover's tiff seems a likely cause. Maybe he just didn't\nlike women very much - as you say, there's a certain element of misogyny\n\nto the story."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "What bearing does that have on Kevin, or the current \"young couple\"?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The young couple are there, as is said, as stage properties, to recreate\n\nthe house as Malone remembers it. The twist is, those aren't -his-\nmemories..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Possessed by whom or what? Spoil it for me, by private e-mail if you\nwish."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Kevin Malone is posessed by the elder Mr Malone. (Do we know his first\nname? Can't remember, but if not then I suspect it may well have been\nKevin.) That monomaniacal desire to own the big house, to get back to\nhis lost childhood, isn't his, it's Malone-the-servant's. That's why he\ncould never be happy as master of the house: in the home he \"remembers\",\n\nhe slept in the servant's annexe.\n\nThe subtext of the story is \"you can't go home again\" - the quote from\nTom Wolfe. I suspect - and this is pure conjecture - that the\ninspiration for this story was GW thinking to himself \"...or can you?\nWhat if a man was rich enough to buy his own childhood home, and\nmaintain it just as it was?\"\n\n...I could go on, but I think that once you understand the significance\nof the last line (and the last line in a good short story is -always-\nsignificant) the story speaks for itself. See what you think.\n\nAll the best!\n\n<END OF E-MAIL>\n\nPostscript: Peter Westlake sent me an e-mail in which he arrived at very\n\nmuch the same conclusions, which reassures me a little that I know what\nI'm\ntalking about for once. He adds the interesting idea that Marcella too\nhas\nbeen posessed - by the ghost of Betty Malone. I'm going to have to\nre-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-read the story before I can decide one way\nor\nanother on that one.\n\nPost-postscript: while trying to convince Roy of my theory, I remembered\n\nanother telling point. Priest says that the body of Betty Malone was\nnever\nfound, and Malone immediately says that she was \"buried on the estate.\"\nHe\nseems very sure, doesn't he? <g>"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}