{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1630",
    "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": 1630,
    "subject": "Inside the Sausage Factory",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-05-14T09:29:23+00:00",
    "last": "1999-05-14T09:29:23+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0026-0110@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David_Lebling",
        "address": "david_lebling at avid.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-05-14T09:29:23+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Inside the Sausage Factory",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Patrick O'Leary, guarding the gate to the sausage factory, wrote:\nAll this speculation about Wolfe \"speeding through,\" \"making it up as he goes\nalong,\" \"backfilling mistakes,\" \"multiple drafts,\" \"no idea where it's going\"\nare, in my opinion fruitless. How a writer gets to where he's going doesn't\nmatter."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Gee, my original post in this vein was intended as a joke. I think I even\nlabeled it as such.  But seriously, folks...  This stuff _is_ interesting.  I\nthink it's even potentially interesting to writers.  Stephen Jay Gould writes\nthat it's very common in science to hide (or even be ashamed of) the path taken\nto reach the wonderful theory; to make it look like the theory derived\ninexorably from a cool dispassionate chain of logic. He scoffs. Science is\nmessy, and learning about the process by which the mess became the theory is\nimportant.  Wolfe commits art, not science, of course, but the process is just\nas interesting, at least to some of us.  Who is not fascinated to learn why\nMichelangelo's _David_ stands in the posture he does, or why Leonardo's _Last\nSupper_ is so deteriorated?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "It's magic, don't you think? Who cares how the wizard does it?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, actually, I do.  I care about it at the simplest level, which is\ncuriousity. I also care about it at the level of learning about craftsmanship,\nwhich is the same thing that impels me to watch _New Yankee Workshop_, even\nthough I know I will never be a carpenter. I find books like _The Castle of the\nOtter_ fascinating.\n\n     Dave Lebling\n     (aka vizcacha)"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}